If you think this is bad, you should see how child protective services interrogates a child regarding allegations of rape. I pray no one ever has to live through what they do in Michigan's child welfare system.
Second in a six-part series
Chapter 1: The allegations
RELATED CONTENT: PDF: Police report in the Wendrow case (1.8MB) | PDF: Care House interview evaluation in the Wendrow case | VIDEO: Police interrogate the teen boy
Chapter 2: The investigation
In an interview room at CARE House of Oakland County, Amy Allen asked the girl whether she could log on to the computer.
The 14-year-old girl hit the "Y" key for "yes." But then, she just sat there with the specialized laptop that was designed to help her communicate.
Allen, a CARE House interviewer and former employee of the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, was responsible for interviewing the girl that day about rape allegations she made using facilitated communication. Allen had no experience with autism and had never heard of FC when she met the girl that day.
She persisted.
"Would you like to log on?"
The girl hit the "Y" key again. Then nothing.
"Are you able to log on?" Allen asked.
Again the "Y" key, but nothing else.
There were more questions. And always, the "Y" key in response. Eventually, the girl's grandmother, who had taken her to the interview, intervened and logged on for her.
Soon, school aide Cynthia Scarsella, who had been called to CARE House by police, started supporting the girl's hand. Two days earlier, the girl was at school with Scarsella, a facilitator hired to support her hand over the keyboard, when she first typed that her father had sexually abused her for years, while her mother stood by and did nothing.
During the interview of more than an hour, the girl, sometimes rocking and moaning, again typed -- with Scarcella supporting her hand -- allegations that her father had been sexually assaulting her. The statements, with phonetic spellings and little punctuation, also brought new claims that her younger brother, 13, had been abusing her, too.
There were graphic details. The facilitated typing described early morning rapes while others in the house remained asleep and several kinds of assaults, including some by her brother while her father watched. The statements said the girl had told her mother, who "pretends not to no."
The typed messages also had factual errors -- such as a passage describing nonexistent relatives, including a grandmother. She got the family dog's name wrong and misspelled her brother's name. She said her father had videos of her nude. She incorrectly described the layout of her home.
She typed that her parents, Julian and Thal Wendrow, were angry with her over the allegations.
"They said I'm a lier and I'm going to hell because I'm using my imagination and know one will believe me because I'm autistic."
A credible witness?
The girl's interview at CARE House, a Pontiac agency that specializes in forensic interviews of children, took place on Nov. 29, 2007.
West Bloomfield Detective Tara Kane, working on her first child sexual assault investigation, stood behind a one-way mirror and watched. With her were several more experienced investigators, including Sgt. Daniel O'Malley; Deputy Eric Overall, the Walled Lake schools liaison officer; Rob Giles, chief of the child sexual assault unit in the Prosecutor's Office; Veronica Burke, who specializes in autism in the district's special services office, and state social worker Rebecca Robydek.
None of them asked questions about facilitated communication, including why the girl could plug in the computer but didn't have enough motor control to type.
When it was over, Giles filled out a form summarizing the interview he'd watched and marked that the girl was a credible witness. He noted no communication problems.
His report didn't mention that the girl couldn't speak or type on her own. He sent it on to the Prosecutor's Office as part of the warrant request, while the children were placed in the custody of state workers.
What a nurse found
After the CARE House interview, Robydek, a social worker with the Department of Human Services, took the girl to a nurse for a rape exam at a local medical facility.
The child brought her keyboard, but without a facilitator to help, she typed only gibberish.
Later, Robydek was asked whether she had concerns about facilitated communication while watching the girl randomly pound away on the keyboard.
"I sure did. ... I said to the police, 'Have you ever seen this before? How does this work?' " she testified in a July 2009 deposition. "No, they had not seen it, either."
Nurse Diane Zalecki, who examined the girl, found three tiny, non-acute tears on an otherwise intact hymen. Zalecki warned that she couldn't conclude they came from sexual abuse and noted that they appeared to have occurred well before any alleged rape a few days before.
In depositions, Robydek, who holds a bachelor's degree in science from Western Michigan University, would describe them as "acute" tears. She later testified she didn't know the difference between "acute," something occurring rapidly and usually severe, and "non-acute," typically a chronic or long-term condition.
The day after the physical exam, three patrol cars arrived at the Wendrows' home with a search warrant.
As the couple sat on a couch, police officers went through closets and cupboards. They carted off the family computer, cameras and photo albums.
Both parents felt helpless and embarrassed, wondering what the neighbors were thinking.
"We weren't worried about the search," Thal Wendrow said. "Because there was nothing to find."
Brother interrogated
Meanwhile, Family Court Judge Joan Young ordered the girl placed with prominent West Bloomfield Rabbi Levi Shemtov and his family, who were friends of the Wendrows. The girl's brother, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism, was placed with a family member.
