After a Little Boy’s Death, Grief and Regret at Missed Clues

Pallbearers with the coffin of Kyle Smith, 3. He was left in the care of his mother’s friend and the friend’s companion, who face manslaughter charges in his death.

By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: June 19, 2008

Kyle Smith’s deflated body lay in a small white coffin piled with stuffed animals, a bruise still visible on his right cheek. All evening, scores of teary friends and relatives consoled his ashen father, a doorman in Manhattan’s financial district, and his sobbing mother, a newly married restaurant manager now living in South Carolina.

The outpouring of support at the 3-year-old’s wake on Tuesday night, and again at his funeral Mass on Wednesday, both on the Upper East Side, belied the biography of a boy who last summer was left in what prosecutors describe as the monstrously brutal home of a 30-year-old Brooklyn woman, a friend of Kyle’s mother who had previously lost custody of her own children in Texas.

“It was a wrong mistake,” said Eulalia Stack, a friend of the family of Kyle’s father, Elliot Smith, referring to the decision to place the boy with the woman, Nymeen Cheatham, and her companion, Lemar Martin, who now face manslaughter charges. “It’s a big family. We feel very bad.”

The sad, abbreviated life of Kyle Smith was, in fact, filled with a number of disconnects and what-if’s that neighbors, relatives, child-welfare advocates and city officials have retraced again and again since his death the morning of June 6. One of the most disturbing elements of the case to surface is that Ms. Cheatham’s own children, then ages 3 to 11, were removed from her care in 2002 when child-welfare officials in Borger, Tex., near Amarillo, found them malnourished and alone, locked in a filthy home without food or running water.

The criminal complaint against Ms. Cheatham and Mr. Martin chronicles Kyle’s multiple injuries, including bruises on his face and body and lacerations of his anus, and says that he died as a result of blunt-force trauma. Mr. Martin told detectives that he struck Kyle and punished him repeatedly by making him “do push-ups and march in place” and by throwing cold water at him, according to the complaint. Ms. Cheatham, it says, said she had hit Kyle repeatedly with her hands and a hairbrush.

While many of the mourners this week expressed anger at city officials for not protecting the boy, the Administration for Children’s Services was only peripherally involved in the case.

Kyle’s mother, Gina Holmes, had arranged privately for Ms. Cheatham, an old friend from Brooklyn, to take him in, rather than placing him in the foster-care system, where homes are screened and monitored. And the children’s services agency never received an official report of suspected abuse or neglect.

Residents of the 24-unit building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn where Kyle lived now recall seeing bruises on his body and witnessing bizarre punishments by Ms. Cheatham. For instance, they say, she used to make him sit outside in shorts and a T-shirt in subfreezing temperatures.

The building’s superintendent, Gail McNally, said that two days before Kyle died, during a heat wave, she saw the boy outside in a long-sleeved jacket while Ms. Cheatham had on a tank top; now, in retrospect, she wonders if the sleeves were hiding bruises.

Many residents reported after the death that Ms. Cheatham routinely cursed at Kyle. Adrian Paulson, 38, who lived two doors down from Ms. Cheatham, said that once, in an elevator, Ms. Cheatham unleashed a volley of expletives at the boy, demanding to know why he was crying and concluding that she hated him, and “all kids.”

“It’s crazy,” Ms. Paulson said the day after he died. “I’m looking at the lady’s face. I’m stunned. I’m scared for the child. I’m thinking: She must be doing something to that child.”

But Ms. Paulson, like others in the building and at this week’s funeral and wake, did not call the authorities. No one did, according to the Administration for Children’s Services. Though reports of suspected child abuse can be made anonymously, Ms. Paulson said she never called the police because she did not want to invite Ms. Cheatham’s wrath.

“I don’t want to get in no argument with her,” she explained. “We live on the same floor.”

The absence of reports in this case seems to run counter to the trend since the beating death of Nixzmary Brown, 7, in early 2006. After that case, which received wide attention, child abuse and neglect complaints skyrocketed and have remained 30 percent higher than they were before her death, with the city now investigating more than 60,000 reports a year.

Some relatives of Kyle’s father, who frequently visited the boy, especially on Mondays, Mr. Smith’s day off, speculated that the physical abuse that led to Kyle’s death may have begun recently.

