DHS settles lawsuit over girl’s murder for $475K
A murdered girl’s grandparents have settled their wrongful-death lawsuit against the Oklahoma Department of Human Services for $475,000.
The brutal 2011 death of Serenity Deal sparked widespread public outrage toward DHS. Her maternal grandparents sued in 2013 on behalf of her estate.
“We have settled the matter to the mutual satisfaction of the parties,” their attorney, Joe Vorndran, said Friday.
Serenity was murdered by a father she barely knew, shortly after a judge in 2011 placed her in his care at the urging of DHS workers. She had been in a foster home.
DHS fired two child welfare workers for mistakes in her placement.
DHS had become involved with Serenity after her mother was accused of a child sex offense. Her grandparents, Charles and Annette Deal, of Chandler, had tried to adopt her but were not allowed to because the father objected. They blamed DHS for her death.
“I’ve not ever seen anything even close to this bad,” their attorney, Vorndran, said of DHS. “It’s just unbelievable. It really is. But, hopefully we’ve made some improvements since then
and something like that won’t happen again.”
DHS chief legal counsel, Ronald Baze, said, “This has been a long and difficult experience for everyone involved. We sincerely hope this resolution provides Serenity’s family with some closure.”
Serenity, who had a pacemaker, had turned 5 the month before her death.
The outcry over her murder led, in part, to reforms at the primary state agency providing services for children.
The longtime DHS director, Howard Hendrick, stepped down in 2012 after public confidence in his leadership fell because of child deaths.
A special committee created to review what role DHS had in child deaths made 37 recommendations in 2013.
The settlement in the wrongful-death case is being paid in installments out of taxpayers’ dollars.
DHS paid $150,000 in January and will pay
$50,000 more in July. The rest of the settlement came from funds in the state’s self-insurance program.
Serenity’s father, Sean Devon Brooks, beat her to death in June 2011, less than a month after she began living with him full time at his Oklahoma City apartment.
The former motel clerk pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Brooks had not known he was Serenity’s father until she was 3.
He found out from a paternity test.
DHS fired two Pottawatomie County child welfare workers who had pushed for Serenity to be placed with her father even though she had been injured twice during overnight visits with him.
In termination papers, DHS said its two workers
failed to fully check the father’s background, which included times when he had been violent.
The two workers later were charged with suppressing evidence from Serenity’s judge. Both pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor offense and were put on probation.
The suppressed evidence included a hospital photo of Serenity taken after one of the overnight visits with her father in January 2011.
The photo showed her with a swollen and bruised face and two black eyes.
Both Serenity and her father said he dropped her accidentally. DHS workers accepted that explanation.
Pottawatomie County District Attorney Richard Smothermon said in 2012 that the judge never would have placed
Serenity with her father if the judge had seen that evidence.
“There is no way that this child fell out of a car seat.
“And anybody, without any bit of education, can tell that his story was just not true. This child was beaten. They never provided that to the court,” Smothermon said in 2012.
Another child welfare worker involved in Serenity’s case committed suicide in Chandler after DHS put him on suspension. The DA later said that worker did nothing wrong and actually tried to warn the other workers repeatedly not to place Serenity with her father.
“And he was repeatedly ignored,” Smothermon said.
Serenity’s mother is now in prison, serving a 15-year sentence for a sex offense involving a boy.