Four days later, Robydek, the social worker, took the boy to the West Bloomfield Police Department, where a detective interrogated him for two hours.
His parents weren't there. He had no attorney present. His court-appointed guardian, Abbie Shuman of Southfield, wasn't notified of the interrogation, so she wasn't there, either.
Detective Joseph Brousseau told the crying boy he had tapes of his father sexually assaulting the girl. He also said he had tapes of the boy assaulting his sister and crime lab evidence that implicated his father.
None of it was true, but it would be months before the boy would learn that.
Believing the police actually had tapes and lab evidence implicating his father, the boy cried, "I've lost the image I had of my dad, the image of a trustworthy person!"
But the boy insisted, repeatedly, that there was no abuse in the house. Brousseau continued to press.
"Bullshit, man!" he shouted, as the boy rocked, wept and wiped his nose. "You know what was going on because you've experienced it firsthand."
Later, Brousseau warned: "You think you feel guilty now? Wait until later, when that guilt just eats at you because you didn't do the right thing and help your sister."
"Man up," the detective pressed on. "Tell the truth."
Finally, the boy gave up what police believed was incriminating evidence: His father sometimes showered nude with the girl because she couldn't wash her own hair. Thal Wendrow did the same, although that wasn't asked in the interview.
Experts on families with disabled children say parents sometimes shower with their kids. "You can see on a practical level why they would, as a matter of convenience," said Dr. Lori Warner, a psychology professor at Oakland University and director of a parent-training program at Beaumont Health Systems for families with autism.
"I suppose you could say the parent should wear a bathing suit, but a child with these sorts of disabilities, she's not thinking, 'Why is my parent nude?' "
Julian Wendrow was asked during a deposition about showering with his daughter.
"It's usually arisen out of necessity. Someone else hasn't been available. Usually, I will say, 'Thal, you know, she needs to shower and go help her,' " he testified. "This is not something I enjoy or relish or I -- I'm a father. I have to, you know, take care of my child. That's basically it."
Police also were interested in another episode the boy recounted. His father, while wearing a bathrobe, came out of the bathroom with the tip of his penis exposed, and said to the boy, "Find the mouse."
Julian Wendrow, in a June 2009 deposition, said he was "goofing around."
"It was just a silly, stupid, goofing thing. That's all," he said.
After the boy's interrogation, state social workers placed him in a Pontiac facility for juvenile delinquents, where he was exposed to drugs and pornography in the months he was there, according to court records.
Parents are arrested
Back in school on Dec. 5, the girl made more allegations with the facilitator guiding her hand.
She typed about a visit with her parents that morning. Shemtov left the house at 3 a.m. and brought her parents and several relatives from South Africa back to the house, the message said -- a direct violation of a court order.
Her parents told her they were angry with her and would soon be taking her to South Africa, according to the message. She also typed that her parents had guns and would harm Scarsella.
School officials called police.
Shemtov, a community leader and founder of Friendship Circle, a nonprofit center for families with children who have special needs, told investigators and the news media that visit never occurred.
Prosecutors, who declined to talk to Shemtov, moved ahead and charged the Wendrows criminally. They accused Julian Wendrow of sexual assault and his wife of turning a blind eye to the abuse.
Later that day, Julian Wendrow was napping at home when pounding on the front door awoke him. He peered out a window to see West Bloomfield police dressed in SWAT gear. He didn't answer the door, but instead called his mother-in-law's home to check on his wife.
"Tali's been arrested," his mother-in-law told him, using her daughter's nickname.
He called his lawyer, Jerome Sabbota, who told him to follow procedures and say nothing.
He threw on some clothes as the phone rang. It was a police officer, asking whether he was at home.
He walked out his back door, where three officers arrested him. His neighbors stared out their kitchen window as he was handcuffed.
The officers "told me I was being arraigned. I'd get bond and be home in a few hours," he said.
He doubted things would work out that way.
"My stomach was churning like a concrete mixer," he said.
As he was being placed in the back of the patrol car, he realized he hadn't had time to put on socks -- an oversight he'd soon regret.
These videos show the interrogation of the Wendrows’ 13-year-old son by West Bloomfield Police Det. Joseph Brousseau. The boy was questioned Dec. 4, 2007, as part of the investigation into claims that Julian Wendrow, the boy’s father, had raped his then 14-year-old daughter. The two-hour interview was recorded in the interview room of the West Bloomfield Police Department. The Free Press, which first published the videos March 16, 2008, has obscured the boy’s face and deleted references to the first names of the children. The Wendrow family later sued West Bloomfield Township, and its insurance carrier paid $1.8 million to the Wendrow family to settle all claims against the Police Department.
