Red Tape Led Slain Toddler Into Foster Care System : Abuse: Child’s aunt was unable to keep him. Bureaucratic rules are blamed for preventing her from getting medical and financial help.

As officials were sorting out the tragic details Friday surrounding the death of a 23-month-old toddler allegedly beaten to death by his foster mother, relatives and social workers questioned the effects of rigid bureaucratic regulations that were supposed to protect the child.

The toddler had been separated from a good home with relatives who were denied needed medical and financial assistance, relatives and a county children’s services official said Friday.

“All the things he needed, I couldn’t afford it,” the boy’s aunt, Betty Moore, said in an emotional interview after making funeral arrangements. Moore, who is disabled and receives government aid for her own children, reluctantly agreed to place her nephew Robert Brown in a foster home last July. “I’m low-income. I have to have food for my other kids. . . . I did the best I could.”

Robert died Monday after allegedly being severely beaten and placed in a water-filled tub by his foster mother, 28-year-old Valerie Lacy-Walker. Authorities said Friday that Lacy-Walker is facing charges of murder and child endangerment in connection with the death. She is being held without bail at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women.

Moore, 33, of Lawndale on Friday recounted her unsuccessful efforts spanning several months to break through red tape and paperwork problems to obtain medical assistance for Robert, who suffered ear infections and needed other medical attention.

Gerhard Moland, a regional administrator with the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services, confirmed that the boy had been removed from Moore’s home because the aunt was denied assistance because of technical rules and regulations.

“If it had been up to the (social) worker, the worker would have left the child in (Moore’s) home,” Moland said. “It wasn’t because she was a bad aunt or any problems. It was . . . really because she couldn’t get the financial and medical care she needed.

“(It’s) a highly structured program. It’s very easy for people to fall between the cracks. Unfortunately, this is one of those situations.”

One of the chief reasons Moore was denied aid was because Robert’s mother could not be located to fill out needed paperwork, Moland said.

Meanwhile, new details emerged about the boy’s death.

The child was apparently beaten repeatedly with a stick wrapped in tape, and suffered bruises on his back, arms, legs and the bottom of his feet, according to the district attorney’s office. The stick was found in a bedroom, said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Gibbons said the boy was “in full cardiac arrest” when he was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where he died about 4 p.m.

“It’s really, really tragic,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Steven Hales, who investigated the death. “The kid was one big bruise.”

Child welfare authorities initially said they believed the child had drowned when his foster mother put him in the bathtub and left him unattended. But Hales said Friday that police are certain the boy died from being beaten, and that Lacy-Walker told them she had put the boy in water to try to revive him.

Lacy-Walker, and her husband, Samuel, were licensed on March 18 to become foster parents, and Robert was placed with them July 23. Samuel Walker, who has not been charged, could not be reached. Child welfare officials said they did not believe he was in the home at the time of the beating.

According to police and child welfare authorities, the boy was born addicted to drugs and his mother left him with Moore.

State officials who licensed the Walker home maintain that there were no signs that Lacy-Walker would be abusive.

County social workers made five visits to the boy--more than the minimum the state requires to ensure that foster children are receiving good care. County officials have said that they did not notice anything amiss during the visits. Records of those visits obtained by The Times on Friday under a court order indicate that the child was doing well in the home, although he showed the usual signs of adjusting to a new home environment.

A social worker’s report from a Sept. 24 visit indicates that Lacy-Walker expressed interest in becoming the boy’s legal guardian.

On Oct. 9, social worker Vickie Tolliver noted that Robert was very quiet, but Moland said in a report after the child’s death that that was not unusual.

“It looks like a woman who lost control and beat a child,” said Donna Mandelstam, chief of the Los Angeles regional office of the state Department of Social Services. “I don’t know what you could do to prevent this.”