Deputy notified CPS of alleged abuse
Sheriff: Agency never followed up on visit in April
A Fort Bend County deputy sheriff visited a Richmond-area home months prior to the removal of seven adopted children living in squalid conditions at the address, the sheriff ’s office said Thursday.
According to a news release, the deputy went to the family’s home on Falcon Creek Court for a welfare check on April 16.
The sheriff’s office said one of the seven specialneeds children said they had backpacks ready and were eager to leave the home to go live with their adoptive father, identified in court records as Larry Sinclair. The children’s parents divorced in 2010, and the children were living at the time at the home of their adoptive mother and her husband. The child also told the deputy they were being mistreated, the news release said.
The statement said the deputy notified Child Protective Services of what he had found — but it did not prompt a CPS investigation.
Tiffani Butler, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Family and Protective Services, said Thursday evening that she did not know of a record of the contact made by the sheriff’s office to CPS in April. When provided with a reference number of the conversation, as recorded by the sheriff ’s office, Butler said she would seek information on it from the state intake system.
CPS removed the children from the home shortly before Thanksgiving after receiving a tip about possible neglect and finding they were living in squalid conditions, authorities said,
Paula Sinclair, 54, and Allen Richardson, 78, face charges of aggravated kidnapping and injury to a child arising from the alleged mistreatment of the children, including beatings. They remained Thursday in the Fort Bend County jail, with bail set at $200,000 each. It was unclear if they have an attorney, and the sheriff ’s office has said they do not want to be interviewed.
The news release said
Paula Sinclair told the deputy in April that the children were home-schooled and well-fed. The deputy noted that food was being cooked and did not believe the children to be underfed.
But Sinclair also acknowledged that the children lived in a single room upstairs. Seven months later, a CPS caseworker would find them living in a filthy room and describe a stench of human waste, according to court documents.
Sinclair told the deputy, too, that four “adult clients” lived on the first floor in what has been described as a group-home arrangement. Two were encountered by the sheriff ’s office when they returned to investigate, after CPS had referred the case to them on Nov. 23.
Paula Sinclair had previous brushes with the law in several states, sheriff’s office spokesman Bob Haenel said. Past charges included burglary, possession of a controlled substance and battery, he said.
A Fort Bend County District Court judge granted temporary custody of the children, now ages 14 to 16, to CPS the following day. They were removed and taken to a hospital and remain in CPS care.
The agency had not investigated the home since 2011, when an eighth adopted child died, said Butler, whose department is over CPS. That child, 7-year-old Jaden Sinclair, suffered from cerebral palsy, was blind and unable to speak, the sheriff ’s office said.
“A Fort Bend County death investigator arrived at the scene and conducted the investigation,” the news release said. “A Fort Bend County Justice of the Peace determined the child died of natural causes and the child’s physician signed off on the death of Jaden Sinclair. The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office is not reopening that case.”
A day earlier, Sheriff Troy Nehls had said the agency would be looking into Jaden’s death after it had completed its investigation into the alleged mistreatment of the seven children. Reached on Thursday, he said they had gone back to the records and found no reason to reopen the case.
Nehls said the death had been thoroughly evaluated at the time. “There was no evidence on the scene back then that actually showed that that child was abused,” Nehls said. “If we felt there was anything strange, unusual, with the child’s death back in 2011, we would certainly reopen it but there’s nothing there.”
A copy of the report of the death investigation, provided by the office of the Fort Bend County Precinct 2 justice of the peace, shows the child was found dead by his mother. He was partly clothed, positioned on his back, on the floor, according to the document, and pronounced dead at 9:36 a.m. on Jan. 30, 2011.
State health records for a child of the same age who died on the same day indicate an asthma attack, bronchitis and cardiac arrest caused the child’s death. Reached by phone at home, the doctor listed as the child’s physician — and who signed the death certificate — said she had not been contacted by CPS nor the sheriff ’s office.