Early in the two-hour interrogation, Detective Brousseau tells the13-year-old that police have uncovered other evidence supporting his autistic sister's allegations of sexual abuse. The detective never explains what evidence he is referring to.
Brousseau tells the 13-year-old that the boy's body language suggests he knows more than he's saying about his sister's allegations. Experts who have reviewed the video say the detective may have misinterpreted symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, a condition for which the boy was treated for 10 years, as evidence of guilt or evasion.
The 13-year-old boy says he's questioning his father's innocence based on what Brousseau has told him.
As the boy continues to insist he has never had sexual contact with his father, Brousseau says that police have discovered evidence of sexual contact between the boy and his sister. No such evidence existed.
Brousseau returns to the interrogation room after a 10-minute absence to report that crime lab technicians have uncovered new, unspecified evidence that points to the boy's own involvement in sexual abuse. No such evidence existed.
Pressed to remember situations when his father and sister have been together, the boy tells Brousseau he has seen his father help his disabled sister shower while his father was naked. A psychologist who treated the girl for many years said she was aware of the father's actions and not alarmed by them, because the autistic girl frequently became "frozen" and required her parents' assistance to bathe.
As the boy continues to deny any knowledge of sexual abuse in his home, Brousseau expresses doubts about his honesty.
The boy asks to take a lie detector test; Brousseau tells him his father has refused to submit to a polygraph. Julian Wendrow's lawyer says he vetoed the polygraph when he learned Wendrow had volunteered to take one.
Brousseau insists the boy has firsthand knowledge of sexual abuse in his parents' home.
Brousseau hints that videotapes recovered in a search of the parents' house depict the boy in sexual situations with family members, and warns that "it's going to come out." No such videos were found. You will hear a tone where the Free Press has removed a name from this clip.
The boy tells Brousseau he no longer sees his father as trustworthy. The detective insists that the father forfeited his son's trust "a long time ago."
For the first time, in the history of the United States has the issue of Foster Care made the center stage, far removed for any political party state platform, in a political campaign.
Welcome to Michigan, where it all started.
Ricky Holland
I was wondering why my stats were going off the charts.
Now, I am going to need everyone to send me everything.
I want interviews with people in attendance, outside, and on stage.
I want pics, soundbytes, campaign material pics, play-by-play, from the time you pull up in the parking lot to the time they start freaking out when someone screams about child trafficking in foster care and adoption.
Ask them about poverty being codified as the crime of child abuse and neglect for failure to provide for the necessary needs of the child.
Ask them about Termination of Parental Rights and Due Process.
I want to see the sweat and hear the stutters of these people trying to parrot and distort my work when they try and claim that the fraud in child welfare does not fund political campaigns.
I want livestream of when these people claim that these Child Placing Agencies are and administrations are not foreign corporations participating in exfiltrating HUMIT and asset forfeiture of Michigan's Children who eventually grow up to be adults.
I want to experience across the social media cybersphere their faces when you ask them about the fraudulent foreclosures in Detroit and Flint which forced the migration of children, leading to gerrymandering of the congressional districts.
The reason I want the people to do it is because the only place these political and community leaders can turn to reconstruct the rights to a civil society is me.
Make them say my name because, not once, has anyone attempted to contact me, which means they are about to spout a bunch of crap they know absolutely nothing about.
Whatever they say, upon posting to my blog, will be entered into the official, public record, through a court of law.
Bill Schuette, Garlin Gilchrist Jr., and John James are just a few of the candidates that will appear at a Thursday forum on foster care.
Oakland University will play host to the 7 p.m. public candidate forum sponsored by Michigan's Children, a statewide, independent organization working to ensure public policies are made in the best interest of children and their families, as well as 25 other non-profits and agencies.
The forum will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., 318 Meadow Brook Road, and will include a full panel of candidates running in various State House and State Senate races. Schuette, Gilchrist and James will open the event with some remarks, which will be followed by the question and answer forum.
“Unfortunately, our state currently fails many of its youngest citizens,’’ said Matt Gillard, President and CEO of Michigan’s Children. “Data in the annual Kids Count reports shows us that Michigan ranks at or near the bottom third of states in a range of child well-being indicators, from low reading and math test scores to rising abuse and neglect rates to the sixth-highest rate of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods in the country.
The list of confirmed candidates appearing at the forum include:
12th Senate: Michael McCready (R) and Jeff Pittel (Lib)
13th Senate: Marty Knollenbergand (R) and Mallory McMorrow (D)
40th State House: David Wolkinson (R) and Mari Manoogian (D)
41st State House: Doug Tietz (R) and Padma Kuppa (D)
45th State House: Michael Webber (R) and Kyle Cooper (D)
This is the Judge who ruled upon the physical bondage of the youth to Children's Villages.
