Isaac’s Death in Detroit

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LOSING ISAAC: Last of a series

Overhaul may be only hope

The beating death of 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge in foster care exposes a stubbornly persistent pattern of failures in Michigan’s child welfare system, despite several attempts at reform. The overburdened system has seen the number of children in foster care rise steadily since the mid-1990s even as the state resources to handle them shrank. Isaac was the third young child to die under the state’s watch in the last 18 months.

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3 violent deaths in 18 months under state’s watch

Isaac Lethbridge is the third child to die violently in a Michigan foster or adoptive home in the past 18 months. Ricky Holland, a 7-year-old former foster child from Jackson County, was killed by his adoptive parents in July 2005 in the family’s home near Williamston in Ingham County.

Troubles across the country

Foster-care systems across the country are troubled. In many cases, it takes a death or a lawsuit to spur reform. Here is what is happening in other states:

where advocates want to see changes

Children’s Rights, a New York-based advocacy group, is suing Michigan’s child welfare system. Marcia Robinson Lowry, the organization’s executive director, cites these areas for which change is needed:

How the system is supposed to work

Michigan’s complex, labor-intensive child welfare system begins with a Child Protective Services worker investigating a complaint of maltreatment. The first decision: Is it abuse or neglect? Then: Should the child be removed from the home and placed with relatives or in a foster home?

VIDEO: Isaac Lethbridge slideshow

Photos and music capture the life of Isaac Lethbridge, courtesy of his family.

January 29, 2007

LOSING ISAAC | A 3-PART SERIES

Unheeded warnings lead to beating death of 2-year-old boy

All the warnings were there that 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge was in trouble at a Detroit foster-care home. But everyone ignored them until after the toddler was beaten to death. A Free Press examination found irregularities in how the foster parent was licensed — and complaints alleging mistreatment of children that failed to raise alarms.

Agency had lengthy list of alarming problems

The Lethbridge children’s journey did not end with Isaac’s brutal death.

Isaac not 1st child that center had failed

Isaac Lethbridge and his sister weren’t the only children the Lula Belle Stewart Center failed. In early 2006, Betty Robins’ complaints sparked an investigation that should have signaled another alert about the agency.

Tragedy haunts siblings’ families

The families who adopted six of the Lethbridge children are deeply disturbed by what happened to Isaac. Daisy Tomlin of Detroit, who adopted Ashleigh, the oldest, several years after taking her as a foster child, regrets not having been able to take one of her siblings.

January 28, 2007

LOSING ISAAC

Day 1: How state’s big system failed this little boy

Isaac Lethbridge traveled a painful journey in his 2 1/2 years. He was neglected by his parents, moved through three troubled foster homes in less than a year and was dead by last Aug. 16, beaten and burned, his collarbone broken. A Free Press special report shows there were many chances to save Isaac. But no one did.

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Problems with center preceded Isaac’s case

Despite several licensing violations by the Lula Belle Stewart Center and a 2004 state report that criticized the agency over the beating death of a 4-year-old foster child that year, the Michigan Department of Human Services renewed the Detroit-based agency’s license to place children in 2005.

August 23, 2006

Foster care agency is shut down

The state Department of Human Services on Tuesday shut down a private nonprofit foster care program that had placed a 2-year-old boy in a Detroit home where police say he was beaten to death last week.

October 4, 2006

Family sues in boy’s death at a foster home

The family of a 2-year-old boy beaten to death in a Detroit foster home in August has filed a federal lawsuit against the Lula Belle Stewart Center, the private foster care agency that licensed the home and was responsible for monitoring it.

Foster boy’s death reveals wider neglect

After the Aug. 16 killing of a 2-year-old boy in a foster home licensed through the Lula Belle Stewart Center in Detroit, a team of seven state child abuse investigators took a closer look at how the agency was caring for its 106 other foster children. What the investigators found was startling:

August 29, 2006

Workers could have saved boy

Just 12 days before 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge died of a beating in a Detroit foster home, two social services workers let his foster mother keep the boy despite noting that he was covered with “greenish, blue and black” bruises and had two black eyes.

August 27, 2006

Who killed boy is a mystery

Nine people — three children under age 4, a 12-year-old girl, three teenagers and two adult women — were present in a Detroit home when a young foster child was severely beaten and burned last week, according to court records from a hearing Friday. But Detroit police still don’t know who killed 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge.

August 19, 2006

Boy’s death ruled homicide

The death of a 2-year-old foster child was ruled a homicide Friday after Wayne County medical examiners determined the boy had been struck by a blunt object. Isaac Lethbridge died Wednesday at Children’s Hospital of Michigan after he stopped breathing in a Detroit foster home. Detroit police were investigating and no arrests had been made.

August 18, 2006

Police awaiting autopsy results on foster child

The attorney for a Detroit foster mother under scrutiny after a 2-year-old foster child died in her care this week said Thursday that his client has no idea why or how the child died. “She feels horrible about what happened,” attorney Marc Shreeman said of Charlise Rogers. “She doesn’t know what happened.”

January 10, 2007