February 17, 2006
BY MARGARET A. MCGURK | ENQUIRER
STAFF WRITER
Marcus Fiesel's death ignited
public hostility against a system that gave him to the foster
parents now accused of killing him.
Critics called social workers
negligent and the system broken. Both claims will be tested
during the trials of Liz and David Carroll Jr., and during the
official reviews touched off by the tragedy.
Butler County launched an
intense review of its foster system. Ohio is reviewing the
handling of Marcus' case.
Kentucky ordered face-to-face
visits with every child placed by Lifeway in the commonwealth.
Hamilton, Clermont and Warren counties have removed most of
their cases from Lifeway homes. Hamilton County has quadrupled
the number of background checks it will run on foster parents.
Whatever the verdicts of such
efforts, the evidence also suggests that Marcus' death traces to
two fundamental causes: His legal protectors were bamboozled by
a pair of practiced liars, and their manipulations worked
because of a flawed system that is shockingly vulnerable to
subterfuge.
The Carrolls are accused of
binding 3-year-old Marcus in a cocoon of blankets and tape on
Aug. 4, then locking him in a closet for two days while they
went to a family reunion. When they came home and found him
dead, prosecutors say, they burned the child's body in the ruins
of a chimney in Brown County and threw the boy's remains in the
Ohio River.
To hide the crime,
investigators say, they later faked his disappearance at an
Anderson Township park, claiming the boy - who had serious
developmental problems - wandered off when Liz Carroll passed
out because of a heart condition. The report touched off a
weeklong search involving thousands of volunteers and hundreds
of professionals.
"If someone is committed to
doing something terrible, sometimes it's hard to know how to
stop them," said Tracy Cook, director of ProKids, which trains
volunteer court advocates for Hamilton County foster children.
The Carrolls made it into the
foster system, which paid them $1,000 a month to care for
Marcus, by masquerading as devoted suburban parents who loved to
care for children in their comfortable new home, and even
coached young cheerleaders and football players at local parks.
They doggedly maintained the
façade from the day they applied to be foster parents until they
were arrested Aug. 28.
In the words of Hamilton County
Prosecutor Joe Deters, "They lied until the bitter end."
Amy Wall, a mother of six, was
one of hundreds of Anderson Township neighbors who searched
Juilfs Park in Anderson Township after the Carrolls reported
Marcus missing. She knew David Carroll Jr. only as the volunteer
coach of her son's football team.
In that context, Wall said, "He
was very good with the children, very patient, very kind."
The same man, according
Clermont County Juvenile Court documents, beat his own children
with belts and once put a knife to his wife's throat during an
argument.
On Aug. 22 - 18 days after
investigators say she locked Marcus up - a haggard-looking Liz
Carroll stood before a crowd of television cameras and pleaded
for help finding Marcus. She couldn't eat, she said, she
couldn't sleep. "I love children," she said. "Children are my
life."
The Carrolls entered the
foster-care system through Lifeway for Youth, a private
not-for-profit company that recruits and trains foster parents,
then places children in those homes and oversees their care. The
lies they told Lifeway cover almost every aspect of their lives.
Records show little evidence
that Lifeway, or the Butler County Department of Jobs and Family
Services that hired the agency, took even rudimentary steps to
verify the Carrolls' statements:
David Carroll told Lifeway he
was an independent business owner, but there is no business
registered in his name in Ohio. Friends and family told The
Enquirer he rarely worked and had tried for years to get
disability payments.
The couple claimed to own the
home where they lived in Union Township. Clermont County auditor
records show they never owned the Valley Wood Drive home.
They listed two previous
addresses from 1999 to 2005. In its petition to take custody of
their four children after the Carrolls' arrest, Clermont's child
services department said the Carrolls had at least 10 addresses
since 1998.
The Enquirer found similar
information during the search for Marcus through a service often
used by bill collectors. The same information would have
appeared in a credit check.
One letter of recommendation
the Carrolls gave to Lifeway describing them as stable, loving
parents was written by Amy Baker, who was living in their home
and was involved sexually with both David and Liz Carroll.
Lifeway reported its caseworker saw no evidence of a third adult
living in the home.
During the two weeks after she
reported Marcus missing, Liz Carroll claimed her husband was on
medication for bipolar disorder. According to Lifeway, a letter
they submitted from their family doctor made no mention of the
condition. They did not undergo independent psychological
screening, because it is not required by law.
They underwent an Ohio criminal
check, which is required, but it did not reveal a Milford theft
charge against Liz Carroll because the charge was not in a
category that is reported to the state. Nor did it reveal a
shoplifting charge against David Carroll Jr. in Kentucky.
In June, after Marcus was
placed with the Carrolls, Union Township police charged David
Carroll Jr. with domestic violence after an incident when he
reportedly threatened his wife with a knife and shoved her into
a pool table - an incident witnessed by their children. The
Carrolls never reported the charge to Lifeway or Butler County,
as required by law. There is no system to send such police
reports to the foster authorities. Nothing on the police report
indicates that officers knew there were foster children in the
home.
Butler County Commissioner Mike
Fox, a long-time critic of Ohio's family services system, said
double-checking such information should be mandatory.
"The quality of the decisions
(a child protection agency) makes about children and families
cannot rise above the quality of information they have," he
said. "If the information is flawed or incomplete or inaccurate,
the risk to child will be greater."
The Carrolls are being held on
Clermont County charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter,
kidnapping, felonious assault and three counts of child
endangering; David Carroll Jr. is also charged with gross abuse
of a corpse. In Hamilton County, where the search took place,
both are charged with making false alarms and inducing panic;
Liz Carroll is charged with perjury.
While they await trial,
supporters and critics search for ways to make foster oversight
stricter.
Hamilton County, for instance,
is launching a program to link criminal and foster records and
flag arrests at foster home. The county also will require
criminal, civil law and credit checks on foster parents four
times a year.
Mike Berner, director of
Lifeway for Youth, said no amount of screening could have
uncovered the facts about the Carrolls. His organization is
facing a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by Marcus'
birth mother.
Joyce Freson, a Forest Park
foster mother who has cared for more than 100 children over 23
years, had harsh words for Lifeway. "I know some of the people
they have licensed, and I wouldn't let them watch my dog," she
said. She works through Catholic Social Services and Butler
County.
Still, she said, even rigorous
oversight can be defeated.
"Who knows what happens when
the doors close on somebody's house?"
Fox said the system needs more
independent oversight.
"If our nation's secrets were
held by our child protection system, they would be safer than
with the CIA," he said. "They have a moat built around them that
blocks any attempt by outsiders to be involved."
Fox said that under existing
law counties are not required to rigorously assess contract
agencies. "They basically said to Lifeway, 'Take care of these
children and oh by the way, periodically tell us how you're
doing,'" he said.
"Did they violate any laws? No.
They violated common sense principal."
"Ultimately, the question is,
can this system ever take the place of a family? The answer is
no," Cook said. "As long as we rely on something that was
designed to be temporary to raise these children, we are going
to continue to put children at risk.
"I'm all for making the system
better," she said, "but I'm all for getting kids out of the
system. That's not where kids should be raised."
E-mail
mmcgurk@enquirer.com
