'We knew this was a high-risk family'
EUGENE, Ore. -- Jeanette Maples showed up at Cascade Middle School in torn clothes, trying her best to hide bruises.
Family and friends say they believed the young teen was being abused and reported their concerns to the Department of Human Services. It took her death for the agency to take a thorough look at her life.
Maples died Dec. 9 after someone in her home called 911 to report she was not breathing. Her mother and stepfather, Angela and Richard McAnulty, are charged with her murder. According to court documents, Maples died "in the course of, or as a result of, intentional maiming and torture of the victim."
In an initial report, DHS said only one of four reports was investigated, saying the agency's policies were not followed.
Following the release of the report, the agency is Gene Evans, DHS spokesman said the agency is determining if Maples' story was an isolated case.
"I think the big change is going to come as a result of figuring out is this a system wide issue, is this something that happens across the state or was this a flaw that happened in this one case," said Evans.
One employee at the Springfield DHS office has been placed on administrative leave and others are being questioned, he said.
The DHS report outlined several issues with the way Maples' case was handled.
After receiving a report in 2006, a DHS worker interviewed Maples but "concluded that it could not determine whether there was a safety threat ... The CIRT team believes more could have been done to interview additional, collateral sources about the alleged abuse."
"We knew this was a high-risk family, they had a past history of child abuse and child neglect and we didn't adequately take that into consideration," said Evans. When asked why the information was not taken into consideration, Evans said that is the focus of the on-going DHS investigation.
Additionally, the report said Maples' "age [in the 2006 case] was considered as a major factor in the coclusion that she was not vulnerable and, therefore, an assessment of the abuse reports was not warranted."
The report also says there are "the need for specific guidance to workers with respect to comprehensive assessments when children are being rasied without contact by traditional community supports."
Maples was being home-schooled at the time of her death.
"Did the agency over rely on the fact that this was a teenager girl, that she could disclose, that she could tell people about her abuse," explained Evans. "And the other part of it is, because she was more isolated, was no attending public school, was not seeing doctors necessarily, should that have been taken into account when evaluating these reports. We've got some serious concerns that that may have happened in this case and we want to further look at that as the investigation goes forward."
No agency policies are currently being altered, he said. Rather, DHS will finish its investigation to determine if the policies or people are at fault. That includes auditing a sample of cases that were closed at screening in which children are 10 years or older, like Maples', to see if the child's age "inappropriately influence the decision that was made."
"Was it an individual who didn't do that or is it something about the way we're training our screeners," he explained.
"Our mission is to protect children 100 percent of the time and that didn't happen in this case," said Evans.
