Officials kept file on ‘horrifying’ child abuse secret, and now a judge has rebuked them
It took a lawsuit by the Miami Herald and other news organizations to force the Florida Department of Children and Families to open its files on a deadly case of abuse.
On Nov. 12, 2020, state child welfare administrators filed a motion in court seeking custody of seven of Christopher Bryant and Jabora Deris’ surviving children.
The couple’s 22-monthold son, Rashid Bryant, had died a week earlier, and an autopsy revealed “old and recent” skull fractures. Rashid, the court petition said, died after “sustaining multiple injuries due to severe physical abuse and medical neglect while in the care and custody of [his] parents.”
But two months later, when the Miami Herald filed suit to obtain records detailing Rashid’s history with the Department of Children and Families under a state law requiring transparency when a child dies at the hands of a parent, administrators refused to release them. They insisted — then and for a year thereafter — that they were still investigating whether Rashid’s death was the result of abuse or neglect.
In fact, records released by the judge show, the decision had already been made.
The case is emblematic of a pattern in which Florida increasingly makes news organizations and the public go to court to secure access to documents that fall under the state’s public records law — one of the strongest in the nation. With DCF, the stakes could not be higher: The agency is charged with protecting children from abuse and neglect. Its records can show whether the decisions of investigators, case workers and judges left children in harm’s way.
The Herald requested DCF’s file on Rashid on Nov. 17, 2020, 11 days after the boy’s death.
DCF provided an incident report containing fewer than five full sentences. As to DCF’s lengthy history with the family, the report said: “There was prior DCF involvement.” Then DCF refused to disclose any additional records.
Last week, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Barbara Areces — observing that DCF’s file on the boy contained “a lot of information that is horrifying” — ruled that DCF had no basis to withhold the documents, and ordered the agency to release them.
The dispute, which remains ongoing, could have significant repercussions for Floridians’ ability to enforce a state law intended to ensure transparency following the deaths of children who had prior contact with the
‘‘ A CHILD DYING UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES IS EXTRAORDINARY, AND THE REMEDY MUST BE EXTRAORDINARY. Frances Allegra, a child welfare lawyer
state’s long-troubled child welfare system.
Frances Allegra, a nearly 30-year child welfare lawyer who headed Miami’s private foster care agency, Our Kids, from 2004 through 2014, said “the stakes are incredibly high” in the litigation. “A child dying under these circumstances is extraordinary, and the remedy must be extraordinary. That means unsealing the records so that everyone who cares can inspect and review what happened.” She added: “We should all care.”
“Opening the records is not an exercise in criticism or finger-pointing. It’s about what we can learn — what mistakes were made, if any, and what improvements can follow.”
At a court hearing last week, DCF’s deputy general counsel, John Jackson, assured Areces the agency was not seeking to keep secrets. “I will tell the court we have nothing
to hide at this point. Nor have we had anything to hide from the very beginning,” Jackson said.
Mark Caramanica, whose firm represents the Herald — and several other state and national news organizations that later joined the Herald’s lawsuit — suggested at the hearing the conflict indeed was about “just how far DCF goes in stringing these investigations out and keeping this information from the public.”
Florida law requires that DCF administrators must release their files when a child’s death is determined to be caused by the abuse, neglect or abandonment of a parent. Under previous administrations, the agency often released such records shortly after a death when the circumstances made clear that a child died at the hands of his or her parents.
A 2014 law passed unanimously after the Herald reported on the deaths of more than 500 children with DCF histories, many of the deaths preventable, required DCF to examine its history with deceased children quickly, so as to allow administrators to learn from their mistakes, and better protect other children.
Since Gov. Ron DeSantis took office, however, his child welfare administrators often have refused to release such records for months or years, insisting that their investigations remain pending, even when a parent has been criminally charged by prosecutors. The result is that such records often remain secret, in contravention of state law.
