Horribly Abused Boy, His Cry Answered, Now Has Place to Call Home

When 8-year-old Clifford Triplett sits down to Thanksgiving dinner, he will be with a family that loves him, in a tiny but tidy Mississippi home. There will be enough food on his plate. He will be safe.

Children should expect no less. But for Clifford, it’s so much more than he ever had.

On Thanksgiving Day three years ago, Clifford arrived at a Chicago hospital bearing the marks of horrific abuse. He weighed 18 pounds--as much as an average 1-year-old. His feet, hands and bottom were burned. His body was covered with bruises.

The public was outraged. Clifford’s mother and her boyfriend were convicted and sent to prison for abusing him, and two state workers were fired for not detecting he was in danger. People wrote and sent gifts to the boy. Gov. Jim Edgar visited him in the hospital.

It was the start of Clifford’s trip toward a real home.

Along the way, he spent months unnecessarily in a hospital as bureaucrats struggled to determine what would be best for him, and he was removed from his first potential adoptive family, a disruption that could have been avoided.

But last March, Clifford joined his father’s parents in the cotton fields of Mississippi, where his caseworkers hope he will stay until he’s grown.

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“What I like is the fact that he’s happy and comfortable,” said Robert Harris, Clifford’s public guardian, who recently visited the boy. “He looks good, seems very happy with his grandparents. . . . He’s thin, but he has a little tummy.”

Clifford’s father never really was part of his life. His first years were spent with his mother, Aretha McKinney, and her boyfriend, Eddie Lee Robinson, an ex-con whose record included convictions for rape, burglary and theft.

Family members had complained to child welfare officials Clifford was being mistreated. But it was not until Thanksgiving 1993, when McKinney brought the dehydrated and malnourished boy to a hospital, that the state actively intervened.

“You know when they show the picture of those children starving in Somalia on TV? That’s what he looked like,” police officer Antonio Artis said then.

Today, Clifford weighs 45 pounds. He is in second grade and played Little League last summer. He has several pets, including a turkey and a pig. He relishes tractor rides with his grandfather and takes pride in his role as a church usher each Sunday. His 12-year-old brother, who always has lived with their grandparents, is a constant companion.

And despite his troubled history, Clifford suffers few developmental problems.

“He’s a real sharp little guy--really delightful,” said Carol Lingenfelder, a social worker who handled his case. “He’s doing well in school and has settled into the community.”

But even with all of the publicity Clifford’s situation received, experts say his care was not good casework--simply good enough. Particularly troubling, they say, is that he was moved four times before receiving a permanent placement.

Clifford spent seven months in a hospital, at a cost to the state of $198,000. Yet he was medically fit for release after two months of treatment for malnutrition and other complications, Harris said.

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Ironically, Clifford’s lovable personality, and his knack for engaging adults, may have contributed to the length of his hospital stay. So many adults became interested in his well-being that it slowed the decision process.

Clifford’s second placement was a respected group home, which conducted a battery of tests before he was moved again, this time to a potential adoptive family. But sources close to the case, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the placement fell through because of a bureaucratic error: Something in the couple’s history, which should have been caught in the screening process, precluded them from adoption.

So Clifford was moved again, this time to a temporary foster home.

Eventually, steps were taken to move him permanently to his grandparents’ in Mississippi, but only after the direct intervention of the child welfare agency’s inspector general--an unusual step.

“That shouldn’t be,” said Jerome Miller, the head of Washington’s child welfare system. “You look for permanency; you look for termination of parental rights and adoption. Foster care should be seen as a very temporary status.”

Children who have been abused or neglected need steady, consistent care if they are to have any chance at repairing the early damage they suffered, Miller said.

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Martha Allen, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Children and Family Service, acknowledged Clifford’s casework may not have been perfect. But she said he has come far in three years, and that the case has had a happy ending.

This Thanksgiving, Clifford will awaken in a small frame farmhouse. His grandfather, grandmother and brother will be nearby. If it’s a nice day, perhaps he’ll sit awhile on the porch swing with his brother or throw his line in the catfish pond across the way.

No one will try to hurt him.