Denise Revels Robinson

Crocker Stephenson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been covering the story of the death of Christopher Thomas Jr.

The father of four writes that little Christopher's murder is not an abstraction to him.

A small child's vulnerability is not an abstraction to me. A small child's trust is not an abstraction. A small child's innocent and helpless love is not an abstraction.

Christopher, whose unbreathing chest I touched as he lay in his child-sized casket, is not an abstraction.

It was all too easy, as I read the medical examiner's report and the criminal complaint charging the siblings' aunt/foster mother with their calamity, to imagine the suffering these children endured.

To read such things is to break one's heart.

And though it is a reporter's task is to be objective, I believe objectivity is a discipline; I believe a disciplined reporter can write objectively about atrocities and feel - as I felt as I wrote my initial stories about Christopher and his sister - outrage.

I still feel outrage.

Readers feel it, too.

Few stories in my career have generated as many e-mails, phone calls and letters.

Most people want to express their sorrow and pain.

Many, many readers want to tell me their own nightmarish stories about Wisconsin's child welfare system.

And just about everyone wants to know who in the child welfare system will be held accountable for what happened to Christopher and his sister.

Denise Revels Robinson is the director of the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare, the agency responsible for placing and monitoring Christopher and his sister in the home where she suffered and he died.

I've never had the pleasure of talking to Robinson. Not for lack of trying.

A public servant whose salary is paid by you and me, she has yet to see fit to return our calls.

That ticks me off.

...Her secretary no longer even bothers to take my messages.

I do not understand how the director of the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare can have a baby beaten to death and a toddler tortured and not feel an obligation to appear in public to express her pain, to extend her condolences, to explain what happened and what she is going to do about it.

But as a father and as a journalist, I will do my best to find this out.

This and other questions raised by Christopher Thomas' death.

Nearly a month ago, shortly after Christopher was murdered, I wrote:

People who are aware of this story are extremely upset, for now. There is outrage, but will the cries be loud enough and will they be sustained enough to bring about real change in a system that did not look out for the best interests of the children?

I'm afraid the case will be forgotten. Another story will replace this one and community outrage will shift to the latest ghastly news.

I hope that's not the way this plays out.

I hope that disgust over the death of Christopher and the torture of his sister will mean change in the system so that it will effectively prevent other children from experiencing similar suffering.

I'm confident that the outrage over what was allowed to happen to Christopher, an innocent 13-month-old, will not ebb.

Yesterday, a small group of protesters gatherered at the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare demanding answers.

Crocker Stephenson reports:

The handful of protesters who stood outside the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare on Wednesday morning carried posters demanding that foster children be protected and that those responsible for their safety be held accountable. Rob Whitman did not carry a poster. What he carried instead were the cremated remains of his 2-month-old son.

Whitman's son - named Robert but whom Whitman calls "Junior" - died Oct. 2, two days after the baby was removed from his home and placed in foster care.

"Two days," Whitman said.

Whitman, 37, had taken a bus from his south side apartment to the protest in front of the bureau's S. 13th St. office. He had 36 cents in his pocket. That was, he said, all the money he had left.

In his right arm, Whitman held a ceramic angel. The angel contained Junior's ashes. Less than an ounce worth, Whitman said.

In his right arm, he held a teddy bear that had belonged to Junior. He had dressed the bear in Junior's clothes. He held the bear the way one might hold a living, breathing infant child.

Whitman stood with the protesters for about a half-hour. The demonstration had been organized to decry the death of Christopher L. Thomas Jr., the 13-month-old whom police say was beaten to death last month by his foster mother and whose sister suffered months of torture, even as child welfare caseworkers periodically visited the home.

...When Whitman got home from the protest, [Valissa Reynolds] was tacking sheets in front of the windows to keep out the cold. He placed Junior's ashes and his bear in Junior's crib, which has been turned into a kind of shrine: Pictures, clothes, a diaper, a blanket, the sweat shirt Whitman was wearing when Junior was removed.

The reason for the sweat shirt, Whitman said: "I believe I can still smell him in it."

This is another heartbreaking story.

What makes the stories of the innocent little victims of the foster care system so unbearable is that the heartbreak is preventable.

There is no excuse for a bureau supposedly functioning to oversee the protection of children to be unaccountable for its catastrophic failures.

There must be accountability.

I trust that Stephenson will not give up.

He will demand answers from Denise Revels Robinson and the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare.

It is mind-boggling to me that she has been completely unwilling to publicly address the torture and murder of little Christopher.

Stephenson is doing the community a great service. Hopefully, his persistence will save other children from suffering Christopher's fate and his efforts will spare parents the pain that Rob Whitman and Valissa Reynolds know.

And hopefully, the families and the loving foster parents of the children eventually tortured and murdered in foster care will find some peace.
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From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board: A deafening silence: Stonewalling in the tragic death of a boy is bad enough, but some of the child welfare bureau's actions seem plain bizarre.