Judiciary Committee to review Wednesday $12 million settlement of “significantly emaciated” child’s claim against DCF for its failure to protect him in 2015 that stunned Connecticut.

The failures of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) under former commissioner Joette Katz will be on grim display at Wednesday morning’s Judiciary Committee meeting. The committee will review the $12 million settlement of the claim by the child known as Baby Dylan for damages against the State of Connecticut for the abuse and neglect he suffered in family foster care for five months in 2015.

Dylan was placed with his mother’s cousin and her husband under Katz’s misbegotten Kinship Enhancement program. The program required Dylan to be placed with relatives, who were unlicensed by DCF. In this instance. The relative who had been the subject of substantiated allegations of abuse against her own son, according to the complaint against the State of Connecticut. The cousin and her husband had no income and were unsuitable by any meaningful DCF standard.

For six months, DCF ignored urgent warnings and repeated alarms. As a result, according to the complaint, Dylan suffered severe malnutrition, physical and emotional injuries, developmental delays, and physical and emotional injuries. When doctors saw Dylan in November 2015, they described him as ”significantly emaciated,” according to an investigation by the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA). “At no time,” the report reveals, ”did a DCF supervisor, a manager or a DCF nurse visit the home [where Dallas had been placed] to assess the child’s condition.”

Dozens of DCF regulations were ignored by the agency, an action brought in Superior Court by Dylan’s adoptive father alleges. It reads like a criminal indictment against the agency. The Child Advocate’s 2016 report decried “the utter collapse of all safeguards.”

Wednesday’s hearing will provide an opportunity to shine a searing light on a shameful episode at the agency. What discipline was imposed on the DCF workers who failed to take routine steps to protect and rescue Dylan? The OCA report found DCF did not perform an internal investigation of the Baby Dylan catastrophe until the Hartford Courant reported on the case and the arrest of the foster mother, Crystal Magee, in February 2016.

Wednesday provides a rare forum for a complete and candid airing of facts. Katz did not resign and Governor Dannel P. Malloy did not fire her as the details of the horror became known. Only Dylan was sacrificed. Wednesday’s hearing ought to include an explanation of what actions the agency took to discipline the DCF employees who failed Dylan in the face of alarming evidence of his plight as it was happening.

Published February 22, 2023.