Legislators this week are expressing outrage over the death of 4-year-old Eric Dean and called for new laws to prevent future child protection failures.
A story in Sunday's Star Tribune described how Pope County in western Minnesota received 15 maltreatment reports about Eric before he died in February 2013. Many of those reports came from Eric's day-care providers and teachers, who warned the county's child-protection unit that his stepmother was likely responsible for his recurring bite marks and bruises, but watched as the abuse continued.
"There should be hearings on this," said Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee. "The whole thing was shocking."
Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, chairwoman of the Senate Health, Human Services and Housing Committee, said she would support calls for hearings into how to improve child protection. She said what happened to Eric showed "there must be something terribly flawed in the system."
Sen. Torrey Westrom, a Republican who represents the area where Eric lived, said he's heard from numerous constituents who are angry about how the case was handled. He said he will work with other legislators to draft laws in the upcoming session that he hopes will better protect vulnerable children.
"We need to prevent this from ever happening again," said Westrom, who is running for Congress in Minnesota's Seventh District.
One of his focuses will be to require that counties give more scrutiny to repeated abuse reports, Westrom said. Currently, the Department of Human Services (DHS) recommends that counties not consider prior abuse reports when deciding how to handle new ones that come in.
"That defies common sense," Westrom said.