EDITOR NOTE: The reporter has omitted some details of this case and changed the name of the girl because the judge who presided over the parental severance hearing threatened to pursue a contempt charge, even though much of the information is available via public records. This is Part 2 of 2.
One thing is certain – on Oct. 5, 2019, Little Girl Jane ingested an undetermined amount of drain cleaner while in her Cochise County home with two adult residents. The toxic substance was in a bottle with a faulty cap and had been within reach to a young child behind the toilet for several months.
What possessed the young girl to take a swig from the bottle will never be known. Nor will anyone ever know if for some heinous reason someone prompted or forced her to drink it.
But if the girl’s time in the pediatric ICU of a Tucson hospital and countless medical procedures wasn’t enough trauma, a judge last month found the mother’s neglect in allowing the poison to be accessible was so horribly insurmountable that it was in the best interest of Little Girl Jane and a sibling to have the mother’s parental rights severed, or terminated.
Taxpayers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Little Girl Jane’s medical care; after all she almost died from ingesting the poison. And taxpayers spent tens of thousands of dollars more for a “parenting plan” overseen by the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) which sought to reunify the mother, the girl, and her sibling.
Before the poison incident there had been no drug use by the mother. No mental health issues. She ensured the kids lived in a clean home with her extended family. They had clothing and food, and were enrolled in daycare.
Yet despite all of the efforts to reunify the children back into their mother’s fulltime care and custody, a little-known timeline started ticking in October 2019. Attorneys call it D-Day — the dreaded 15 months in out-of-home care deadline.
Little Girl Jane had frequent contact with her mother in the days, weeks, and months after the drain cleaner incident. The girl may have been in a foster home, but she saw her mother and a sibling on a regular basis with the blessing of DCS case workers, as well as court-appointed attorneys for the girl and the sibling.
Even Judge John Kelliher of the Cochise County Superior Court was on board. But during a recent three-day severance trial, the judge said it did not help the mother’s cause that she was resistant for many months to the idea someone may have forced the girl to drink the poison.
But no one at the local hospital saw any evidence of such monstrous abuse when the girl was rushed there on Oct. 5, 2019. And no one at the Tucson trauma hospital she was airlifted to saw any reason to be suspicious of the injuries.
Everything pointed to an accident.
At least until Oct. 9, 2019, when a DCS employee claimed Little Girl Jane, who was heavily medicated and in critical condition, told her a specific family member “made her” drink the poison. The only person who heard that declaration was the DCS employee, who admitted under oath to not having the requisite training at that time to conduct forensic interviews.
The die, however, was cast by the girl’s unwitnessed and unrecorded statement to the lone DCS employee. Days later to the girl and her sibling being declared “dependent” on the state and attorneys were appointed to look out for their “best interests.”
It also triggered an investigation by the Sierra Vista Police Department which found no evidence to support the suggestion that anyone prompted or forced the young girl to drink from the bottle. In fact, this glimpse under the dark shroud of DCS cases in Cochise County may never have been possible but for Det. Thomas Ransford, albeit unintentionally on his part.
Ransford has earned a reputation within SVPD and the Cochise County Attorney’s Office as a hardnose, unemotional detective. A “the facts are the facts” guy who has investigated dozens of child abuse reports in his 14 years with the city and 20 years as a military investigator.
But a careful read months ago of Ransford’s official public report about the poisoning of Little Girl Jane left two strong impressions. First, the leave-no-stone-unturned detective found not one tiny indication that anyone forced the young girl to drink from the bottle of poison.
And second, he was clearly upset by how DCS handled the case.
Ransford’s report notes all of the medical staff he interviewed at the local hospital – something the initial DCS case worker admitted to not doing. He also observed the girl in the pediatric ICU in Tucson and had a chance to watch the girl’s reaction to the “suspected” family member at the hospital.
The detective even put that family member through a voice stress assessment, which is an interrogation tool similar to a polygraph. He later described the case as “one of the worst experiences” he has had with child welfare in 34 years.
And when Ransford he was called to testify at the recent severance trial he did not shy away from sharing his opinion about the credibility of the girl’s alleged “forced” poisoning statement that ripped apart Little Girl Jane’s family.
There were problems with how DCS handled the case “right from the beginning,” Ransford testified. The young girl was of an age “easily influenced” by adults, not to mention the effect of her medication and serious medical condition.
And then there was the fact the DCS employee who was alone in the girl’s room was not trained in such interviews, and had admitted in her own testimony that some of her interactions with the girl may not have strictly followed protocol.
But the judge cut off Ransford’s testimony after a very testy exchange. Unless the detective had testimony to counter the fact the drain cleaner had been accessible in October 2019, it did not matter anymore whether the girl drank it herself or was forced to, Kelliher said.
The mother’s attorney, Roger Contreras, also tried to point out issues with how DCS handled the family’s case. One of the therapists assigned to the family reported that the mother showed “a lack of empathy” and was incapable of being a source of trust and support for the girl because the mother did not believe her daughter was injured on purpose.
Contreras noted it apparently did not matter to the therapist, the children’s attorneys, or DCS that Little Girl Jane also described her poisoning in another interview a few days later as happening when the family member injected her with a needle.
The attorney also noted that the girl claimed to have been made to drink drain cleaner at least once before, something every medical professional who testified said would have been impossible without significant and obvious injury.
DCS staff and hospital personnel testified the mother became highly agitated when told her daughter allegedly claimed a family member poisoned her. There was also testimony the mother said the girl had to be lying, which some DCS witnesses said indicated the mother presented “a risk” to both children because she refused to consider the poisoning may not have been accidental.
One of the therapists who testified about the mother’s parenting attitudes admitted to never seeing the mother interact with either child. Nor did the therapist receive copies of DCS visitation reports about how the mother conducted herself with the children.
DCS, which is represented in its legal cases by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, reported to the court that the official file for Little Girl Jane and her sibling contains more than 5,100 pages. Last month, after hours of testimony spread out over three days, Kelliher said he could not say what really happened on Oct. 5, 2019 and that “I don’t think anyone can.”
The only thing that mattered, Kelliher said, was two facts – the first being the mother’s “shameful” failure “to even accept responsibility” for her daughter’s serious injuries due to the drain cleaner being within reach of a young child.
The second was the fact the mother allowed the drain cleaner to be accessible in the home for months, something she should be “ashamed for,” the judge said. Those facts alone supported a finding of neglect on the part of the mother, which was grounds for Kelliher to sever, or terminate, her parental rights with both children.
“Our job as adults, as parents, is to protect children,” he said. “It’s a very sad set of circumstances. If I’m wrong, the Court of Appeals will correct me.”
The judge’s ruling could be overturned on appeal, but recent data from the Arizona Court of Appeals shows less than five percent of termination orders are reversed. The mother will not see her children again, even during the appeal. Legally, they are no longer her children.
PART 1 First Little Girl Jane Was Poisoned, Then A Judge Took Away Her Mother