Agencies Hit in Infant Boy’s Beating Death

Public and private agencies contributed to the beating death of a 14-month-old boy adopted by a man and his transvestite lover posing as husband and wife, a state agency reported Wednesday.

The case of Nathan Moncrieff, who was born brain-damaged to a heroin-addicted mother in San Francisco, was being supervised by the city’s Social Services Department at the time of his June 13 death in Oakland.

The infant had been placed with the two men by a private Oakland adoption agency.

When Alvin Woodard and Gregory Thomas Rogers brought the infant unconscious to an Oakland hospital, they told authorities he had had a seizure. They later confessed to beating him and have been charged with murder.

‘Married’ in Nevada

Oakland police said that after the death the men admitted that Rogers was a man and said they were “married” in Nevada in June, 1982. They said they had lied to the adoption agency in order to get a baby, police said.

A report released by the state Social Services Department concluded that the city department and the Black Adoption Placement and Research Center in Oakland contributed directly to the child’s death, said Loren Suter, deputy director of adult and family services for the state agency.

The Oakland adoption center certified the men’s home for potential adoption despite a state warning that a waiver of the required criminal background check had not been obtained, Suter said.

Not Properly Licensed

City social service workers erred by placing the boy in a home never properly licensed and by delegating to the Oakland agency the investigation of allegations that Rogers was really a man, the state said.

The city agency once had rejected the home as unsuitable in part because of concern about Rogers’ criminal record, and because of the household’s inadequate income.

According to police records, Rogers was named in a warrant last year after he failed to appear on misdemeanor weapons charges.

After the death, the state suspended the license of the Oakland center, which has placed 24 children in three years of operation.