Hon. Mary Ellen Brennan Presiding Judge of the Family Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family Court Division Presiding Judge, Oakland County Family-Focused Juvenile Drug Court Elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court on November 4th, 2008 Senior member of the Oakland County Family Court Bench Graduate - James Madison College of Michigan State University Graduate - Wayne State University Law School Judicial Staff Attorney, 44th District Court 2002-2008 Assistant City Attorney, City of Royal Oak 1998-2002 Assistant General Counsel, Meadowbrook Insurance Group 1996-1998 Assistant Prosecutor, Oakland County 1990-1996 https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-ellen-brennan-71709454
Hon. Mary Ellen T. Brennan is the presiding judge of the Oakland County Juvenile Drug Court (Family Division). She was a judicial staff attorney for the 44th District Court from 2002 to 2008 and was elected to the Oakland County Circuit Court in 2008. Prior to that, Judge Brennan was an assistant city attorney for the City of Royal Oak, assistant general counsel of an insurance firm, and an Oakland County assistant prosecutor. She is a former board member of CARE House of Oakland County, an organization that offers prevention programming, forensic interviewing for victims of sexual abuse and assault, therapy as needed for victims, family-support services, and a court-appointed special advocate program for children involved with the court. Judge Brennan is also a former board member of the RESTORE Foundation, a group that raises funds for the adult and juvenile therapeutic drug treatment courts through private, tax-deductible donations. She is a graduate of Wayne State University Law School.
Slavery was never abolished because it was renamed gerrymandering and it was privatized through foreign Public Private Partnerships as tiny human asset forfeiture operations.
A 15-year-old in Michigan was incarcerated during the coronavirus pandemic after a judge ruled that not completing her schoolwork violated her probation. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” said the girl’s mother.
PONTIAC, Mich. — One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse* drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile detention center in suburban Detroit, desperate to be near her daughter. It had been a month since she had last seen her, when a judge found the girl had violated probation and sent her to the facility during the pandemic.
The girl, Grace, hadn’t broken the law again. The 15-year-old wasn’t in trouble for fighting with her mother or stealing, the issues that had gotten her placed on probation in the first place.
She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills switched to remote learning.
Because of the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, it’s impossible to determine how unusual Grace’s situation is. But attorneys and advocates in Michigan and elsewhere say they are unaware of any other case involving the detention of a child for failing to meet academic requirements after schools closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
The decision, they say, flies in the face of recommendations from the legal and education communities that have urged leniency and a prioritization of children’s health and safety amid the crisis. The case may also reflect, some experts and Grace’s mother believe, systemic racial bias. Grace is Black in a predominantly white community and in a county where a disproportionate percentage of Black youth are involved with the juvenile justice system.
Across the country, teachers, parents and students have struggled with the upheaval caused by monthslong school closures. School districts have documented tens of thousands of students who failed to log in or complete their schoolwork: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles, one-third of the students in Minneapolis Public Schools and about a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students.
Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.
“Who can even be a good student right now?” said Ricky Watson Jr., executive director of the National Juvenile Justice Network. “Unless there is an urgent need, I don’t understand why you would be sending a kid to any facility right now and taking them away from their families with all that we are dealing with right now.”
In many places, juvenile courts have attempted to keep children out of detention except in the most serious cases, and they have worked to release those who were already there, experts say. A survey of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states found that the number of youths in secure detention fell by 24% in March, largely due to a steep decline in placements.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in March that temporarily suspended the confinement of juveniles who violate probation unless directed by a court order and encouraged eliminating any form of detention or residential placement unless a young person posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk to others.” Acting on Whitmer’s order, which was extended until late May, the Michigan Supreme Court told juvenile court judges to determine which juveniles could be returned home.
Judge Mary Ellen Brennan, the presiding judge of the Oakland County Family Court Division, declined through a court administrator to comment on Grace’s case. In her ruling, she found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation.
“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said as she sentenced Grace. “I told her she was on thin ice and I told her that I was going to hold her to the letter, to the order, of the probation.”
That June afternoon, a month after the sentencing, Charisse left Children’s Village without seeing Grace, but she did pick up a shopping bag of clothes and toiletries she had delivered days earlier. She said officials had rejected them because they violated facility rules: underwear that wasn’t briefs; face wipes that contained alcohol; a pair of jeans deemed too tight.
Charisse counts each day they’re apart, and that was day No. 33. Another month has since passed, and there could still be months to go before they are at home together again.
Driving home, Charisse had to pull over soon after she turned onto the road leading away from the complex. She sat in a parking lot, sobbing.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She shook her head as tears dampened the disposable blue face mask pulled down to her chin.
“Every day I go to bed thinking, and wake up thinking, ‘How is this a better situation for her?’”
It has always been just the two of them, Charisse and Grace.
