Review child protective services, foster parents of slain child say
LARGO— The foster parents of a 2-year-old Florida boy who police say was killed by his birth mother are asking for a “fundamental re-examination” of the state's child protective services system, while records show the victim was the focus of state social workers from the time he was 3 months old.
Sam and Juliet Warren said if Jordan Belliveau hadn’t been returned to his biological parents, he would still be alive and well at their home. Jordan's body was found in a wooded area near St. Petersburg on Tuesday. His 21-year-old mother, Charisse Stinson, initially told Largo police a stranger had abducted him, but then said she hit her boy.
“We hope that Jordan’s loss will lead to the change that is needed to protect other endangered children in the system,” Sam Warren said at a news conference, reading from a statement. “Jordan was failed by the system. He was failed by many people who should have protected him but didn't. Promises that were made to us about how he would be protected after his return were broken.”
Because of what happened to Jordan, the Warrens said they were seeking “a fundamental re-examination of the entire (child protective services) system.”
Jordan was returned to his mother on May 31, 2018, the Warrens said. Before that time he had lived with the Warrens for most of his young life.
Jordan's first contact with child protective investigators came in October 2016, just three months after he was born, the Tampa Bay Times reported , citing Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and child protective services reports.
Jordan was living in a home with his father, a known gang member also named Jordan, a grandmother and uncle, the reports said.
The elder Jordan was shot in his driveway and then again at the end of his street, according to the reports, which also say that he threatened a woman with a gun that same night.
A Clearwater police officer told child welfare investigators he had been to the home several times to respond to weapons complaints, track down wanted people and recover stolen cars.
“The parents knowingly allow their infant son to reside in a dangerous environment” and “fail to understand the danger the baby is in when around gang members,” a child investigator's report said, according to the Times.
Even while in foster care, Jordan was allowed at least one unsupervised visit with his parents, on June 18, 2017, during which he got caught in the middle of a fight between his father and a rival that ended with Jordan getting hit in the lip and being treated by emergency medical technicians, the newspaper reported.
At the time, a child protection investigator said in a written report that Jordan was calm and “did not appear to be in any distress,” and Stinson declined to have her son taken to the hospital.
The investigator also remarked that Stinson didn't appear to think she had done anything wrong.
“She did not seem to recognize that being near the fight with the child in her arms put the child in an unsafe situation,” the investigator said.