Day 3: Babies at Risk

The Washington Post documented the cases of 11 babies who died after they were born exposed to drugs and sent to live with troubled parents without city help from 1993 through 2000. The following accounts of four of those cases are based on interviews and records from the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, the D.C. Child Fatality Review Committee, D.C. Superior Court, the medical examiner's office and the police department:

Kristen Cheeks

Oct. 16, 1997 - Dec. 8, 1997
Blunt force trauma

Although her mother denied using drugs, Kristen was born addicted to cocaine, with trouble breathing. Three complaints about Kristen's mother had been called in to the child protection agency that year. Social workers did not open a case until the third complaint was made, a month before Kristen was born. A caller said the woman was using food stamps to buy crack and neglecting her 4-year-old child.

A social worker closed the case shortly before Kristen was born. Howard University Hospital workers sent Kristen home with an apnea monitor -- but without alerting the agency that a new child was born to the single mother, fatality committee records show.

On Dec. 8, Kristen's mother left the baby with a friend who was the subject of a neglect complaint involving her own children. Kristen was later found dead inside the friend's Columbia Heights apartment. The infant had suffered severe blows to the head, scratches, bruises and a burn on her body.

The mother's friend later told police that Kristen had been crying and she threw her down on a sofa bed, where the baby hit her head on a metal bar, police records show. The friend was charged with murder, but the charges were later dismissed. Separately, she pleaded guilty to assaulting two of her own children.

"Policies, procedures and practices were not adequate in addressing the needs of this family," an internal agency review found.