Prosecutor David Ethredge plans a face-to-face meeting with the head of the Arkansas Department of Human Services to discuss the case of a 15-year-old male who was locked in the bathroom of a Mountain Home apartment naked and unfed for days. He told KTLO, Classic Hits and the Boot News if he was not satisfied with the answers he gets at the yet-to-be-scheduled-meeting, he intends to ask the Arkansas State Police to investigate why and how the child welfare system failed the teen.
He said if he believed from the information he is given by DHS and others that the situation “rises to the level where a criminal charge should be considered” then a state police investigation would be requested. The information from that investigation would be used in the process of making a final decision on whether or not charges are to be filed, Ethredge said.
The secretary of DHS is Kristi Putman who was appointed in January last year.
Ethredge said, “this certainly appears to be a total failure of the system and we need to find out exactly what happened or didn’t happen to put this young boy in such jeopardy.”
One of the major questions is how all of the 29 cases of potential abuse that have been opened on the teenager since 2013 based on reports to the Child Abuse Hotline were deemed unsubstantiated. “We need to know how those cases were handled and how the decisions were made to close them all as unsubstantiated and at what level those decisions were made,” Ethredge said.
Ethredge said it is “hard to believe there was no truth in any of those reports. While the abuse was reported multiple times, no remedial action appears to have been taken by the child welfare system and we need to find out why.”
The prosecutor said, “mandated reporters and the general public did a good job of bringing this matter up, but the agencies that exist to protect children do not appear to have addressed the boy’s plight and we have questions about that.”
According to investigative records, the 29 cases dealt with such matters as maltreatment, inadequate supervision, failure to provide food and other essentials, extreme or repeated cruelty and a failure to protect.
As opposed to the other two children in the home, the victim is reported not to have a bed in the apartment and slept on a pallet in the bathroom. He was often kept in the locked room for days and only released to go to school.
The couple charged after the 15-year-old boy was found locked in the bathroom earlier this month — 40-year-old-Daniel Wright and 42-year-old Jaclyn Barnett — are facing 112 counts of false imprisonment, endangering the welfare of a minor and permitting child abuse.
In one report, Barnett was listed as the victim’s mother and Wright as his stepfather, but it appears Barnett was the boy’s paternal aunt and legal guardian.
Bond for each one was set at $50,000 and Wright and Barnett have both posted the bond and been released from jail.
The children have been removed from the home.
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