Child-Abuse Clues Pieced Together Too Late to Help

Joey Phelps didn’t look well the day he visited the family Christmas tree lot in Northridge last year. The 3-year-old towhead seemed pale, dark circles enveloped his blue eyes and his face was slightly bruised.

Then Joey took off his baseball cap and his aunt, Laura Meyer, was stunned. Great clumps of his hair were missing, pulled out by the quiet, troubled boy.

“There was something really wrong there,” Meyer said last week in an interview from her home in Phoenix. At the time, she agonized with family members over reporting Joey as a possible child-abuse victim. But the mother of four put off her decision when she became too busy with the Christmas rush.

Five days later, on Dec. 18, Joey was beaten to death, his battered body rushed to the hospital by his mother, Deborah Meyer, 35, and her former live-in boyfriend, Andre Steven Avila.

Deborah Meyer was found guilty Nov. 2 of two counts of child abuse by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Joel Rudof following a month-long, non-jury trial. But Meyer was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter in her son’s death, leaving open the question of who inflicted the fatal blows. Avila, who cannot be located, also was originally charged in Joey’s death, but the case was dismissed by a judge because of insufficient evidence.

Slow Kind of Death

Joey may have been dying a slow kind of death in the months before he finally died. Friends, relatives, doctors, even police saw signs of abuse and distress in the child, according to court testimony. Yet no one--through no fault of anyone--stepped in to save him.

“People don’t want to believe someone could hurt a child,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca Omens. “No one had all the pieces--the pattern of child abuse didn’t emerge until after his death. It wasn’t until we got Deborah Meyer’s friends and relatives together that we were able to bring all the information together.”

There are many plausible reasons why someone unfamiliar with child abuse would not report such suspicions to authorities, said Mike Houchin, a child abuse detective in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Division.

“They don’t want to alienate the family, they don’t know how to report it, they see the abuse as a passing thing, or they don’t recognize it as child abuse, but rather something accidental,” Houchin said.

Deaths like Joey’s don’t happen often, police say. So far this year, the LAPD has investigated the homicides of five children who died from batterings or other forms of abuse, police records indicate.

Lived in Sylmar

In Joey’s case, the pattern of abuse and signs of distress began to emerge in September, 1986, Omens contended during the trial. At the time, Deborah Meyer worked the late shift at a Chatsworth graphic-research firm and lived with Joey in a Sylmar apartment.

Late in the summer of 1986, Joey’s baby-sitter, George Vick, noticed that the boy was pulling out his hair. In September, Deborah Meyer took Joey to a doctor, who advised that the problem was probably caused by stress. But at that time, the doctor found no evidence suggesting child abuse, according to court testimony.

Then friends and relatives began to notice bruises and scratches on Joey. Some appeared on his face; one on his chest took the form of a handprint. Another was observed on a bald spot at the back of his head where he had pulled out hair.

Deborah Meyer, who has denied abusing Joey and claims no knowledge of how he died, had a ready explanation for every injury, according to friends and relatives. She said Joey was uncoordinated and had fallen off his new bike, or fallen off his bunk bed, or thrown a tantrum. The handprint bruise, she explained in court, was caused by Avila, who swung Joey around in a sort of Superman game. Another time, Avila, who moved into Deborah Meyer’s apartment two weeks before the boy’s death, had caught Joey’s head in the car door, she said.

“In isolation, the excuses appear reasonable, but it’s not until you put all of them together that you see a pattern of abuse,” Omens said.

But Deborah Meyer went one step further. She told co-workers that Joey bruised easily because of a rare blood disorder that required him to have blood transfusions at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. The only appropriate donor was Joey’s father, Raymond Phelps, who lived in Modesto. A California Highway Patrol officer had to track Phelps down and drive him to Northridge for the transfusions.

None of it was true. Blood tests showed he had no blood abnormality. Deborah Meyer later explained in court that she made up the story to test whether a co-worker would repeat personal information.

Vick, who earned $50 a week for watching Joey, accepted Deborah Meyer’s explanations for her son’s injuries and regarded her relationship with Joey as a loving one, according to court testimony. But on Dec. 15, he was puzzled by the bruising and discoloration of Joey’s genitals. When Joey seemed feverish, Vick and his wife took the boy to the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills.

Deborah Meyer said the unusual bruising could have happened when Joey dropped the toilet seat on himself two days earlier. Vick said the boy had fallen off his new bike recently. But doctors at the hospital suspected child abuse and--as required by law--notified police, who came to the hospital.