Told by doctors that she would be unable to have children, Charisse, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, was shocked when she became pregnant at 44. She has raised Grace on her own after the girl’s father did not want to be involved, she said.
They did everything together: winter sports throughout Michigan, rounds of golf, going to the opera, singing to Tony Bennett on road trips. They even appeared in a “Pure Michigan” tourism ad. As a child, Grace wanted so much to be like her mother that she asked to be called Charisse No. 2.
When Grace hit her preteen years, however, their relationship became rocky. They argued about Grace keeping her room clean and doing schoolwork and regularly battled over her use of the phone, social media and other technology.
By the time Grace turned 13, the arguments had escalated to the point that Charisse turned to the police for help several times when Grace yelled at or pushed her. She said she didn’t know about other social services to call instead. In one incident, they argued over Grace taking her mother’s iPhone charger; when police arrived, they discovered she had taken an iPad from her middle school without permission. At her mother’s request, Grace entered a court diversion program in 2018 for “incorrigibility” and agreed to participate in counseling and not use electronic devices. She was released from the program early, her mother said.
While there was periodic family conflict, Grace has always had strong friendships and is active in her school and community, her mother said. She has helped run programs at church, played saxophone in the school band and composed music, and regularly participated in service projects.
The incident that led to her current situation happened Nov. 6, when someone called the police after hearing Charisse crying “Help me!” and honking her car’s horn. Grace, upset she couldn’t go to a friend’s house, had reached inside the car to try to get her mother’s phone and had bitten her mother’s finger and pulled her hair, according to the police report.
Police released Grace to a family friend to let the two cool down and referred the case to Oakland County court, where an assault charge was filed against her.
Weeks later, she picked up another charge, for larceny, after she was caught on surveillance video stealing another student’s cellphone from a school locker room.
“After I was caught, I felt instant remorse and guilt. I wanted to take back everything I had done,” Grace wrote in a statement to police. She said she had questioned herself even as she took the phone but wanted one after her mother took hers away.
The other student’s mother, who declined to comment for this story, told police she wanted to press charges, although the phone had been returned to her son soon after Grace took it. “My sincere hope is that any punitive action taken in this case be grounded in the goal of providing this student with opportunities for growth, change and future success,” she wrote in a statement to police.
In the months following the two incidents, Grace and her mother participated in individual and family therapy and Grace stayed out of trouble.
Charisse told a court caseworker assigned to the case that other than being irritable and getting “cabin fever” from being shut at home during the pandemic, “nothing significant” had taken place between the mother and daughter. There was no police contact after the November incidents, records show.
The April 21 juvenile court hearing on the larceny and assault charges against Grace was conducted via Zoom since the courts had shut down, with everyone calling in from their homes. Grace connected from her bedroom, her mother from their living room.
It had the familiar awkwardness of many online meetings: dropped audio; a dog barking in the background; participants swivelling in their chairs; the prosecutor losing his connection. (This hearing and others in the case were recorded, and a ProPublica reporter watched them at the Oakland County courthouse last month.)
Ashley Bishop, a youth and family caseworker for the court, told the judge she thought Grace would be best served by getting mental health and anger management treatment in a residential facility. The prosecutor, Justin Chmielewski, said he agreed. Grace’s court-appointed attorney, Elliot Parnes, said little but asked that she be given probation because she had committed no new offenses and because of the risk of COVID-19 in congregate facilities.
Parnes and Bishop declined to comment for this story and Chmielewski did not respond to calls.
Throughout the hearing, Grace took her glasses off to brush away tears and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She shook her head, which the judge later criticized as a sign of disagreement but which Grace told ProPublica signaled her disappointment in her past behavior. She raised her hand a couple times and asked, in a small voice, “Can I just say something please?”
“My mom and I do get into a lot of arguments, but with each one I learn something and try to analyze why it happened,” she said. “My mom and I are working each day to better ourselves and our relationship, and I think that the removal from my home would be an intrusion on our progress.”
Brennan admonished Grace for the fights with her mother, her thefts at school and behaving in a way that required police to come to their home. “Police,” she said. “Most people go through their entire youth without having the cops have to come to their house because they can’t get themselves together.”
But, citing the pandemic, Brennan decided not to remove Grace from her home and instead sentenced her to “intensive probation.” The terms of the probation included a GPS tether, regular check-ins with a court caseworker, counseling, no phone and the use of the school laptop for educational purposes only. Grace also was required to do her schoolwork.
“I hope that she upholds her end of the bargain,” Brennan said at the end of the hearing.
Schools across the country weren’t prepared for the abrupt turn to remote learning. Grace’s school, Groves High School, in one of the most well-regarded districts in the state, was no different.
