Community Essay : The Anniversary of a Death Foretold

Lance Helms, 2 1/2, died a year ago today at the hands of his father’s girlfriend soon after the father, David Helms, regained custody of the boy from an aunt. Kathleen Schormann was the toddler’s social worker in the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services. She had registered strong protests over allowing Lance, who was born addicted to heroin and whose mother was in prison, to return to his father’s custody in North Hollywood. The father’s girlfriend, Eve Wingfield, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for child abuse leading to a death. David Helms has not been charged. This article is based on Schormann’s written recollections with assistance from interviewer TRIN YARBOROUGH.

Thinking about it now, my stomach still rolls--that phone call that caused my heart to shrink in useless, defenseless pain. Gail Helms, Lance’s grandmother, was calling to tell me he had been murdered. She choked and wailed in terror, disbelief and pain.

The grandmother and his aunt, Ayn Helms, had fought for the little boy’s safety as fiercely as mother tigers protecting a cub. Strong, courageous women, they had refused to “shut up and go away” in the face of ridicule from the dependency court and certain smirking attorneys who claimed the women were crying wolf. Yet several times over the past months, the grandmother had told me quietly: “Lance is going to be killed.” I believed it was possible.

I became Lance’s social worker about the time his dad was awarded unmonitored custody, after a long struggle between him on one side and the aunt and grandmother on the other.

After he was placed in his father’s custody, when Lance visited his aunt, he often had bruises and other injuries. His aunt and grandmother photographed them and I repeatedly asked the court to reverse the change in custody. But Ernesto Rey, the court-appointed attorney for Lance, did not oppose it.

On Jan. 17 last year, Lance’s father didn’t bring Lance with him to a scheduled court hearing, but when he dropped him off for a regular visit with his aunt the next day, the little boy had a huge injury on one side of his head and eye. When I saw it, I immediately removed him from his father’s home until further court action.

Lance was taken to the hospital and new photos and a full report asking he be returned to his aunt’s custody were sent to the court. The evidence was wrenching and cumulative. I felt sure Lance would be safe now. I breathed out. Yet on Jan. 23, court referee Richard D. Hughes returned Lance to his father’s home, where on April 6 he was beaten to death.

In the weeks after Jan. 17, I called the county counsel’s office several times, demanding that they file for a rehearing, but the lawyers said the case couldn’t be won and that they believed Lance’s injuries came from accidents, as the father claimed.

It was scary because there was so much pressure on me to drop my objections. I talked to my union steward, Tim Farrell, of the Service Employees International Union, and the union backed me up all the way. I told one of my supervisors: If this kid , it’s not on me. She recommended home monitoring calls by an outside agency, but Lance was murdered a few days before their first scheduled visit.

While some of us were pitching end over end with shock, grief and self-blame, others, like some of the lawyers and the hearing referee, were scrambling for cover, pointing fingers anywhere and everywhere. This case is not the first where the dependency court sent kids back who got killed, and God knows how many children have been maimed. We were never allowed to talk about those cases. There are confidentiality laws, and the dependency court hearings were closed to media. But I didn’t want this to get covered up. I talked off the record, and eventually I did a television interview (The courts have lifted this case’s confidentiality).

In the meantime, Lance’s aunt, who was 31, visited his grave every day. She had lupus, an immune system disease that is made worse by stress, and five months after his death, hooked to a ventilator in intensive care, her heart broken and crushed, she died. She was buried beside him.

I’ve been a social worker almost 12 years. After this, I said I just couldn’t do this work anymore. Losing a child is every social worker’s worst nightmare. Even if you know you did everything you should, you still feel horrible and guilty. I got myself reassigned out of fieldwork. But I still feel totally, utterly fried. I’m thinking of quitting, moving to Seattle. Will I work with children there? I hope not.

Lance was such a quiet, sweet little boy. He seemed special somehow, almost as if maybe he wasn’t meant to stay on this earth. Maybe Lance had to die to make things change. New state laws may rip the covers off the secrecy of dependency court and further ensure child safety.

Thinking back on what happened, I know there must be others facing some of the things I did. Whatever work you do, if you know something is wrong but are afraid that if you speak out you could be fired and destroy your life, just remember that bad things that are not revealed will continue to go on.

Find out what your rights are. Look into California’s new law to protect whistleblowers. Go to your union, if you are lucky enough to have one, or look for other allies at your job to back you up. Talk off the record to the media, politicians or public interest organizations that care. In the end, you’re going to have to go by your conscience.

Speaking out is risky and scary, but the bottom line is this: Can you live with yourself if you don’t? ‘Even if you know you did everything you should, you still feel horrible and guilty.

I still feel totally, utterly fried.’ Caption: Lance Helms, whose death from a beating haunts his social worker: “I still feel utterly, totally fried.”