PA children are dying from drug overdoses, drownings and, most prevalent, physical abuse

When Antonio Gonzalez Jr. died in his home, about an hour south of Erie, the 14-year-old weighed 92 pounds and had two black eyes.

His father had waited about 10 hours to call the police. It turns out, he had beaten and starved the boy.

Social workers visited the Gonzalez family in the years before Antonio died. Police had as well, but his family slid through the system, despite the teenager’s thin frame and the squalid conditions in which they lived. He was enrolled in cyber school when he died, hidden from the view of anyone outside the family.

On the final day of his life, he was hosed down by his father and left on a tarp, where he complained of not feeling well. His father threw a bucket of water on him and left him there.

Those details come from Antonio’s fatality report, a document that Pennsylvania requires after a child dies from abuse, neglect or both. Those reports are the only individual case files made available in Pennsylvania’s child welfare system. Otherwise, the system is closed from inspection. The court hearings are closed to the public, and the legal filings between county-level children’s agencies and the families are blocked from public view.

It is not until a child dies or nearly dies that a report is made public, and even then, those reports are heavily redacted, with names, places, agencies and other information blacked out. Because Antonio Gonzalez Sr. was arrested and pleaded guilty to first degree homicide, his son’s case file, still heavily redacted, is available to view.  

“I struggle. I am a survivor of child sexual abuse. I’m raising my own children. I do not want children to be manipulated or corrupted in the public view, but the longer we keep this shrouded, the less anyone understands how frequently it happens and how common the denominators are,” said Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children's Justice.

How are children dying in PA?

Here are some of those common denominators, from the 97 death summaries filed in 2019 and the first three quarters of 2020 by child welfare agencies in Pennsylvania:

Babies and children are dying from drug overdoses. Twelve deaths, reported in 2019 and 2020, are associated with drug overdoses involved children from the ages of 7 months old to 15 years old. One 3-year-old Carbon County boy, James Duch, lived in a home with alleged substance abusers and died of Fentanyl toxicity on Feb. 11, 2020. His parents and two others have been charged in his death.

Eight other children’s deaths are tied to substance abuse by their parents or caregivers. In one case, a Centre County mother, who admitted she was drunk, dropped her baby while in an argument with her husband. The next morning, the 1-month-old boy was found dead in his crib. Several other cases don’t clearly tie the parent’s substance abuse to the death, but substance abuse had been investigated by child welfare agencies previously.

Physical abuse makes up 51 of the 97 deaths reported by the Department of Human Services in 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. A 1-month-old girl from Erie County died from “constellations of severe injuries,” including bleeding in her eyes and swelling of her spinal cord, according to a DHS report. They "were the result of trauma." One month before her death, the Erie County Office of Children and Youth received a report of "parental substance abuse, which was determined valid and no services were provided. This report was active at the time of the fatality incident."

More than half of the children are younger than 2. Of the 97 reports filed, 54 of them involved a child less than 2 years old. 

Drownings made up 12% of the deaths. In one case, a Philadelphia mother had a flotation device on her 23-month-old son and told him to stay out of the pool, where other children were playing. She wasn't watching him, and he was later found floating in the pool. 

Before the child died, one or more child welfare agencies were involved with the children’s families in half (48 out of 97) of the cases.

More:Lebanon child abuse advocates aiming for broader awareness in wake of 'heartbreaking' cases

What happened to Antonio?

When Antonio's mother died, he and his younger sister lived with their father, Antonio Gonzalez Sr. Between 2016 and 2019, they lived in Beaver, Allegheny and Mercer counties, and in that time, child welfare agencies and police had been in and out of the family's home.

In 2016, Antonio told Beaver County Children and Youth Services that food was withheld from him at times, and he was forced to take cold showers and dry himself off in front of a fan. He didn't appear to be malnourished at that time, according to his DHS fatality report.

A year later, the boy said he was undergoing verbal abuse, and "there were allegations that the victim child was fearful to request dinner," according to the DHS report. At that time, the Gonzalez family lived in Allegheny County, so the Office of Children, Youth and Families got involved "to help address housing, community resources, parenting, budgeting and substance abuse," according to the report. Three months later, the case was closed because "the services that were in place were successfully completed."

In March 2019, police officers were asked to conduct a welfare check on the children, and they did that outside the home. Antonio's younger sister "did appear to be well fed," according to the report, and "the officers did not report the victim child to be malnourished."

Seven months later, Antonio was dead.

"The victim child was emaciated and appeared to have been beaten. The victim child's eyes were blackened from a possible skull fracture and a possible healing basilar fracture," according to the DHS report. 

A bike chain and lock had been wrapped around the refrigerator. 

The boy's father admitted to police that he had hosed down his son that day. He also admitted to pouring a bucket of water on him when the boy said he wasn't feeling well. Gonzalez went to his son's room and signed on for cyber school, then he noticed the boy wasn't breathing. He told the police Antonio had hit his head earlier that day on a cinderblock, which the police didn't believe. 

A friend living on the property with Gonzalez, Paul Bacorn, was also charged with multiple crimes, including first degree homicide. His trial is pending.

Antonio died from hypovolemic shock due to blunt force trauma.

The school he attended for one year, Chartiers Valley in Pittsburgh, held a memorial service for him. A local television reporter interviewed one of his teachers, who said she would ask Antonio how he was doing, and he would say, "I'm livin' the dream."

More:Dad pleads no contest to severely abusing 5 children in West York 'house of horrors'

More:Locked in a coffin, beaten with an iron skillet: The tragedy of an abusive childhood

How does this happen?

As part of a fatality report, a team is assembled to evaluate the case, including members of the child welfare agencies who saw the child. One of the deficiencies they found in Antonio's report was the lack of a hand-off, when the Gonzalez family moved, between the Beaver County agency and the Allegheny County welfare agency.

They also had these recommendations:

• When a child is home-schooled or cyber-schooled, there should be a mandated connection to the local district or state entity for routine, in-person well checks.
• It would be beneficial for all children with suspicious marks/bruises/injuries to be seen by a child abuse doctor.
• Specialized training should be offered to child welfare professionals regarding indicators for child malnourishment.

The Department of Human Services also recommended that cyber and homeschool students should be seen "by an entity to ensure the children are free from abuse."

Two years after Antonio's death, a Lebanon County boy nearly died, allegedly at the hands of his adopted mother and father. He, too, was homeschooled as were his four brothers, and no one in a school system was seeing them either.

"We see these cases of children who are not really known to the community or to the extended families," said Lori Frasier, a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center physician who specializes in child abuse pediatrics. She is on the review team for child fatalities in the state. "They’re isolated. They’re scapegoated. It’s difficult to know what’s going on behind closed doors." 

Cathleen Palm from the Center for Children's Justice has been involved in transforming child abuse statutes in Pennsylvania for years. She fought to get the fatality and near fatality reviews, called Act 33 reports, but she doesn't think those reviews are enough.

"You see the same recommendations over and over and over, year after year after year," she said. "We just really aren’t holding ourselves too accountable. We’re allowing a lot of important people to not exercise much on behalf of children."

She blames leaders from the governor and previous governors all the way down to county commissioners, who oversee the child welfare agencies in their communities.

"It’s this constant kind of blame game. The county commissioners will say it’s the state's fault, the state will say: 'Oh, it's the feds.' It’s a circular firing squad, and no one is willing to put their guns down and say: 'This is my fault.'"

Kim Strong can be reached at kstrong@gannett.com.