In mid-March, thinking the closures might last for only a month, the district initially offered optional online activities and then recessed for an already-scheduled weeklong spring break. Soon after, Whitmer announced that schools would end face-to-face instruction for the rest of the year. The Birmingham Public Schools superintendent asked families for patience as schools moved to an online curriculum in mid-April and promised flexibility in their support. Officials said student work would be evaluated as credit/no-credit.
The initial days of remote school coincided with the start of Grace’s probation. Charisse was concerned that her daughter, who was a high school sophomore and had nearly perfect attendance, would have trouble without in-person support from teachers. Grace gets distracted easily and abandons her work, symptoms of her ADHD and a mood disorder, records show. Her Individualized Education Plan, which spelled out the school supports she should receive, required teachers to periodically check in to make sure she was on task and clarify the material, and it allowed her extra time to complete assignments and tests. When remote learning began, she did not get those supports, her mother said.
Days after the court hearing, on April 24, Grace’s new caseworker, Rachel Giroux, made notes in her file that she was doing well: Grace had called to check in at 8:57 a.m.; she reported no issues at home and was getting ready to log in to do her schoolwork.
But by the start of the following week, Grace told Giroux she felt overwhelmed. She had forgotten to plug in her computer and her alarm didn’t go off, so she overslept. She felt anxious about the probation requirements. Charisse, feeling overwhelmed as well, confided in the caseworker that Grace had been staying up late to make food and going on the internet, then sleeping in. She said she was setting up a schedule for Grace and putting a desk in the living room where she could watch her work.
“Worker told mother that child is not going to be perfect and that teenagers aren’t always easy to work with but you have to give them the opportunity to change,” according to the case progress notes. “Child needs time to adjust to this new normal of being on probation and doing work from home.”
Five days later, after calling Charisse and learning that Grace had fallen back to sleep after her morning caseworker check-in, Giroux filed a violation of probation against her for not doing her schoolwork.
Giroux told the prosecutor she planned to ask the judge to detain Grace because she “clearly doesn’t want to abide by the rules in the community,” according to the case notes.
Grace has said in court and in answers to questions from ProPublica that she was trying to do what was asked of her. She had checked in with her caseworker every day and complied with the other requirements of intensive probation, including staying at home and obeying all laws. She had told her special education teacher that she needed one-on-one help and began receiving daily tutoring the day after the probation violation was filed.
Giroux filed the violation of probation before confirming whether Grace was meeting her academic requirements. She emailed Grace’s teacher three days later, asking, “Is there a certain percentage of a class she is supposed to be completing a day/week?”
Grace’s teacher, Katherine Tarpeh, responded in an email to Giroux that the teenager was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
“Let me be clear that this is no one’s fault because we did not see this unprecedented global pandemic coming,” she wrote. Grace, she wrote, “has a strong desire to do well.” She “is trying to get to the other side of a steep learning curve mountain and we have a plan for her to get there.”
Giroux declined to comment. Tarpeh told a reporter she was not allowed to discuss Grace’s case.
The May 14 hearing to decide whether Grace had violated her probation, and what would happen if she had, took place at the Oakland County courthouse when the Family Division was hearing only “essential emergency matters.”
Grace’s case was the only one heard in person in the courthouse that day.
Crop of a court document describing Grace's sentence.
On May 14, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan found that Grace was in violation of probation for not submitting schoolwork and ordered that she be detained at Children’s Village in Oakland County, Michigan. (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
Grace’s attorney, concerned about his health, participated by Zoom, though he told the judge it was difficult to represent her without being there. He told the judge he decided not to request a postponement because the family was worried she would detain Grace if they waited for a later court date.
The prosecution called Giroux, the caseworker, as its only witness. In response to questions from Grace’s attorney, she acknowledged she did not know what type of educational disabilities Grace had and did not answer a question about what accommodations those disabilities might require. Her assessment that Grace hadn’t done her schoolwork was based on a comment her mother made to her teacher, which Charisse testified she said in a moment of frustration and was untrue.
Grace’s special education teacher, Tarpeh, could have provided more information and planned to testify but had to leave the hearing to teach a class, according to the prosecutor.
Grace and her mother testified that she was handling her schoolwork more responsibly — and that she had permission to turn in her assignments at her own pace, as long as she finished by the end of the semester. And, Charisse said, Grace was behaving and not causing her any physical harm.
The transition to virtual school had been difficult, Grace testified, but she said she was making progress. “I just needed time to adjust to the schedule that my mom had prepared for me,” she said.
Brennan was unconvinced. Grace’s probation, she told her, was “zero tolerance, for lack of a better term.”
She sent her to detention. Grace was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
From March 16, when Michigan courts began limiting operations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, to June 29, at least 24 delinquency cases involving youth in Oakland County court resulted in placements to juvenile facilities. Of those, more than half involved young people who are Black, like Grace.