Boy Said Little

Dr. David M. Frankle, who called in a urologist, didn’t buy the toilet-seat theory. He suspected child abuse, according to medical records. The child-abuse form he filled out noted Joey’s history of pulling out his hair and easy bruising. Frankle, who couldn’t be reached for comment, stated on the form that the fall from the bike might have caused the genital bruising.

Joey wouldn’t say how the injury occurred, according to Frankle’s testimony. The boy said little, and appeared to be in no pain. Medical tests and X-rays showed no evidence of illness or injury. He was deemed “medically stable” and released to his mother, who was advised to make a follow-up appointment. Police were to perform a follow-up investigation.

It is up to police to decide whether a child is to be released to his parent or taken into protective custody, according to Edward Fitzgerald, a child-abuse detective with the LAPD who worked on the case after Joey’s death. But doctors have input into that decision, he said.

“It was a judgment call, not a wrong decision” to release Joey to his mother, said Fitzgerald. “In this case, the doctors didn’t say, ‘Yes, this is child abuse and it should be investigated,’ ” Fitzgerald said. He said the doctors clouded the issue with too many “maybe” explanations for Joey’s injuries.

“Nobody took the bull by the horns and said, ‘Wait, this doesn’t look like maybe, this looks like child abuse,’ ” Fitzgerald said. “Ultimately, the police make the decision, but we go on what the doctor says.”

Joey seemed OK the next day and his mother did make a follow-up doctor’s appointment for Dec. 18. But on Dec. 17, the day before his death, the baby-sitter noticed that the boy walked slowly, hunched over, and seemed to have stomach pain. He cried most of the day, according to court testimony. Vick tried to ease the pain by rubbing the boy’s stomach. Joey, who had become quite withdrawn in the months before his death, wouldn’t tell Vick why he hurt, according to court testimony.

Loud Noises

What happened that night after Vick brought the sick child back to his mother’s apartment remains a mystery. Deborah Meyer arrived home from work about 1 a.m. An upstairs neighbor heard loud noises from the apartment after that time, according to testimony. Then Deborah Meyer and Avila carried Joey’s lifeless body into Holy Cross Hospital at 1:56 a.m.

The cause of death was multiple blows to his abdomen, the coroner ruled. He was bruised all over his body.

Deborah Meyer, in custody since her arrest Dec. 31, said she did not inflict the fatal blows. Her attorney contended in court that she was not even home when the child was beaten. Avila was home alone with Joey for nearly an hour before Deborah Meyer came home, according to court testimony on her behalf.

Although she was found innocent of involuntary manslaughter in Joey’s death, she faces sentencing Dec. 1 on the two child-abuse convictions. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

The first count alleges that she engaged in a pattern of child abuse from Sept. 13 to Dec. 17, 1986. The second count relates to the events of Dec. 18, but the judge did not find that she had personally inflicted the injury. However, a parent can be found guilty of child abuse simply by allowing the child to be in a dangerous situation.

Deborah Meyer’s attorney, Robert Allan Zeller, said he may appeal Rudof’s verdict. He contended that there was no medical evidence to support the pattern of abuse prior to early December. Any injuries Joey suffered coincided with Avila, a musician, moving in with the boy and his mother, Zeller said. He has advised his client not to discuss the case.

One person who is grief-stricken about Joey’s death is Deborah Meyer’s mother, Marjorie Meyer, who testified against her daughter. Her daughter and grandson lived with her in the San Fernando Valley until the summer of 1986, when she retired to Phoenix. Until then, she took care of Joey while his mother worked.

“I feel to blame,” she cried. “If I were still watching Joey, he might still be alive.” She said her daughter had a violent temper that would explode like a “keg of dynamite” when she was crossed.

Yet Joey was not a difficult or demanding child, Marjorie Meyer said. He was interested in trucks and bicycles. He could operate the videocassette recorder to watch his favorite “He-Man” and “Care Bears” movies.

When her daughter and grandson visited her in October, 1986, she noticed the bruises and was concerned about his hair loss.

“I asked her two or three times, ‘Are you beating on him?’ ” Marjorie Meyer said. “She said no.” She asked her daughter again whether she was beating Joey after she learned of the genital bruising.

“She said, ‘No, he’s all I’ve got left,’ ” Marjorie Meyer said. The grandmother said she didn’t buy the toilet-seat explanation for the genital bruising. She even examined her own toilet seat to see whether the explanation was plausible.

“By this time, I was starting to put things together--the hair, the bruises, what my daughter-in-law said,” she said, referring to what Laura Meyer had told her. “But three days later, he was dead.”