The murder of a girl placed in foster care two doors from home is raising questions about Tennessee policy on foster care.
Police say fifteen year-old Stevie Noelle Milburn was killed by her father, just three days after she told the Tennessee Department of Children's Services he had abused her. She was placed in foster care with a friend of her father down the street. Tennessee DCS spokesman Rob Johnson claims that when children bring accusations of abuse, the department attempts to place them where they will be comfortable.
One week after the girl’s placement, her father fatally shot her, the foster father, shot and injured his wife, then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Ira Lustbader is associate director of Children’s Rights, a nonprofit group that sued the state in 2000 over how DCS was run. “It is good to keep a child within the community so they can retain important relationships, but safety trumps everything.”
State Representative Sherry Jones said that her panel plans to look into allegations against child-welfare officials. “It’s ridiculous to place a child two doors down...they’re not doing what they need to do to keep children safe.”
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The PROTECT Lobby
Our Mission
The National Association to Protect Children is a national, pro-child, anti-crime membership association. We are founded on the belief that our first and most sacred obligation as parents, citizens, and members of the human species is the protection of children from harm.
PROTECT is a bipartisan pro-child, anti-crime lobby whose sole focus is making the protection of children a top political and policy priority at the national, state and local level.
