WI - Alicia Burgess, 19 mos, suffocated, Milwaukee, 1 May 2007

Ang50

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http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=604608

Not to overlook this little girl's tragic death, but the article has some interesting stats on mom's boyfriends...

<A child who lives in the house with an unrelated adult is nearly 50 times more likely to be killed than a child living with both biological parents, according a study published in the November 2005 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. >

<
In 2006, unrelated boyfriends were charged in three of 16 cases in which Wisconsin children died from neglect or abuse. In 2005, two of 12 children statewide died in such cases, which are reported in both urban and more rural parts of the state.
"Statistically, (outside of parents themselves) the most dangerous person for a child is mom's new boyfriend," said Lori Kornblum, an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County and former president of the Wisconsin Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. "That is just a fact.">
 
Thanks Ang for posting those stats. I have thought for a long time that this was a sick trend.

I'm sorry to hear about this sweet little lamb's abuse and murder. Absolutely pathetic!

This link says that DHFS was called to the house on three occasions prior to Alicia's murder:

http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/news/13281727/detail.html

snip

According to the criminal complaint, Burgess was taken to the hospital in October with a broken leg and a burn on her side. That's the first time social workers were alerted to possible abuse of Burgess and her 3-year-old brother, but it wasn't the last...

...Records show representatives from the Department of Health and Family Services also visited the family in January and February, but there is no indication anything was ever done to remove the children.

-and I found this, too:

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/7326956.html

snip

...The criminal complaint also says that police questioned Arteaga, Crystal Burgess and friends of the couple concerning previous allegations of abuse against the children. Alicia had suffered a broken leg that Arteaga attributed to a crib accident...
 
Welfare workers are now under review too, because they previously investigated allegations of abuse and neglect of the girl.
this seems to be a pattern as well.

one line in the last article that upset me more than some of the others...
Arteaga's attorney, Alan Eisenberg, said his client was tired. "It says right in the complaint that he suffered from severe sleep deprivation and hadn&#8217;t slept in five days,&#8221; Eisenberg explained. The complaint also says that Arteaga admitted the sleep deprivation stemmed from a five-day crack-cocaine binge.
i killed the kid cuz i was under severe stress coming off my crack binge...
 
Milwaukee, like a lot of other large cities, is overwhelmed. Sadly, if she had gone into foster care, it's not like she would have had more of a chance...

What bothers me is the hands-on nature of the crime... I often wonder what it takes to kill a person with your bare hands. Or simply to inflict pain deliberately on a child in any way.
 
Children that share the home with a boyfriend or step-father are actually 8 times more likely to be abused. Social services really needs to start paying attention to cases where there is a live in boyfriend in the house.

Most of the severe cases I have been reading about in AZ are the result of an idiot boyfriend or husband who is not the childs father.

Very sad and disturbing trend.
 
Abuse fears got no action

Two doctors warned of suspicious injuries months before toddler was killed.

Months before a 19-month-old girl was suffocated, two doctors warned the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare that the girl and her brother were in danger of abuse - but the agency left the children in the home anyway, records show.

In November, a 7-month-old baby starved to death as child welfare workers regularly stopped by her Milwaukee home to check on an older child who had been abused. The state-run bureau had been warned of concerns about the baby's health, but caseworkers reported that the parents refused to let them check on her condition.


In the more recent case, the man accused of suffocating Alicia Burgess is her mother's crack-addicted boyfriend, Raul Arteaga, who has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide.


"Alicia would not be dead if the bureau had done its job," said Eric Thompson, senior staff attorney with Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy group.



"How many times does a child have to show up bruised and battered in an emergency room before the bureau does a thorough investigation?" Thompson asked. "There were so many red flags in this case over a seven-month period, it is impossible to understand how the case could be closed."

Much more in the article - it details all the horrific KNOWN abuse suffered by these children.
 

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