The biological mother of two California little boys who died while in the state foster care system has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that her sons were illegally taken from her and placed with foster parents who are now accused of killing them. .
Four-year-old Classic Pettus and 3-year-old Cinsere Pettus were reported missing from the backyard of their foster family in the desert city of California City on December 21, 2020. The boys, who were black, were not found and Kern County prosecutors said in March that the investigation found that they had died.
Ryan Dean, the biological mother of two young brothers who were killed while in a foster home, spoke at a news conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Haven Daly / AP
Foster parents, Trezel West and Jacqueline West, pleaded not guilty to a number of charges, including two second-degree murder charges. Criminal proceedings against them are due to begin next month.
The civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit, filed June 17 by the boys’ mother, Ryan Dean, and grandmother, Dana Moorer, named West as defendants, along with Kern County Human Services and the California Department of Social Services.
It claims that the foster home was a “danger created by the state” that led to the eventual disappearance and death of the two boys. The lawsuit seeks $ 40 million in damages.
“I just feel like I don’t deserve this,” Dean said emotionally at a news conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “I’m not a criminal. I don’t have a bad record.”
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Waukeen Q. McCoy said Congress intends with the Family Act first from 2018 to try to preserve family units, reversing the presumption that foster care is better for children.
“Sinser and Classic Petus were killed after being illegally abducted by their mother as a result of an outdated model of foster care that Congress described as a perverse incentive to tear up African-American families,” McCoy said.
McCoy said that before the 2018 law, the foster care system disproportionately subjected African-American families to “investigations into child abuse caused by trauma.”
Kern County Human Services Information Officer Jana Slaggl said the department was unable to comment on the case due to a court order. The state agency said in an email that it could not comment on litigation.
The older child was abducted from his biological parents after being hospitalized in 2016, according to the case. Dean returned from work to find the 3-month-old boy, who was “crying uncontrollably,” and when she took him to the emergency room, he was found to have two broken legs, according to court records. Biological father Charles Petus said he gave his son two baths that day and nothing else happened, according to the case.
A hospital official informed Dean that the Kern County Human Services would take the child because “they believe he was abused,” the case said. Dean had no criminal record and no charges of ill-treatment against her when the child was removed from her care, according to the record.
After Dean gave birth to another son in June 2017, a deputy sheriff took him away because human resources officials said they “like to keep siblings together,” the case said.
After spending months with a foster family, the boys were housed in Wests in late 2018. At that point, Dean said she had begun to notice that her children were losing weight and that the younger boy had scratches on his face. in the statement.
“In November 2018, Ms. Dean wrote a letter expressing her concerns about the lack of appropriate care that her children receive while in foster care in the West. No one has ever responded to the letter, “the lawsuit states. Dean’s mother, Moorer, has also requested that the children be placed under her, who have been ignored, the document said.
McCoy said Moorer also completed parenting and psychological examinations in an attempt to take her grandchildren, but was refused.
State and county officials negligently placed the brothers in West’s care “to cause the immediate and immediate subsequent death of the minor children,” the lawsuit said. Officials rejected requests from the biological mother and grandmother to reunite with the children before they were killed, the document said.
The West renamed the boys Orin West and Orson West, but the lawsuit concerned them by their birth names, Classic Pettus and Cinsere Pettus.
Kern County Attorney Cynthia Zimmer announced in March that a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence had been presented by investigators, and a grand jury found that the boys had died three months before the foster family reported them missing.
The grand jury heard testimony from 50 witnesses in three months, she said.
Zimmer said that a week after the boys were reported missing, “important information came to light,” which led to police involvement in Bakersfield, about 60 miles west of California City.
Police and FBI agents searched a field in Bakersfield in March 2021, but the results of those efforts were not disclosed. The district attorney said she was not allowed to reveal any facts about the case until the trial.
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