One of Mr. Smith’s uncles, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the family had instructed him not to speak to reporters, said after the funeral on Wednesday that Kyle had spent a week in his apartment in May and appeared happy and healthy. “I feel guilty,” he said. “I wish I had seen something. I’m a loudmouth. But he looked fine.” He crossed himself, adding, “There was nothing.”

Relatives of Kyle’s parents said that Ms. Holmes, his mother, struggled with drug addiction after Kyle was born and decided to move to South Carolina. (She and Mr. Smith have another son, Darien, 6, who lives with a relative and stood in the back of the church on East 90th Street on Wednesday, holding a single balloon with white doves and hearts.) For a time, Kyle lived with his mother, but at some point last summer Ms. Holmes decided he would live with Ms. Cheatham and Mr. Martin.

Ms. Holmes’s husband, Kevin Holmes, an Army specialist based in Alaska, said on Wednesday that she had overcome her addiction and had recently been talking about taking Kyle back. (She lives in South Carolina but was considering a move to Alaska.) The last time she saw Kyle was in November, Mr. Holmes said. (The couple met online and were married June 2.)

In New York, Kyle’s father continued to see the boy frequently, relatives say. But they said he often sparred with Ms. Cheatham over access to the boy, although city officials say the parents never gave up custody and could have taken him back at any time. Some child welfare experts say Mr. Smith may have been confused about his rights.

Several times, the police went to Ms. Cheatham’s apartment to settle disputes surrounding visitation, not to inspect for any potential abuse.

Ms. Cheatham filed a petition in family court to become Kyle’s legal guardian last fall. As part of that process, the court ordered the Administration for Children’s Services to investigate her home. The agency said that it “found the house in order and the child happy and healthy at that time” and had no further role in the matter. The city submitted its assessment in early November, but in February Ms. Cheatham left court before her case was called, and the case was dismissed without prejudice, ending her quest for guardianship.

Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said that as part of the investigation the city interviewed some relatives. Kyle’s paternal grandmother, Norma Acosta, told a social worker that Ms. Cheatham had told her that she had once punched Kyle in the chest for peeling paint in the apartment.

“We went to Cheatham and said, ‘Did you do this?’ and she said ‘Absolutely not — I never said it, I never did it,’ ” Ms. Stein recalled in an interview. “We examined Kyle and there was no evidence that he had been abused in any way.”

But when the city’s social worker asked Ms. Cheatham how she disciplined Kyle, she responded that she made him stand with his legs spread apart and his arms in the air. “We said that’s absolutely inappropriate and instructed her on the correct disciplinary techniques for a child that age: give a timeout, cut off the TV,” Ms. Stein said. “The grandmother never evidenced any concerns through the ways in which we hear concerns: the state’s central register.”

City officials have been pushing in recent months to have the Administration Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said that as part of the investigation the city interviewed some relatives. Kyle’s paternal grandmother, Norma Acosta, told a social worker that Ms. Cheatham had told her that she had once punched Kyle in the chest for peeling paint in the apartment.

“We went to Cheatham and said, ‘Did you do this?’ and she said ‘Absolutely not — I never said it, I never did it,’ ” Ms. Stein recalled in an interview. “We examined Kyle and there was no evidence that he had been abused in any way.”

But when the city’s social worker asked Ms. Cheatham how she disciplined Kyle, she responded that she made him stand with his legs spread apart and his arms in the air. “We said that’s absolutely inappropriate and instructed her on the correct disciplinary techniques for a child that age: give a timeout, cut off the TV,” Ms. Stein said. “The grandmother never evidenced any concerns through the ways in which we hear concerns: the state’s central register.”

City officials have been pushing in recent months to have the Administration that provides legal help for parents being investigated for possible abuse or neglect.

Ms. Jacobs also said that when city workers go out to investigate a home as part of a custody case — as opposed to allegations of abuse or neglect — “people are asked just to look for basic things, to make sure that the person can adequately care for a child.” While a prospective guardian should have been asked whether they have other children, Ms. Jacobs said, if someone chooses to lie, “there’s very little we can do to protect the system or the child in it.”

Like others, Ms. Jacobs said she has puzzled over why neighbors did not report their suspicions. “The very nagging question that we all have in this work is why people who might have been in a position to get help for him did not do that,” she added. “That’s the agonizing thing you’re left with.”

Original Link- with a picture of Kyles older brother

After a Little Boy’s Death, Grief and Regret at Missed Clues - NYTimes.com

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