Doctor says Social Services sought to send bitten 3 yr old girl home

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Doctor says Social Services sought to send bitten 3 yr old girl home
No bail for pair accused in abuse

By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff | July 12, 2007

NEW BEDFORD -- A Boston doctor who examined a 3-year-old girl whose
upper lip was bitten off said yesterday that hospital staffers had to
persuade the Department of Social Services not to send the child home,
where her mother had allegedly failed to stop months of physical abuse
by her boyfriend.

Five days after the girl was brought to Children's Hospital Boston
with black scabs on her mutilated face, DSS proposed sending her home,
according to testimony by Dr. Alice Newton during the couple's
dangerousness hearing in New Bedford District Court yesterday.

The injuries were so severe, Newton testified, that the girl will
never fully recover.

The DSS proposed on April 30 to return the child to her home four
months after she first came to the attention of the agency's officials
in January, when she was seen at a New Bedford hospital for treatment
of a broken tooth and bruises that a physician there called
suspicious.

DSS officials said last week that they did not take action in the case
in the months following the January hospital visit because they did
not find the girl at home on several occasions.

Anthony Clune, defense lawyer for the child's mother, tried to show at
the hearing yesterday that the woman posed no danger and should be
released. During cross-examination of Newton, he asked the doctor to
confirm that DSS had recommended the child be released to her mother,
Jessica Silveira, on the condition that "this child is not to be left
unsupervised by the boyfriend."

Newton replied, "That's correct."

But hospital staff members adamantly insisted DSS change its plans,
Newton said, because of the abuse the child suffered while living with
her mother and the boyfriend, Bryan James of New Bedford.

"There was general concern about the gravity of the case," said
Newton, who is medical director of the child protection team at the
Boston hospital. "It was clearly a case of serious physical abuse from
the outset."

In a telephone interview yesterday, DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro
called the disagreement over the child's release a miscommunication
that was quickly cleared up by a conference call that hospital staff
requested with DSS. DSS officials had not authorized a plan to send
the child home, she said.

Doctors, she said "thought the [DSS] worker was going to pick up the
kid and take the kid home, and that was not what was going on,"
Monteiro said. "That was not the plan. There was no plan to take the
child anywhere."

DSS ultimately went into court and, on May 3, obtained legal custody
of the girl and her 5-year-old brother. The boy has not shown signs of
physical abuse, officials said.

Last week, Angelo McClain, who was appointed DSS commissioner in late
May, said he has launched an internal investigation to be sure agency
workers went far enough in attempts to protect the child.

At the hearing yesterday, Silveira, 26, and James, 33, were ordered by
District Court Judge David Turcotte to be held without bail. For their
own safety, officials said, the two are being held in segregation at
Bristol County Jail.

On the stand, Newton described the girl's injuries in detail. Bristol
District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter said he was sickened by what he
heard.

Newton said the girl's face is permanently disfigured. "Basically, the
middle of her upper lip is completely missing," Newton said. "She will
never have a normal- appearing lip. There has been too much
destruction."

The girl's ears were battered so frequently and with such force that
the child now has the "cauliflower ears" of a boxer or a wrestler, she
said.

"There is no way to repair the damage to the ears," she said. "Both
ears were completely missing the normal anatomical structure."

DSS workers first saw the girl Jan. 11 when a dentist and doctors at
St. Luke's Hospital suspected she had been abused. But she was not
seen again by DSS until April 25, when her grandmother brought her to
a Waltham hospital, which transferred her to Children's Hospital
Boston.

Newton testified that in January and in April the girl's body showed
evidence of human bite marks, some of which appeared to have come from
adults because of the size of the teeth impressions. Some of the
biting injuries probably came from the girl's brother, she said.
Newton did not see the girl until she arrived at the Boston hospital,
but she reviewed photographs of her from January.

After being bitten on the face, Newton testified, the girl probably
would have been screaming in pain and the blood flow would have been
heavy.

When authorities investigated in January, Silveira blamed the child's
various injuries on a fall in the bath tub, walking into doors,
falling out of bed, or being bitten by a relative's cat, according to
a police report and testimony yesterday by Detective Christopher A.
Cotter of the New Bedford Police Department.

Both children identified "Daddy Bryan" as the person who bit the
girl's face, Cotter said. The girl told investigators James was angry
that she had wet her pants, Cotter said, and the boy told them he was
in a bedroom when "Daddy Bryan walked in and bit my sister on the
lip."

Silveira, who sat in the prisoner's dock in front of James, wept
occasionally during the hearing, especially as Newton described the
girl's injuries. She sobbed heavily as Cotter recounted the girl's
reply to an investigator who asked what happened after she was
bitten .

"She said she was upstairs crying, and 'my mommy was downstairs
watching TV,' " Cotter testified. The couple is due back in court Aug.
8.

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