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Joette Katz Uses Anonymous Web Comment to Attack Child Advocate, WNPR.

by Kevin Rennie

Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz is beginning to sound a little kooky. The former judge sent a strange memo to members of the unit holding transgender teen Jane Doe, the subject of considerable attention for the past several months. Jane Doe, under the care of DCF, was confined to prison with Katz’s approval, though the teen was not charged with or convicted of a crime.

Sarah Eagan, the state’s child advocate,  accused DCF of engaging in “a public shaming” Jane Doe. WNPR wrote about the story. Read its account here. Katz was not pleased. She sent a one paragraph memo to the “Pueblo community”–those are DCF workers who oversee Jane Doe and other difficult cases. Katz wanted to thank them for their work. What is unusual about the memo is its second goal. “I want to share with you a comment to a recent NPR article because it shows that others recognize the need for your good work and the need for you also to feel safe.” Katz includes the anonymous comment below the WNPR story from reader “roanie”. The comment is several times longer than Katz’a memo and lets loose on a variety of targets.

It borders on kooky for a commissioner of a state agency to resort to an anonymous (at least anonymous to readers) comment on a radio station website to unleash her wrath on her growing army of critics. Here’s the comment:

roanie • 9 days ago
This is a disturbing and potentially dangerous story. The Child Advocate, Sarah Eagan seems to be out of her depth and very unprofessional. Instead of criticizing DCF for “public shaming” she should be praising them for public service. Imagine if Jane Doe had been moved in the middle of the night to a more restrictive facility and DCF had said nothing about the move. DCF would have been vilified for “kidnapping”Jane and hiding what they did. This story has received national coverage. DCF should be commended for quickly making those who are watching and who care about Jane aware of the change in her custody. The public would have learned about the move eventually. There is no shame in informing the public about this change in her custody — it is a fact and the public needs to be aware of it, to the degree allowable by law. Eagan encourages transparency and then complains about DCF attempting to be transparent. Weird. The notion that DCF would want to “shame” Jane is both silly and malicious.
Are Sarah Eagan and Sandra Staub privy to the police report of this unfortunate incident? If so, they should not be judge and jury of what appears to have been a complex situation that happened very quickly. If not, then they choose to ignore Jane’s long, and unique, history of violent behavior across many institutions — according to court records and other public information — actions that were at the extreme seen in the juvenile system. Do the OCA and ACLU not care about safety? Do they not care about the other girls? Are staff assumed to just be victims? If staff are victimized without consequences, will they be able to protect other youth in the future? I worry that the well-intentioned blindness of Eagan and Staub could result in something much worse happening and, of course, they will blame DCF.
I am most disappointed in NPR. For years I have counted on them for quality journalism. This story appears to be another attempt to “sell papers” or “grab the eyeballs” of the public. We need to move beyond the finger-pointing of Sarah Eagan and the “gotcha” journalism and try to work together to help Jane Doe and the other girls and boys in DCF’s care.