Those numbers, obtained by ProPublica from the Oakland County Circuit Court, reflect long-standing racial disparities in the state and county’s juvenile justice system. From January 2016 through June 2020, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to the Oakland court. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black.
A report released last month, which found inadequate legal representation for juveniles in Michigan, noted that research has shown a disproportionate number of youth of color are incarcerated in Michigan overall. Black youth in the state are incarcerated more than four times as often as their white peers, according to an analysis of federal government data by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that addresses racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
“It is clear that kids of color are disproportionately involved and impacted by the system across the board,” said Jason Smith of the nonprofit Michigan Center for Youth Justice, which works to reduce the confinement of youth. “They are more likely to be arrested, less likely to be offered any kind of diversion, more likely to be removed out of the home and placed in some sort of confinement situation.”
In Grace’s case, too, she was sent to a facility at a time when the governor had encouraged courts to send children home.
At the county-run Children’s Village, which has space for 216 youth in secure and residential settings, the population was down to 80 last week, according to the facility manager. There have been no COVID-19 cases in the youth population and four workers have tested positive from contacts outside Children’s Village, she said.
During March and April, 97 juveniles were released from Children’s Village by court order, said Pamela Monville, the Oakland County deputy court administrator. “We understood the orders and the concerns to stop the spread,” she said. Judges, caseworkers and attorneys worked together to determine “who could go back to the community,” she added.
Juvenile justice experts and disability advocates decried the decision to remove Grace from her home, particularly when “the state gave clear directives that children, and all people, unless it was a dire emergency, were to be kept out of detention,” said Kristen Staley, co-director of the Midwest Juvenile Defender Center, which works to improve juvenile defense across eight states.
Terri Gilbert, a former supervisor for juvenile justice programming in Michigan and a high-profile advocate, said the system suffers from inconsistencies in treatment and sentencing, aggravated by a lack of public information.
“This is too harsh of a sentence for a kid who didn’t do their homework. … There is so much research that points to the fact that this is not the right response for this crime,” said Gilbert, a member of a governor-appointed committee that focuses on juvenile justice. “Teenage girls act out. They get mouthy. They get into fights with her mothers. They don’t want to get up until noon. This is normal stuff.”
Monville said Brennan, a judge since 2008, “made the decision she made based on what she heard and her experience on the bench.”
But officials at the Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, the state disabilities watchdog organization, said they were especially troubled that a student with special needs — one of the most vulnerable populations — was punished when students and teachers everywhere couldn’t adjust to online learning.
“It is inconceivable that, given the utterly unprecedented situation, a court would enforce expectations about what student participation in school means that was not tied to the reality of education during a pandemic,” said Kris Keranen, who oversees education for the group.
Charisse says the “greatest pain and devastation” of her life was watching Grace handcuffed in the courtroom. She got a letter in the mail a few days later:
Handwritten letter from Grace to her mother while detained.
In the first letter to her mother while in detention, Grace wrote, “I want to be a better person.” (Records provided by Grace’s Family)
“I want to change. I want to be a better person. Here I’ve realized how much you care and love me. I’m sorry I took that for granted. Please continue to send me pictures of me and you or just with anyone. I love you mommy and I miss you.”
On Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the end of slavery, Charisse sat alone at her kitchen table, the wall behind her covered with Grace’s childhood artwork. As the country faced a reckoning over systemic racism, the day had taken on increased recognition and Charisse lamented she and Grace couldn’t mark it together as they usually did, attending programs at church or at the Museum of African American History in Detroit.
Charisse made strawberry lemonade with fresh watermelon, a variation on the traditional red Juneteenth drink, and talked to Grace the only way she could, through a video call monitored by a Children’s Village case coordinator. The longest they had ever been separated before was when Grace attended a leadership sleepaway camp for six weeks over the summer.
“Juneteenth is all about freedom and you can’t even celebrate. What do you have? It has been taken away,” she said to her daughter.
Other than three recent visits, they have seen each other only on screen, including during a court status hearing in early June. On that day, Charisse watched as Grace walked into a room at Children’s Village handcuffed and with her ankles shackled, her mother said.
“For us and our culture, that for me was the knife stuck in my stomach and turning,” Charisse said. “That is our history, being shackled. And she didn’t deserve that.”
“I Can’t Breathe.” It Happens at Schools, Too.
Students in Illinois schools said “I can’t breathe” while being restrained at least 30 times over the time period we investigated, according to our analysis of the records. The practice of face-down restraint is still legal in Illinois.
At the hearing, both Grace and her mother pleaded with the judge to return her home. “I will be respectful and obedient to my mom and all other people with authority,” Grace said. “I beg for your mercy to return me home to my mom and my responsibilities.”