Administrators say they are not bound by the actions of police departments, medical examiners or prosecutors. Only DCF administrators, they have argued, have the authority to determine the cause of a child’s death under the statute — and their conclusion may take as long as they deem necessary.
Until recently, DCF had said that it was the agency’s prerogative alone to determine when records should be made public. At the end of January, however, administrators said they would have released the documents sooner but that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office had explicitly asked them not to, for fear of jeopardizing Bryant and Deris’ criminal prosecution.
At last week’s hearing, Jackson said DCF “can’t close our case when there’s a concurrent criminal investigation without the permission of law enforcement to do it.”
Said Rivera, in her deposition: “From my understanding, the investigation is still ongoing, there’s ongoing criminal proceedings and they haven’t gotten approval from the State Attorney to close the investigation yet.”
But that was not true, according to prosecutors.
In a sworn statement filed as part of the lawsuit by the Herald, which was joined by The Associated Press, The New York Times, WPLG, Gannett, Tampa Bay Times and First Amendment Foundation, among others, the prosecutor overseeing Rashid’s death wrote: “I have never contacted
DCF and requested that they keep any DCF investigation open in connection with, or as a result of, the criminal prosecution of [Rashid’s] parents.”
Jackson told Judge Areces on Feb. 9: “Our position is that we [had not closed the case] until yesterday.”
Areces, however, had reviewed all of DCF’s records pertaining to Deris and Bryant’s children privately. It was no easy task, she said. When DCF first gave her the records, “it was like trying to work through a puzzle,” she said in court. “It looked like someone had shaken the box.” DCF sent a new batch that wasn’t all mixed up.
The review showed, Areces said, that DCF had, in fact, made its determination within days that Rashid died from parental abuse and neglect. On Nov. 12, 2020, six days after Rashid’s death, DCF filed a petition seeking custody of the couple’s other children.
“DCF swore under oath that the children’s sibling [Rashid] passed away after sustaining multiple severe physical injuries as a result of physical abuse and medical neglect. So, that was under oath, and it was filed. How is that not a determination?” Areces said. “There’s no ambiguity in that statement.”
Areces added: “You know, when I got to that paragraph, I was like, whoa. Wait a minute. And I don’t see how that’s not a determination.”
Jackson’s reply: “There is no way the department could make a determination of whether the child’s death occurred from abuse or neglect in a week.”
Rashid’s Opa-locka parents and siblings were well-known to state child welfare administrators long before Rashid was born on Dec. 13, 2018. Between 2004 and the year Rashid was born, his parents had been the subject of 14 abuse or neglect reports to the state, records say.
Investigators had received seven of those reports to the state’s child welfare hotline in the months before his birth. The reports alleged that his mother smoked marijuana with her older children, that most of her kids didn’t go to school, that her home had no running water and that her kids were hungry and losing weight.
Rashid’s siblings were removed from his parents’ care a month before his birth, and were living with relatives or foster parents. Rashid was taken into state care after he was born.
Child welfare administrators had always planned to reunify Rashid and his siblings with their parents. But a “special review” of the case, released last week following Areces’ order, said neither Deris nor Bryant were “engaging” in activities, such as therapy, designed to improve their parenting, and did not demonstrate the kind of “behavioral change” that might justify the return of their children.
The special review noted that Deris had been offered an array of services to make her a better mother, but “attempts to contact the mother” to get her started “had been unsuccessful.”
“The home condition was not stable” enough, the report said, “for the children to be returned.”
Foster care workers recommended that the kids be returned slowly, beginning with the second-oldest child. But a Miami-Dade child welfare judge, whom the special report identified only as “the judiciary” — and whom DCF won’t name — overruled the recommendation in February 2020, ordering that four children be returned immediately, including the infant Rashid.
Two months later, the judge ordered the four remaining children be returned too, the report said.
“Case management staff recognized that reunifying eight children simultaneously would be detrimental to the family’s success and the children’s ongoing safety,” the report said.
