How we did it

To produce this and other articles in this series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Ginny Monk reviewed thousands of pages of documents, photographs and videos obtained from county coroners, local police departments, news archives and state prosecutors.

Information gleaned from these sources enabled Monk to build a database with details about more than 1,500 deaths of minors from 2012 to 2017. Data from 2018 and 2019 was unavailable at the time this series was produced.

Monk submitted public records requests to every prosecutor and county coroner in the state. Some prosecutors said they no longer had files for some cases. A few coroners provided only redacted records and some did not provide all the records for the time period requested, saying their predecessors had taken records home with them.

The database includes demographic information, contacts the children had with Arkansas Department of Human Services workers before their deaths, details about the circumstances of their deaths and any criminal charges filed in their deaths. It includes all causes of deaths but does not include miscarriages or stillborn babies unless charges were filed in those cases — a rare occurrence.

Monk analyzed this data to determine which cases were ruled the result of abuse or neglect or whether the children were in foster care at the time of their deaths.

She then conducted interviews with current and former investigators, family members, health specialists and experts in child abuse and neglect.

Support for Monk’s reporting on this project also came from the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being, a program of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California.

CREDITS

Reporting: Ginny Monk

Editing: Sonny Albarado

Copy Editing: Chris Carmody

Graphics/Illustrations: Carrie

Hill, Aaron O’Quin

Photos: John Sykes, Yutao

Chen, Staton Breidenthal,

Benjamin Krain, Thomas Metthe

Web Design: Yutao Chen

Page Design: Terry Austin