NY - Dahquay Gillians, 16 mos, drowned in bathtub, Brooklyn, 6 Nov 2005

mysteriew

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A Brooklyn mother was charged yesterday in the death of her 1-year-old son who apparently drowned in a hot-water bath - 18 months after she pleaded guilty in the bathtub scalding of her older son.
Last night, a cousin of the woman said she had raised both boys until last year when - over her fierce objections - the children were returned to their troubled 25-year-old mother.

Bond lashed out at the Administration for Children's Services, which she said returned then-4-month-old Dahquay and his badly burned older brother Tramel to their mother, Tracina (Tracy) Vaughn, last November.

"They returned those children regardless of the fact that Tracy was not ready to raise them," Bond said.

"There has been incident after incident with Tracy ...ACS knew and did nothing. It's apparent they don't value life."

"I spoke with caseworkers several times and they did nothing to protect those children," she charged.

An ACS spokeswoman would not say if the agency had been monitoring Vaughn and her two children, who lived in a Bedford-Stuyvesant basement flat.

But police said there was an active ACS file on the family.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/363598p-309668c.html
 
I dont know who I am more angry with:furious: the so called mother or the bas/rds
who returned the boys too her.what these poor little things must have suffered is terrible.The cousin must have been devastated .:banghead: This woman should have been in prison for years for scalding the first boy.
 
I just want to put this in perspective for everyone....


If you abuse a pet at the very least they take the animal (often the abuser gets jail time) But the very least is they take the pet AND NEVER RETURN IT.

Treat your kids like crap and "Hey!! Lets reunify the family"
So we don't return a dog but your kid you get a second chance to screw up.
What do you think has a more harmful effect on society??
A abused dog or a messed up person who can then grow to produce more messed up people???
 
CPS has a tough job, very emotional and major decision taking a child away from it's parents, or leaving a child in danger - but that's what the job is - you have to be able to make the tough choices, decide between a parent's love, convincingly presented, and a child's danger, also quite evident. If you can't make the tough choice, if you can't stand being villified for taking a child away from a wonderful mother (according to her friends, coworkers and enabling family), you don't belong there.
 
I'm telling you right now, that I couldn't do that job. I'm a "one-strike you're out" type of person. You abuse a kid once, that's it - the kid is gone. I would beat the idiot to death myself before I returned a child to that type of home. I think those departments are too shorted staffed, too underfunded and too unregulated to do a very good job most of the time.
 
One strike, you're out sounds good to me, for child abuse. The cases I consider borderline are the ones where they don't have good food or sanitary conditions - sometimes those people just hit bad times, and I think when they've cleaned up their act they can have the kids back. For drugs - I'd tend to take the kids away permanently - they can maybe earn visitation if they clean up, but that's it. For the kid's sake, they shouldn't be in limbo long - figure out if the parent is abusive or unable to care for a child, if so, make the child adoptable, and don't let the parent have it back, period. Kids need stability, certainty. This bit where the parents come back in and disrupt their lives over and over again is no good.

So, I think you should go become a CPS.
 
Details said:
One strike, you're out sounds good to me, for child abuse. The cases I consider borderline are the ones where they don't have good food or sanitary conditions - sometimes those people just hit bad times, and I think when they've cleaned up their act they can have the kids back. For drugs - I'd tend to take the kids away permanently - they can maybe earn visitation if they clean up, but that's it. For the kid's sake, they shouldn't be in limbo long - figure out if the parent is abusive or unable to care for a child, if so, make the child adoptable, and don't let the parent have it back, period. Kids need stability, certainty. This bit where the parents come back in and disrupt their lives over and over again is no good.

So, I think you should go become a CPS.


Start the defense fund now then! LOL
 
Hmmm, if CPS can be sued, I wonder if some kids would have a good case?
 
Details said:
Hmmm, if CPS can be sued, I wonder if some kids would have a good case?


CPS probably doesn't keep enough documentation to get through the discovery process!!!!! LOL

Seriously though, after what some of those workers see every day, I have no idea how they're able to shut their eyes and try and block it out. I know they've GOT to be able to do that in order to do any good whatever, but it would be too hard on me.
 
A Brooklyn mother who left her two young sons alone in a bathtub in the dark blamed the older boy after the other drowned, it was revealed yesterday as she was ordered held without bail.
"It's the baby's fault! It's the baby's fault!" Tracina (Tracy) Vaughn, 25, blubbered after her 16-month-old son, Dahquay Gillians, died in her filthy Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment Sunday night, sources said.

