How does a child die and nobody knows?

Before his body was found encased in concrete in a Denver storage unit last month, Caden McWilliams was a model student at Ellis Elementary. His family had been involved with human services in recent years, and five months before he died, police had been in his family’s home.

How did a seemingly vibrant 7year-old boy disappear for seven months before anyone discovered he was dead?

“From May to December, this kid was invisible. And that’s a red flag,” said Ned Breslin, CEO of the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver.

It’s not unheard of for children to disappear from the public eye for months, Breslin said. Kids slip through the cracks for a wide variety of reasons.

Sometimes law enforcement or social workers miss signs of abuse, experts said. Sometimes, like in the 2005 high-profile disappearance and death of 6-year-old Aaroné Thompson, a family’s

movements from home to home, often in different jurisdictions, keep officials from connecting the dots. More simply, sometimes nobody reports that there’s a problem.

“We didn’t see this kid for seven months. That could be a failure of lots of different things,” Breslin said. “That’s neighbors, the grandparents, the parents who didn’t know how to reach out.”

It remains unclear how involved government services were in the life of Caden McWilliams.

State child fatality records show that Caden’s family likely had contact with a county human services department within the past three years, but they do not provide any detail. Human services officials previously declined to confirm whether the boy’s family was working with case managers, what kind of services were provided or which county was involved.

Involvement in the system does not necessarily save a child.

At least 60 Colorado children died in 2017 because of abuse or neglect, according to a report by the Colorado Department of Human Services. In more than 60 percent of the 2017 cases reviewed by the state’s Child Fatality Review Team, the family had prior involvement in the child welfare system, according to the team’s report.

But under state regulations, child protective services can close cases if they determine that a family has met their program requirements. Case workers complete an assessment of continued risk of abuse in the home before closing a file, but follow-up contact is not always required.

Parents who abuse also sometimes attempt to hide the signs of their mistreatment, said Jodi Byrnes, director of the forensic interview team at the Denver Children’s Advocacy Center. Children will start wearing shirts with long sleeves on warm days or will stop attending school or other activities for days. Parents also will isolate the family from the outside world.

Child protective agencies can’t do much unless they are first notified of a problem, Breslin said. Somebody should have noticed the red flags in the Caden McWilliams case, Breslin said.

“There were a lot of eyes around this family who for a whole host of reasons didn’t feel comfortable enough to intervene,” he said.

One of the most common reasons people don’t report suspicions of child abuse is because they are afraid of falsely accusing someone, said Stephanie Villafuentes, child protection ombudsman of Colorado.

“People are just worried: What if I’m not really seeing what’s happening here? What if I’m wrong?” she said.

Overall referrals to Colorado’s Child Welfare system have increased steadily in the past 10 years in part because of the creation of a statewide hotline in 2015, advocates said. Between 2008 and 2017, the number of referrals grew 46 percent to a high of 107,092, according to a June report from the the Colorado Human Services Directors Association.

Many reports of suspected child abuse are made by the broad group of professions required by state law to report suspicions of child abuse, including many medical providers, emergency responders, religious clergy and school staffers, Villafuentes said.

Policy for Denver Public Schools — where Caden attended Ellis Elementary — states that all district staff members are required to immediately report to the state hotline or local law enforcement if they have “reasonable cause to know or suspect” that a child has been abused or neglected. All staff members attend annual training about their responsibilities as mandatory reporters, district spokesman Will Jones said.

Staff members reporting the abuse also must inform the school principal as soon as possible that they had done so. But once a report has been made, the primary responsibility for investigating the claims lies with law enforcement or human services — not with the school.

However, the district does not have policy directly addressing what school staff members should do if a student suddenly stops attending class and a parent can’t be reached.

Jones previously declined to say when Caden stopped attending school or whether he was enrolled last fall. Police believe Caden has been dead since approximately May 24, a week before the district’s last day of school.

Villafuentes’ office is tasked with investigating how various agencies handle cases. But she can start an investigation only after receiving a complaint. Anybody can make a complaint about an agency at any point in time, she said.

Her office has not received a complaint about Caden’s death and therefore has not opened an investigation into how it was handled, she said Tuesday.

Understanding the vast network of services and agencies that work to protect children from abuse can be difficult, Villafuentes said. Law enforcement, schools, medical providers and multiple levels of government agencies are often involved, she said.

In her experience, it’s not uncommon for social workers or police officers to fail to see signs of abuse or neglect while in contact with a child.

“I hear these examples all the time,” she said.

Public records show that police had been involved with the McWilliams family at least once before Caden’s death. In November 2017, Denver police responded to the family’s home to investigate a report that Elisha Pankey’s partner, Leland Pankey, had strangled her. The affidavit from the investigation noted that two children were in the home when officers arrived.

“I think that as the story unfolds, what we’re going to find is there were moments where interventions could have happened and helped the family,” Breslin said. “Maybe saved the child.”