The judge, however, sided with the caseworker and prosecutor. They agreed that Grace should stay at the Children’s Village not as punishment, but to get treatment and services. She ordered her to remain there and set a hearing to review the case for Sept. 8. By then, it will be a week into the new school year.
On Juneteenth, Charisse and Grace spoke for their full allotted 45 minutes. Grace wore a light blue polo shirt her mother had dropped off a few days earlier. Her hair was pushed back with a Lululemon headband.
Their conversation began with the mundane: Charisse reminded Grace to use her deodorant, and Grace said she needed to get her glasses fixed. But it landed, inevitably, at the frustration they both feel.
“I want you to write in your journal,” Charisse told Grace. She urged her “not to get too comfortable” in detention. “I want you to do what you are supposed to do, but I don’t want you to feel like this is your new norm.”
Grace’s initial weeks in detention were “repetitive and depressing,” she recently told ProPublica in response to written questions.
Grace was required to stay in her locked room from 8:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. She couldn’t turn the lights on and off herself and she slept on a mattress on a concrete slab, she said. She passed the time by reading, drawing and watching some TV.
The local school district provided packets of material but no classes. She said that she has not yet worked with a teacher in person or online, and that she meets less regularly with a therapist at Children’s Village than she did at home.
She has since been transferred to a long-term treatment program at Children’s Village, where she has a bit more freedom. Still, she tells her mother, it’s difficult to think about what she’s missing. “Everyone is moving past me now and I’m just here,” she said during the Zoom call.
A Children’s Village case coordinator, listening, tried to be encouraging. “You are doing very well right now,” she said. “Whatever happens, it looks good. You are respectful, you are following the rules.”
Then she told them their time was up.
“Stay strong,” Grace told her mom.
“You stay strong, too,” her mother replied. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
ProPublica is using middle names for the teenager and her mother to protect their identities.
There are unspoken gag orders in child welfare, where, if a parent speaks out, parental rights will be terminated and the child put up for adoption.
One of my Landmaids whispered in my ears through the cyberverse to show me the crap she found floating in the streets of Oakland County, and thy name is Oakland Family Services.
What you have here is frontline, boots on the ground, Data Catchers.
Calling them slave catchers is so passe' and even illegal, in certain situations, but not all.
Here, you have a better picture of the rebranding of child welfare by making Child Protective Services more data intuitive when it comes to providing services.
Yes, that is absolutely correct, you are experiencing predictive modeling crap where they are allowed into the homes of "The Poors" through monetary seduction, where they establish brand reliability for life through civil asset forfeiture.
Yes, I am going out there to say that for a few pennies, or basically a need to buy groceries for the kids in fear of them being snatched for "food insecurity", all you have to do is sign a few documents, without any legal advice, whether under duress, physician's care, it does not matter, because that is an automatic default to the corporate parent, Oakland Family Services.
We have no idea who is funding this G.O.A.L.S. program, or even who will be the keeper of the data, or if the data are to be sold, but it does not matter, United Way is bearing its arms on the top right of the flag of the UCC privateer ship, ready to sail off across the seas with the pillage of the children's trust funds, that I am calling out in this instance as Medicaid, under the Families First Act.
There are wonderful people who run United Way of Southeastern Michigan, but there are people in the upper echelon of its global operations that like to do very naughty stuff with money dealing with children.
I will call to ask who is the principle of the study, but that may be too difficult a question to pose to Kim Grefka because she only does what she was groomed to do.
I bet by signing the participation agreement, you and your tiny humans come under the aegis of Oakland Family Services because they have to keep records and bill, right?
I found that the Elks Temple Association, a domestic non-profit, executed a quit claim deed, 5-24-1990 in consideration of $1.00 to Oakland Family Services.
But it got to be too confusing because I would have to see the original documents recorded, but up popped Aetna Life Insurance, Luthern Family Services, and eventually Healthy Homes, LLC, which just so happened to file a UCC lien on Oakland Family Services, where I saw about 5 mortgage discharges, in millions.
Michael Earl, president and CEO of Oakland Family Services, is retiring after a 34-year career with the organization, half of that time at its helm.
Succeeding Earl, 63, effective Aug. 1, is Jaimie Clayton.
Clayton, 45, has been with the agency for 13 years, serving as vice president of program operations since 2007.
Before that, she served as Oakland Family Services' director of behavioral health operations and regional director of behavioral health, and as a therapist.
Clayton serves as the chair of the Oakland County Office of Substance Abuse Services Advisory Council and co-chair of the steering committee of Energizing Connections for Healthier Oakland.
She also is a member of the strategic leadership team for Great Start Collaborative – Oakland.
Founded in 1921, Pontiac-based Oakland Family Services operates from additional sites in Berkley, Rochester Hills and Walled Lake, providing early childhood, family preservation, behavioral health, adult caregiver and youth services to more than 35,000 people each year.
