Daelynn Foreman
- July 31, 2006

The first report of neglect was when Daelynn was only seven years old, in 
February of 2002. Three more complaints were filed in 2002 and 2003, which 
told of the severe neglect that Daelynn was being subjected to. In August of 2003
and April of 2006, more complaints came in and these were substantiated by
CPS workers who investigated. 

Daelynn's own mother was to blame for the child being so thin and dying. CPS
had been told that Daelynn was ill, that she had Cerebral Palsy, was not being
treated by a physical, was deathly thin and was being neglected. CPS COULD
have saved her life, CPS CHOSE not to!

During the last 1 months of her life, Daelynn was starved and neglected. When
she died, she had bed sores on her pelvis, one of those sores reached all the
way to her bone and was one inch wide. Daelynn's mother was arrested and
charged with homicide, neglect and selling Methamphetamines. Linda Parisia,
who was the public defender for Brandy Foreman shamelessly said:

Oh? I'm sorry Linda, it's sad that you can't see that your client is a murderer
and a child abuser. I realize that everyone is entitled to be defended when 
they commit a crime, I just don't see how some lawyers can defend and make
excuses the way they do, the child abusers and murderers of this world. Each
and every one of them disgusts me more than I could ever put into words.

As usual, CPS hides behind confidentiality laws to cover up their part in the
death of a child. The sad thing is that the Sacramento County Child Protective
Services decided to review their police's related to "medically fragile" children
AFTER Daelynn had already died. Lynn Frank, who was the director of the
county's Department Of Health And Human Services, which oversees CPS,
said that Brandy was believable, that she had deceived every agency that had
been involved with Daelynn's case. She also said:

Well, I hope that Lynn is recovering from all that SHE went through because
of the Daelynn's death. You can insert an eyeroll here. Do I seem a bit more
agitated than normal right now? I won't apologize for this, or any other time
when I am going to be a bit harsh in the eyes of the people reading here. How
many times are we going to hear the same story? CPS SHOULD have taken
action and didn't. A child dies because of their unwillingness to save that child.
CPS can't talk about the case, though CPS is NOW reviewing and making
changes to their policies in dealing with cases like this. Directors and other
employees are devastated by the death of the child. This is not new to us. The
time to change things is BEFORE a child died.

Another member of the review team, who was familiar with Daelynn's case
said that she knows more action SHOULD have been taken:

A member of the county's child death review team who is familiar with Daelynn's case said more action should have been taken.

Really? So these people KNEW and did nothing? Why am NOT surprised?

Sacramento County Sheriff's Detective Brian Shortz said that efforts to save
Daelynn fell tragically short. In April of 2005, CPS had told Brandy to take
Daelynn to the doctor or they would take unspecified action against her.
Brandy took Daelynn to the doctor and was found, at the age of ten, to be
only 46, pounds which was 14 pounds less than she had weighed only one
year before at a doctors appointment. The doctor told Brandy that she needed
to get Daelynn to a Pediatrician and other specialists.

Over the next six months, the doctor called Brandy at least six times to try to
get her to take Daelynn to see him. Brandy didn't do it and shortly after that
even stopped sending Daelynn to Ralph Richardson Center, which is a school
that educates severely disable children.

During the Fall of that year, Cherie Bates began visiting twice a week with
Daelynn for in-home teaching. Cherie noticed that Daelynn was losing weight
and brought it up to Brandy as well as CPS. In June Cherie tried to get Brandy
to take Daelynn to a doctor and Brandy said she would do that the next day
and never did. At that point, Brandy stopped allowing Cherie to see Daelynn,
canceling visits or leaving her waiting behind a locked gate. Daelynn would be
dead only 40 days later. Paramedics round Daelynn, in a rented duplex, on
July 31, 2007, dead. Brandy told them that Daelynn had not eaten anything at
all for the past three days and that she had only been drinking nutritional
supplements.

CPS is required by law to send a report to the Department Of Social Services
detailing their involvement with the families of neglected children, within
48 hours of a the death of a child. A report was filed, though it was not
released. Officials claimed that CPS did not provide enough evidence for this
case to make a ruling that substantiated that abuse or neglect had been the
cause of Daelynn's death. Once again SOMEONE was trying to cover up what
had happened:

Lynn Frank claims to not know how the state had come to the conclusion. For
seven months, Daelynn's case on hold while the coroner was coming to a
conclusion about the cause of death. Eventually, the truth came out, Daelynn
was starved to death.

On the day Brandy was arrested, the police arrived to arrest her a man dove
off of her second floor balcony onto a garage roof and tried to run from the
police. Eric M. Parker was caught and arrested on suspicion of possession of
and selling drugs. Neighbors claimed that Brandy had many visitors who came
at all hours of the day, staying for only a few minutes.

That day proved to be a dramatic one in Foreman's neighborhood near Hazel Avenue and Greenback Lane.

One neighbor,Michelle Talkington, has a daughter who was 13 years old at
the time and also has Cerebral Palsy. She was upset at the role she felt she
played in death of Daelynn:

who has a 13-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy, chides herself in part for Daelynn's death.

Brandy also had a son, who at the time was five years old. He was placed in
the custody of his father.

A Sacramento based group called the Child Advocacy Institute was disgusted
with what happened:

Martha Brewer, Daelynn's stepgrandmother was shocked to learn of Daelynn's
death. Brandy had married Martha's son when Daelynn was very young. 
Eventually, they would have a son together. Martha said that from the year
2000 to 2002, she had seen Daelynn on a regular basis and she had always
been a chubby little girl. Daelynn could not walk, though she was able to
scoot around the house on her bottom and she loved to watch Barney and
she was always happy to see her step-father:

Martha said that Brandy always took good care of Daelynn until about 2002
when things began to change. Martha noticed drug paraphernalia in the 
home and her son divorced Brandy. When Martha would got to pick up her
grandson for visits, Brandy would never allow her into the house. 

Martha also said that her grandson often needed medical care with severe
diaper rashes and he always seemed to need a lot of sleep:

"How many times do you have to call CPS before they do anything?" asked Richard Melm of Sacramento, whose stepdaughter, Daelynn Foreman, starved to death in July 2006 while living with his ex-wife – despite six reports to Sacramento County's CPS of suspected neglect over a four-year period.

Daelynn's death was so shocking that CPS' own spokeswoman said the case "sent shudders down the corridors of all CPS."

When she died, the 12-year-old Orangevale girl with cerebral palsy had withered to 23 pounds, the average for a 1-year-old. The girl's mother, Brandy Foreman, has been charged with murder for allegedly having withheld food; she also faces drug charges.

Daelynn's death after six local referrals is acknowledged within Sacramento CPS as a problem case, one in which the worker "did not understand the situation well enough to be able to identify an appropriate intervention," said Coulthard, who took the agency's top job last year after rising through the ranks since 1985.

The department previously told The Bee that an internal investigation had resulted in "personnel actions," but would not elaborate.

Out of Daelynn's case, the agency developed new programs and assigned workers to specialize in "medically fragile" children and medical neglect referrals. It also created a Medical Neglect Review Team to monitor the more complex cases.

From an article at: Action Center For Justice

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