The "baby" she blamed was her 3-year-old son, Tramel Vaughn, who was badly burned in a tub scalding last year.

The lights didn't work in the bathroom of Vaughn's basement apartment, sources said.

But that didn't stop her from plopping Dahquay and Tramel in the tub - telling the older boy to bathe his little brother and walking away, the sources said.

As Dahquay struggled to breathe, Vaughn got sanitary pads for herself and even changed the CD on the stereo, prosecutors said. And when her boyfriend came back from getting her a soda, she told him the children were safe.

The unidentified boyfriend even looked in the bathroom - but when he only saw Tramel, he assumed Dahquay was hidden by a shower curtain, prosecutors said.

"He went out again," saying he would get a diaper but instead came back with beer, said prosecutor Wilfredo Cotto.

Eventually, Cotto said, Vaughn "went in. The 1-year-old was face-down in the water."

Vaughn called 911, but EMTs who tried to resuscitate the helpless boy found his lungs full of water.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/363890p-309879c.html

The year-old boy who died after his mom left him in scalding-hot bath water was covered in bruises — and the family's Brooklyn home was a "total wreck" that reeked of urine, a police source said yesterday.
But the city's Administration for Children's Services said it had closely monitored the family after another son was badly burned in a similar incident last year and had never found any evidence of abuse or neglect.

When police arrived at the Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment of Tracina Vaughn, 25, and found little Dahquay Gillians dead in a filthy bathtub, they noticed he had bruises on his ribs, face, on the back of his head and around his genitals, sources said.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/57105.htm

Tracina (Tracy) Vaughn's first son was taken from her after he was horribly scalded in a bathtub last year. Her second son was taken from her for his own safety right after he was born.
But city child welfare authorities gave the 25-year-old Brooklyn mother another chance - and it ended in the death of the younger boy.

As she was charged yesterday in 16-month-old Dahquay Gillians' drowning, new details emerged suggesting the little boy had been failed on several levels.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/363889p-309876c.html
 
From the last link above:
But friends and relatives described Vaughn as a good-hearted but overwhelmed woman whose troubled life left her unprepared to raise two little boys.

Relatives said she was raised by her grandmother after her abusive father disappeared and her mother died of AIDS when she was 5.

"Tracy would tell people she didn't have family," her aunt Daphne Green, 47, said yesterday. "Tracy had a hard life."

-----
In my opinion, she had a chance to have a real family and blew it. I don't feel sorry for her.
 
I feel sorry for her but more sorry for her boys. I thought, how can anyone in their right mind put a 3 y/o in charge of a baby. Sometimes when I read stories like these of a mothers stupidity the anger overwhelms me. Then, I step back abit when I realize she didn't have anyone to teach her to be a mother. Thank God I have a wonderful mother. It's scary for me to think how well I would have raised my boys without having a good example of a mother. I had unconditional love, encouragement, and discipline. It was second nature to me to be a good Mom jus like she was. There is so much truth in the saying "I've become my Mother!" LOL

My Mom and I were having a conversation about women who make stupid decisions with their kids. Her in her wisdom told me this..."Well if you were on an airplane and the pilot died, there's no communications, and it's up to you to fly it, could you? Of course not, you have no training or experience with that to do a good job at it. If the plane crashes, does that make you a stupid person, a bad person or should be blamed for trying to fly it? For some women it's like that when they have kids, nobody showed them how to be a good mother so of course they don't know what they're doing."
 
I agree with you Sadie Mae, but her grandmother raised her. I would think that would be a mother figure for her. Maybe not a good one in this case, but many grandparents raise children who grow up to be fine parents.
 
There's so much to being a good mother - at what age are kids responsible enough for what? Even when they seem to be, they really aren't. Also just the knowledge that being a parent is a huge, huge amount of work. So many of these people just leave the kids to raise themselves, barely can be troubled to feed them. I wish there was some way to enforce a course, or a quiz that you must take to bypass the course, for new mothers. It'd be a big help for these kids who don't have the family support.

I'm working on this myself right now (8 more months), and it's a good thing, even with my mom bringing us up properly, that I'll have my sisters who already have kids to learn from. It's just not automatic.
 