On May 28, 2020, Deris texted the children’s aunt a picture of Rashid’s swollen leg, telling her the leg was injured when a sibling removed him from a playpen and dropped him, according to DCF’s petition seeking custody — made part of the court file in the Herald’s litigation on Tuesday. The aunt told her to take Rashid to the hospital. Deris took Rashid to Jackson North two weeks later, but left before he could be fully examined. Deris told hospital staff Rashid had fallen out of bed two days before.
“The parents refused an x-ray,” the removal petition said, “and the child was discharged.”
That June, DCF’s special review said, the family’s court-appointed lay guardian reported Rashid had injured his leg, and was having trouble walking. “The mother alleged this was due to an accidental fall,” the review said — not an incident involving a sibling and the playpen. One month later, the judge terminated all oversight of Rashid and three of his siblings. Relatives later told police the boy rarely left his bed after the injury, which was later determined to be a broken leg — an injury that can be enormously painful.
One of Rashid’s brothers, a then-16-year-old, later told police Rashid’s right leg appeared to be injured two months before he died, and the boy cringed and cried whenever anyone touched it.
Beginning in October 2020, Rashid had two seizures. His mother told authorities she took him to North Shore Hospital following the second “attack,” but “left the hospital while waiting to be seen.”
“The mother just said ‘forget it,’ and determined the hospital would do nothing for them,” the petition added.
Rashid’s oldest sister, then 17 and living with an aunt, told police Rashid had not been able to walk since injuring his leg. She said Rashid “appeared small, as if he was losing weight. He was also not able to keep food down, and would vomit,” the petition said.
Four days before his death, the 17-year-old said, Rashid’s “eyes were droopy and crossed and one side of his body lacked strength.” Rashid, she said, was propped up “in the sitting position” against a wall.
At around 10:28 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2020, Deris found the toddler cold and unresponsive. He had vomited, and was “foaming out of his mouth and nose,” the petition said. Deris gave him a spoon so he wouldn’t bite his tongue, but waited 83 minutes before calling for paramedics — and only then began to perform CPR, a detective wrote in a warrant.
DCF’s special report, dated last July, said paramedics “worked for over an hour trying to resuscitate” Rashid. “When asked about the delay in calling for help, Ms. Deris explained that she panicked, and that she didn’t want her other children to witness the medical emergency.”
After Rashid’s death, his 17-year-old sister told authorities she had witnessed “the father hit the child with a belt.”
And after seizing Deris’ phone, a detective found a text Deris had sent to her sister dated May 22, 2020 — six days before she sent another aunt a picture of the boy’s swollen leg. Deris said she had “beat Rashid’s ass,” the petition said.
An autopsy showed “a number of unexplained and significant injuries, including a fractured femur,” healing rib fractures and at least two skull fractures. The cause of Rashid’s death was “complications of acute and chronic blunt force injuries,” the autopsy said, adding that a contributing cause was “parental neglect” and “withholding appropriate medical care.”
The medical examiner ruled Rashid’s death was a homicide.
Deris, 32, and Bryant, 36, were charged with child neglect leading to great bodily harm shortly after Rashid’s death. Last May, the charges were upgraded to manslaughter and aggravated child abuse. They are awaiting trial.
In a statement to the Herald after the special report was released, Mallory McManus, a DCF spokeswoman, said “the tragic death of young Rashid Bryant is heartbreaking.”
“The safety and wellbeing of children are top priorities of the Department of Children and Families, and as such the Department advocated for the protection of the child, developing an in-depth transition plan that recommended a staggered reunification. However, this was later rejected by the judiciary, and resulted in four children being reunified at once,” McManus added.
DCF SWORE UNDER OATH THAT [RASHID] PASSED AWAY AFTER SUSTAINING MULTIPLE SEVERE PHYSICAL INJURIES AS A RESULT OF ABUSE AND MEDICAL NEGLECT. HOW IS THAT NOT A DETERMINATION?
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Barbara Areces
Carol Marbin Miller: 305-206-2886, MarbinMiller