Caprice Reid
--Brooklyn, New York
Caprice Reid was removed from the care of her mother not because she was abusive of neglectful, but because her baby sitter had left her unattended as an infant.For three years of her life, she remained with a foster family she came to know and love as her own. After some problems with visitation developed, she was moved along with three of her siblings to a Brooklyn foster home.[1]
Over the last four tortured days of her life she was tied to a chair and a bed and beaten repeatedly with a stick by her foster grandmother while her foster mother watched, initial reports said.
Her former foster father described Caprice as the "most beautiful little girl." He said Caprice was smart, well-liked in her nursery-school class, and that she loved coloring.
"Everybody loved her like crazy," he said. "It's just very difficult. I can't even believe it's real. It's not even possible."
Her former foster parents charged that agency which had placed Caprice, the Louise Wise agency, seemed disorganized. Said her former foster father of the caseworkers: "It was like a revolving door and no one seemed to know the background. We had to inform them each time."[2]
Over time, it would become apparent just how disorganized the Louise Wise agency was. It had been warned by another agency that the Coker home had been barred from receiving any foster children.[3]
The Louise Wise agency apparently knew that another agency had stopped sending children to the Coker home, and chose to disregard the information, placing the Reid children there anyway. A spokesperson for the other agency told reporters that the letter they had sent to the Louise Wise agency was quite clear about the concerns they had had about the home.
So, too, would the extent of the abuse Caprice had endured become more apparent over time. Prosecutors charged that over the last four days of her life she had been tied to a bed, deprived of food, and that Particia Coker and her mother Betty Coker took turns beating the girl. Bruises were found all over her body, prosecutors charged.[4]
Eventually, it came to light that Patricia Coker had attended an administrative hearing with the New York Administration for Children's Services, and that she had been found to be unfit as a foster parent. It was three months after this administrative determination that Louise Wise Services placed the Reid children in the Coker home.
City officials blamed the lack of a centralized computer system for the oversight.[5]
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Last updated April 14, 1998