It wasn’t until last week that the neighbors–and the rest of the country–learned what was going on behind that door. Mike Byrd had seen what he thought was a child pawing through his garbage for food and called the police. The little boy turned out to be Bruce Jackson, a starving 19-year-old. He and the three other boys–9 to 14, and weighing less than 50 pounds each–were subsisting on peanut butter, pancake batter, wallboard and possibly even insulation, according to authorities. Meanwhile, five adult biological children, two adopted girls and another girl who is a foster child were all apparently well fed. The boys’ adoptive parents, Vanessa and Raymond Jackson, were arrested and held on $100,000 bail.
What is especially horrifying is that the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), which had placed the children with the Jacksons, may have known about the suspected abuse and done nothing to stop it: a caseworker had visited the house regularly during the past few years. With a DYFS investigation pending, the director (just two months into the job) wouldn’t comment directly on the Jacksons’ caseworkers, but said part of the problem is that there is no official oversight of adopted kids, an issue not confined to New Jersey. The caseworkers who had visited the Jacksons recently were checking in on the foster child. “But even if you’re out there looking at other kids, I expect you to take action,” says director Edward Cotton. In fact DYFS has a history of knowing about abuse and doing little to keep it from recurring. The state’s own inspection records from last year, obtained by NEWSWEEK, document chronic shortcomings at adoption centers across the state in screening and supervising foster and adoptive homes, including the failure to report suspected abuses. In one egregious instance, revealed in records from a recently settled class-action suit brought against the state on behalf of its children, a caseworker found a belt mark across a child’s face but did not classify it as abuse. “The fact that something terrible has happened is heartbreaking, but not surprising,” says Marcia Robinson Lowry of Children’s Rights, the advocacy group that settled with the state.
Late last week residents of this middle-class community packed a soul-searching town meeting, still in shock that their own could be starving. After speaking with the couple in jail, the pastor of the Jacksons’ church, the Rev. Harry Thomas, called them a “totally innocent and loving family.” Relatives attributed the boys’ stunted growth to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which investigators say two of the boys were born with. Dr. Mira Irons, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston, says the boys’ sudden weight gain over the past two weeks suggests deprivation. But it’s possible that the hyperactivity and behavior problems often associated with FAS children might have made feeding them a challenge, she adds.
Over at DYFS, the rebuilding has begun. The agency, already reeling from another shocking case earlier this year in which the body of 7-year-old Faheem Williams was found mummified in a Newark basement, has fired nine employees involved in the Jackson case, and is hiring a raft of new workers to help cope with the formidable caseload. Under court order to clean up its act, DYFS will soon establish a new training protocol and install an emergency hot line. The cost could exceed $100 million.
The reforms will come too late for the Jackson children. The boys, now living with new families, are beginning to overcome their misguided belief that they’d throw up if they ate normal food, according to Cotton. Late last week Bruce was still in the hospital, being treated for malnourishment. He’s looking forward to starting his new life. But first, he told the DYFS director, he wants to go to Chili’s.
