City Probing Deaths of Children Returned to Parents’ Custody
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services has decided to investigate the deaths of two children who died within two weeks of each other after they were returned to the custody of their respective biological parents. The agency’s commissioner, John Mattingly, said yesterday he expects the results of the investigation to be released within two weeks.
In addition, Mr. Mattingly said the agency would improve its procedures for when children are reunited with their families after living in foster care.
Mr. Mattingly outlined a checklist the agency would follow on a routine basis to ensure children’s safety when they are returned to a biological parent’s home, but he stopped short of saying the procedures were not already in place.
Indeed, he took pains to say that the measures were an attempt to “routinize” and “strengthen” existing protocols. The agency’s response is to “get it right 100% of the time,” he said.
The checklist would call for experts assessing a parent’s readiness, mental health, and substance abuse problems before a child can return home. In addition, the Family Permanency Law, which goes into effect at the end of the year, will mandate that a family court review all reunification and adoption cases prior to discharge.
The agency plans to provide ongoing support services to families once they have been reunited, he said, including assistance in securing housing. The agency made $20 million available this year for aftercare services.
Children’s Services has come under fire for its placement of the two children – Sierra Roberts, 7, and Dahquay Gillians, 1 – in their parents’ care despite seemingly obvious signs of prior abuse.
Russell Roberts, 43, was charged by the Queens district attorney’s office with murder, manslaughter, assault, and endangering the welfare of a child after allegedly beating his daughter, Sierra Roberts, to death in October. Sierra was in her father’s custody despite reports of physical abuse from 2003.
Two weeks before Sierra’s death, Tracina Vaughn, 25, was arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child after her son, Dahquay Gillians, drowned in a bathtub, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said. Dahquay was placed in his mother’s care even though she was deemed neglectful last year when she failed to seek medical treatment after her former boyfriend burned another of her children.
Thirteen of the 59,653 children who were returned to their families from a foster care home between 1996 and 2004 died, according to an agency spokeswoman, Elisabeth de Bourbon. Not all abuse ends in death: Children’s Services investigates 50,000 reports of child abuse each year, Mr. Mattingly said.
He said that whenever a child in the foster system dies, “we take it personally. I take it personally.”