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American Morning
Interview with Sally Kestin
Aired August 14, 2002 - 08:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: To Florida now, where a growing child welfare scandal has forced the head of the state's Department of Children and Families to resign. Kathleen Kearney under fire for a series of agency mishaps in that state. The most recent example this past week when a Florida newspaper located nine children the Department said were missing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JEB BUSH (R), FLORIDA: It is not appropriate. It's not acceptable to have kids that have been absconded, in some cases allegedly for more than a year, be found by a newspaper.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: Sally Kestin is the lead investigative reporter for the south Florida "Sun-Sentinel." She's live this morning in Fort Lauderdale.
Sally, thanks for your time. Good morning to you.
SALLY KESTIN, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, SOUTH FLORIDA "SUN- SENTINEL": Good morning to you.
HEMMER: I just want to get one thing straight here, your newspaper, your investigation went out looking for 24 kids. You found nine. What about the other 15?
KESTIN: The other 15 we actually tried. We made a few efforts. We ran into some dead ends and we may have been able to find more if we had continued trying but we decided that after having found nine relatively easily that that certainly illustrated the point and that it was an important story to tell our readers and just go ahead and get it in the paper.
HEMMER: OK, so...
KESTIN: So we may have been able to find a few more.
HEMMER: If that's the case, then, you found the nine. How long did it take?
KESTIN: It took us a few weeks, although in some cases some of the children we found in a matter of hours or, in one case, there was a child that had been missing and the state could not find that child for eight years and we found that child in about 24 hours.
HEMMER: You're kidding me?
KESTIN: No.
HEMMER: What...
KESTIN: Just through basic reporting.
HEMMER: What were you doing, Sally, that the agency has not been doing?
KESTIN: Well, we weren't doing anything that they couldn't have done. I mean we didn't even have the same kind of resources that the state has available to them. We were just simply looking in phone books, contacting relatives, knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, certainly things that would be available to social workers and employees. They would even have more tools available to them if they were looking. They could have found these children months or even years ago.
HEMMER: So then what's the bottom line on the agency's part, though? Is it laziness? Is it lack of vigilance? Is it lack of employees and personnel? What do you put your finger on?
KESTIN: I think it's a lack of priority and certainly they are overworked. There's a number of vacancies in the child welfare agency now so the workers that are there have two, three times the number of cases that they should. So work load is an issue. Priority is an issue. Supervision, the supervisors don't check on the workers to make sure that they're actually out looking for these kids.
And, frankly, they don't have enough places to put them. So when some of these children go missing, it's one less child they have to worry about finding a foster home for.
HEMMER: So, Sally, then in fairness to the agency, they have thousands of kids to track. And your newspaper, the handful of folks that work down there in Florida, you were looking for essentially two dozen. Without jumping off the deep end here, this agency is over taxed. Is that what you're concluding?
KESTIN: Oh, absolutely. They've got 45,000, 46,000 children under their care. That's a phenomenal amount and certainly they need to get that number down and focus on the kids that really do need the services. I think that would help and they'd have fewer kids that they'd have to be watching and monitoring.
HEMMER: You know, some of the jumping off points that we had on this story this past week, the secretary resigned yesterday, Secretary Kearney, does that help, getting a new boss? Or are the problems and issues there much deeper than one person?
KESTIN: It depends on who you ask. A lot of people think that a new leader will help. This department has been, I think it's -- the average shelf life of a secretary at the Department of Children and Families is a year and a half, two years. It's, you know, many different secretaries have come and gone and the agency has still had problems.
I'm not sure that putting someone in the director's chair, a different person, is going to solve the ills of Florida's child protection system.
HEMMER: And so many people would argue that there are no bad kids, just bad parents thrown into this mix.
I'm curious to know, across the country, it's getting some attention in Florida. How much attention is it getting by the people who live there?
KESTIN: This has been an issue since, really, the Rilya Wilson case, where the 5-year-old girl from Miami back in April went missing. And that got lots of attention nationally and certainly here in Florida. And since then there have been lots of high profile cases of children who were killed and the state knew that they had, they had been reported for abuse or neglect.
So there have been a number of cases that have brought this to the forefront and I think that voters are certainly paying attention. It's an issue that they can kind of get their arms around.
HEMMER: Sally, listen, I'm completely out of time here. But I just want to know, anyone from the government contacted you about what they might be able to do based on your investigation?
KESTIN: They've contacted us and requested our, some specific information for us that they weren't able to find and we're working with them on a case by case basis.
HEMMER: Good luck.
KESTIN: But as far as a plan -- thank you very much.
HEMMER: OK, Sally Kestin in Fort Lauderdale this morning.
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