I agree that this is a constant pattern in some peoples lives. We, as a society have to pass laws that break this pattern. I agree that you cannot give a person their children back after an abuse incident - it's just too risky.

As for CPS being overwhelmed.....I have to wonder if a lot of that is because instead of really doing something to break this cycle, we keep trying to put a bandaid on the situation ( give them another chance ). If we implemented laws that said essentially "one - strike your out", then CPS would have one less household to re-visit and re-visit. This would eliminate all the multiple paperwork, visits, etc. that eventually just end of with the kid dead anyway.
Next we need to fund "Children Centers" that would work a lot like orphanages/hospitals/daycare center's. The center's would be staffed with appropriate personnel including teacher's and could also implement a "volunteer" program where area "grandmother's/father's" could be of great assistance. Of course the volunteers would have to be thoroughly checked out before being allowed in.

I think this would be a lot better scenario for these kids than allowing them back into an abusive home. The parents could be allowed to visit after they have met certain conditions.

The obvious question is ...who would fund these "centers"...well, 1. the cost of crime that results from these kids who do manage to "get out" alive from these homes is far greater than the cost of these centers. We could look to local communities for donations. Churches, or perhaps corporations that would want to buy naming rights would help with the funding. Taxpayer's would also need to foot part of the bill.

Over time, when less and less children are being abused, or living in filthy, drug filled homes, bleak poverty.....I think we would start to see a decrease in the need for so many CPS agencies....wouldn't that be wonderful? This $$ then could be used to fund these center's.

I have a slight problem with single family foster homes in that there is no one to "police" each other at these places. Hence, you often see ever more abuse at these homes. I just think the foster home is becoming a thing of the past. I know there are many WONDERFUL foster families....don't get me wrong. But the potential for ubuse of all kinds is pretty great. Perhaps these people could get jobs in these centers. Look how often you read about these cases in the newspaper.

Anyway, that's my solution

Sherry
 
And it should be far easier for the volunteers or foster families to adopt. Right now adoption is so tough, takes so long, that lots of quite good parents cannot adopt. You have to be an exemplary parent. I think it's time to recognize that the best place for a child is in a family, and it's time to stop being so picky! A mother or father that would be able to have a child and not have that child removed or checked on by CPS should be good enough - it doesn't have to be only dual parent with everything checking out, with plenty of money, young, etc, etc, etc.

Let them adopt, check on the kid regularly for awhile, and if no major problems develop, make it final! It'll be better than a foster home or an orphanage.
 
Details said:
There's so much to being a good mother - at what age are kids responsible enough for what? Even when they seem to be, they really aren't. Also just the knowledge that being a parent is a huge, huge amount of work. So many of these people just leave the kids to raise themselves, barely can be troubled to feed them. I wish there was some way to enforce a course, or a quiz that you must take to bypass the course, for new mothers. It'd be a big help for these kids who don't have the family support.

I'm working on this myself right now (8 more months), and it's a good thing, even with my mom bringing us up properly, that I'll have my sisters who already have kids to learn from. It's just not automatic.
Congratulations Details ,:woohoo: Its lovely to hear good news amidst all this sad news.
 
aussiegran said:
Congratulations Details ,:woohoo: Its lovely to hear good news amidst all this sad news.
There's always tons more good news than bad news - it's just that you hear and remember the bad news more. You have to remember that most kids are raised to adulthood by parents that love them - a huge majority of kids are not abused sexually, not murdered, not tortured. It's right to focus on the bad, because that's what we need to fix, but remember every here and there that there is a lot more good than bad.
 
SadieMae said:
............... you a stupid person, a bad person or should be blamed for trying to fly it? For some women it's like that when they have kids, nobody showed them how to be a good mother so of course they don't know what they're doing."

I agree with this to a certain point, but a person doesn't need training to know that scalding water will burn a baby. Some things are simply common sense. This woman intentionally inflicted pain on her children, the kids were full of bruises. The woman knows what pain is. I have no sympathy or understanding for her, regardless of how she was raised.
 
Mabel said:
I agree with this to a certain point, but a person doesn't need training to know that scalding water will burn a baby. Some things are simply common sense. This woman intentionally inflicted pain on her children, the kids were full of bruises. The woman knows what pain is. I have no sympathy or understanding for her, regardless of how she was raised.
Agreed, some things mothers do to children are just beyond me in that they don't have the least bit of common sense.
 

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