A tragedy of neglect
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
They called him Negron in all the news stories and referred to him as a two-year-old boy. The words "Negron" and "boy" made the crime of his death appear less horrible, almost routine. In fact, the boy was just a baby who, until his death two weeks ago, had always been called Angel.
Words are supposed to be tools which dig out the truth, which allow us to understand one another. But the truth in the short and sad life of Angel Negron, whose foster father, Andrew S. Sesselman has been charged with his death, is that words just got in the way.
All the words on the state Department of Social Services forms, and the Home for Little Wanderers forms, and the Criminal Offenders Records Board forms, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children forms couldn't save Angel Negron.
For nobody reacted to them. Nobody looked through them or beyond them or even at them long enough to see a baby boy in trouble and in danger of his life.
When Angel Negron and his four-year-old brother were removed from their mother's home and placed in the care of DSS, it was DSS's responsibility to perform a criminal records check on the foster parents with whom the boys were placed. But DSS did not do the check itself. Instead it hired the Home for Little Wanderers to do it.
This would have been fine a check had been done when it was supposed to have been done. According to DSS's own policy, an extensive study of a foster parents' home must be completed within 20 working days of a child's placement.
But this didn't happen. Angel and his brother were placed with their maternal aunt and her husband in August 1990. But it wasn't until March 27, 1991, more than 200 days later, that the Home for Little Wanderers, responding to information that Andrew Sesselman had a long criminal history, sent a letter to DSS and the Sesselmans notifying both that the Sesselman home was unfit for foster care.
That this was like mailing a letter to tell someone his house was on fire, obviously never occurred to anyone at the Home. Nor did the simple act of following up the letter with a phone call. "Once we rejected the home and we notified the DSS, it's out of our hands," said the Home's spokeswoman, Carol Phillips.
Five months after the letter was sent, Angel Negron and his brother were still living with the Sesselmans. Why? Because DSS didn't do its job and the Home for Little Wanderers didn't do its job and the MSPCC, whose social workers were responsible for monitoring these children, didn't do its job.
And so Angel Negron is dead at the age of 2, "beaten by another person," according to his death certificate. Andrew Sesselman, 23, who has been charged with killing him, who had an extensive criminal record, is now being held in Middleton Jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
"I think clearly what we have here is a major break in communications on a number of different fronts," DSS spokeswoman Lorraine Carli said.
I think that what we have here is a pitiful tragedy that should have been prevented and could have been, if even one of the agencies responsible for Angel Negron's care had bothered to do its job.
