Committee blasts DCYF after stunning report

June 13, 2019 11:56 pm

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — The House Oversight Committee showed no mercy for the DCYF at a hearing Thursday night.

“There’s blood on your hands,” said committee chair Rep. Patricia Serpa, (D) West Warwick. “And this is disgusting.”

DCYF is partly blamed for the death of a 9–year–old girl in a blistering 57–page report from the Office of the Child Advocate.

“These are pages and pages of poor judgment,” testified Jennifer Griffith, the Rhode Island Child Advocate. “This is not a realistic assessment of how one woman could take care of eight special needs children.”

A focus of the hearing was how the DCYF allowed Michele Rothgeb in a home described as deplorable to care for that many children.

“They already struck out once in the parent lottery, and then this is the family with which we place them?” Griffith said. “Just as this woman adopted a child, she’s on the phone with DCYF looking for another one.”

DCYF director Trista Piccola testified the agency makes no excuses for what happened.

“DCYF is working in lockstep to ensure that impactful and immediate improvements are made to how Rhode Island protects its children,” Piccola said.

Those include a new five–child limit for caregivers, closer evaluation of families with multiple children, and discipline and re–training for some employees.

Chairwoman Serpa says it’s less about creating policies and more about enforcing them, and called the agency’s actions in this girl’s death borderline criminal.

“I do believe that negligence can lead to criminal acts,” she said. “I don’t know if they’re prosecutable, if that’s a term.”

Representative Charlene Lima was disturbed that no one at DCYF appears to have been fired over this.

“I hope you’re feeling nervous, like those handicapped children were feeling in the ‘house of horrors,'” said Lima, (D) Cranston. “If you had any honor or any dignity, you’d hand in your resignations immediately, and walk away.”