Parents Fault System in Boy's Suicide Attempt

Friday, June 30, 2000

Sun Sentinel

By SHANNON O'BOYE Staff Writer Staff Writer Paula McMahon contributed to this report.

Last month, the mother of a 15-year-old boy stood next to him in court and cried as a judge remanded him to a shelter for troubled youth.

Today, she sits by his bedside at Broward General Medical Center and cries as tubes pump oxygen, medication, and nutrition into his body.

Her son, Anthony Dumas, was found hanging by a belt from a bunk bed at the Lippman Family Center in Oakland Park two weeks ago. He survived but is in a coma. Doctors don't know if he will ever recover, his mother said.

The boy's parents, Shirley Finley and Walter Dumas, sitting in their attorney's office on Thursday afternoon, said the system failed them horribly.

The situation began about six months ago when Dumas, 34, and Finley, 38, said Anthony began acting out, skipping school and staying out past curfew. As if a switch had been flipped, their seemingly normal teenage son had grown angry and hostile. Surprised by how quickly Anthony had changed and afraid he was spiraling out of control, Dumas said he started calling crisis hot lines, the YMCA, Boys Town and any number he could find.

Although there is a network in Broward County where Dumas should have been able to find help, he said he was bounced from one place to the next. Dumas, a custom-furniture builder, and Finley, an air conditioning technician, do not have insurance and said they could not afford some of the expensive residential programs available in the area.

Dumas called the Broward Sheriff's Office for help and said a deputy told him the next time Anthony did something wrong to have him arrested so he would be entered into the juvenile system. They said the deputy told them that was the only way to get the boy help.

At the end of May, Anthony stayed out late against his mother's permission and then got into a shoving match with her. Finley called her ex-husband and, together, they decided to have Anthony arrested.

If they would have been offered another alternative, "of course we would have done that," Dumas said. "We don't want our child to have a record. We spent hours and hours and hours calling, and no one was able to help us."

Two days after the arrest, a judge asked Dumas if he would take the boy home. "I'd be happy to take him," Dumas said, "but he needs some counseling."

The judge sent him to the Lippman Center on May 23.

The Lippman Center has 28 beds and is a designated youth crisis shelter in Project Safe Place, a network of community sites that provides temporary refuge for troubled youths. Children can walk in off the street or judges can remand children to the center.

At the Lippman Center, Anthony went to school, received group and individual counseling, helped out with chores after dinner and sometimes played basketball with the other children at the shelter. He was allowed a few weekend visits with his father, who said he noticed an improvement.

On June 12, two days before his parents said he was to be released, authorities say Anthony hanged himself by a belt from his bunk bed. David Fuchs, a Fort Lauderdale attorney representing the family, said it was "an alleged attempted suicide that is still being investigated."

"My son is not suicidal," his mother said.

"He's not a quitter," his father added.

According to the preliminary police report, a "youth care specialist" at the shelter, Sandra Trotter, found the boy hanging and dialed 911. But rather than letting him down, she snapped four to six Polaroid pictures of the boy in the hanging position and left him there until police arrived.

Trotter and the other two employees on duty that night have been suspended without pay, according to Joy Margolis, a spokeswoman for Lutheran Services Florida, the Tampa-based non-profit agency that runs the Lippman Center.

Youth care specialists are not counselors, Margolis said. They handle the day-to-day operations of the residential facility. They need a high school diploma and must undergo CPR and first-aid training within a year of being hired. Margolis said that in addition to meeting the minimum requirements, Trotter was a certified nursing assistant.

On Thursday, Dennis Siegel, the head of the Broward State Attorney's sex crimes and child abuse unit, said his office was reviewing the case to determine whether criminal charges would be filed. In addition to the State Attorney's Office, the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Broward Sheriff's Office and Lutheran Services Florida are investigating the incident.

The Department of Juvenile Justice stopped making placements at the center as of Friday, a spokeswoman said.

Fuchs said a civil lawsuit was pending.

"They dropped the ball here," Fuchs said. "Either way they are going to pay. But this family isn't about money. They want to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen to another child. And they want to make sure they can care for their son."

Page Jolly, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Children and Families said "certainly a child does not need to be arrested before we will get them services or get them hooked up with a provider."

There are dozens of agencies in Broward County that cater to children with mental health needs. Some of them charge fees, some are free, some charge on a negotiable "sliding scale," and some are covered by insurance.

The Behavioral Health Information Line, 525-4636, has been in operation since August 1999 and has the most current list of available resources.

"We give [people] a list of providers, then the family calls providers, and they will walk them through and make sure they are taken care of," Jolly said.

Anita Godfrey, chief executive officer of the Mental Health Association of Broward County, said there are resources available, but demand sometimes exceeds supply.

"There's a longstanding pattern not just in children but in adult mental health services that forces people to reach for a way in the door," she said. "The pattern has been that the only way to get in is to identify a service need perhaps more acute than perhaps is real.

"If we had sufficient resources available and we had a better way to help parents negotiate the system, we might not have parents resorting to the criminal justice system to get their kids help."

Staff Writer Paula McMahon contributed to this report.

Shannon O'Boye can be reached at soboye@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4597.