A failure of the system

By David McGrath Schwartz

Friday, Sept. 4, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Chrissa Matthews was found by her mother in the back yard pool this summer, just a few days shy of her second birthday.

The mother, Sheri Badosky, initially told police she had been inside the house smoking and watching Chrissa and her 5-year-old brother Andrew, who is blind and developmentally disabled, through the window, according to the warrant for her arrest. Later in the interview with police, Badosky, 24, said she was in the bathroom — it couldn’t have been for more than 2 minutes.

A doctor who examined Chrissa after she died on July 1 said she had been under water for 10 minutes, maybe more.

Badosky was arrested in August on charges of child abuse and neglect with substantial bodily harm.

But Chrissa’s death is, in part, the result of a county system that failed to protect her, and placed her under the watch of a mother with a history of neglect, according to Clark County District Attorney David Roger and Chrissa’s paternal grandmother, Debbie Matthews.

Clark County’s Family Services Department had investigated 10 incidents involving Badosky, including child abuse and neglect, since 2005, the year Badosky and her mother arrived in Las Vegas from Florida.

Despite Badosky’s track record, a family court hearing officer sided with Family Services’ recommendation and in September 2008 granted joint guardianship of Chrissa to her grandparents — the paternal grandmother and grandfather and maternal grandmother — and stopped county supervision of the family.

Andrew, who has a different father, was placed under the guardianship of the maternal grandmother, Susan Badosky.

Because Sheri Badosky lived with Susan Badosky, the decision meant Sheri would be left alone to supervise both children while Susan worked at her casino job.

“This is an example where the Department of Family Services got it wrong and a child died because of their decision,” said Roger, who is at loggerheads with the department over how such cases should be handled.

Matthews, 48, has mixed feelings about the charges against Badosky.

“It won’t change anything,” she said. “I don’t blame her, I blame the system wholeheartedly. This is senseless on so many levels.”

Matthews said child protective service workers had full knowledge that Sheri Badosky would be left alone to watch the kids while Susan was at work.

“We asked if Sheri still has to be supervised when she’s with the kids,” said Matthews, a former supervisor for the state welfare department. The caseworker “looked at us and said, ‘We’re now out of it.’ ”

Susan Badosky did not return calls for comment. Sheri Badosky, who is in Florida, where she faces extradition, could not be reached for comment.

It’s unclear why the Family Services Department ended its oversight of the children’s care.

Roger, the district attorney, said his office opposed the guardianship plan and favored Chrissa’s adoption by Matthews and her husband, Robert Matthews.

Debbie Matthews agreed the district attorney’s office advocated for the adoption.

But Tom Morton, director of the Clark County Family Services Department, reviewed video of the July 2008 hearing and said the deputy district attorney raised some concerns that the guardianship wasn’t a permanent solution, but did not question the safety of Susan Badosky’s home or that Sheri Badosky would be watching the children.

If the district attorney’s office truly opposed the guardianship, it could have appealed the case, Morton said. “That would be the next legal step if the DA were vigorously opposed to the guardianship.”

Despite assurances that video of the hearing would be provided to the Sun, Clark County Family Court did not make it available Thursday.

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The state and Clark County district attorney are battling over how Roger’s office handles child welfare cases.

The office occasionally sends two attorneys to hearings. One represents the Family Services Department and, in cases in which the district attorney disagrees with the department’s recommendations, another represents what Roger calls the “public interest.”

This arrangement provides a vital check on the department, another set of eyes on an agency with a troubled past, according to Roger.

State lawmakers disagree, saying the two-attorney system is confusing to judges and sends a mixed message about what’s best for the child.

In Chrissa’s case, the DA’s office sent an attorney to represent what Roger calls the public interest, but not one to represent the department. Roger said this case is one in which his office argued against a department recommendation that led to a child’s death.

“If Tom Morton were to have his way, the DA’s prosecutors would merely be mouthpieces for him,” Roger said.

Morton disagreed. Other counties, in Nevada and across the country, have systems to resolve disputes between caseworkers and attorneys before they’re taken before a judge. He said his office has submitted a plan to the district attorney calling for disputes among lower level staff members to be resolved by their supervisors so caseworkers and attorneys can agree on a recommendation.

Plus, he said, there was no real dispute between the caseworkers and attorney at the July hearing on Chrissa’s case.

His department is doing an internal review of the case, a process the department follows when children die after they have had contact with the system. Morton acknowledged that because Chrissa was not under his department’s direct watch when she died, the review has not been a high priority.

Morton said he did not know whether the department knew that Sheri was living with her mother, or that she would be regularly watching the children alone.

“Hindsight is always interesting. Looking back, a lot of things seem significant,” he said. “You’ve seen a thousand cases that look the same and don’t have bad outcomes ...

“A lot of people were involved in the decision-making. The court made a decision based on the evidence. This is not a case where DFS ran off and made a decision on its own.”

Morton took over the department in late 2006, after a scathing outside report pointed out glaring holes in the child welfare system. The county has made improvements in many areas, such as response times to child abuse claims and how often most kids are checked on.

There remains room for improvement, Morton said. But Clark County has significantly fewer staff and training resources than other jurisdictions, he added.

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Debbie Matthews, Chrissa’s paternal grandmother, attended the July 2008 hearing believing it would focus on the grandparents’ adoption of Chrissa. Her son, Robert “Junior” Matthews, had agreed to give up his parental rights.

Matthews said Susan Badosky, Chrissa’s other grandmother, was a capable parent, but wrongly believed that Sheri Badosky could care for the kids.

The department had taken the kids from Sheri before because of neglect. They were returned after Sheri completed a county-mandated plan, Matthews said.

(Andrew is currently in foster care, according to Morton and Matthews.)

Matthews was so concerned about the welfare of her granddaughter that in November she went to an attorney to ask about trying to adopt Chrissa on her own. She was told it would involve a $20,000 court fight. “That was money we didn’t have,” she said.

She also worried that the Badoskys might flee, taking the kids, if she attempted to adopt Chrissa.

So Matthews waited for the hearing, scheduled for next week, when the guardianship agreement was to be reviewed.

In the meantime, Chrissa spent most weekdays with the Matthewses. On weekends, she was with Susan Badosky. Two days a week, when the Matthewses had to work, they would drop Chrissa off for Sheri to watch.

Matthews kept a diary of incidents involving Sheri in preparation for the hearing, when she hoped to again push to adopt Chrissa.

“I wanted enough ammunition to go in, based on my diary and time line, to get full custody of Chrissa,” Matthews said. “I was so positive Sheri would screw up again. I didn’t think it would cost my baby her life.”