Child Abuse, Family Secrets, Good Parenting, Neglect, Physical Abuse, StopChildAbuse

Head Of TX CPS Vows To Get Better

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.jpg photo of adoptive mother of child found dead
Sini Mathews, mother of Sherin Mathews.

State failed 3-year-old Sherin Mathews,
head of Child Protective Services says

Texas Child Protective Services Commissioner Hank Whitman is disappointed in his agency’s handling of Sherin Mathews’ case.

Whitman, who declined to talk about any specifics of the case, said the agency will figure out how Sherin’s case “slipped through.”

“I’m gonna tell you right now, it is my mission, it is my passion that we get better at this,” he said.

In March, a doctor found that the 3-year-old Richardson girl had suffered injuries to her upper-arm bones and fractures in her leg bones that were in various stages of healing, according to testimony Wednesday.

The doctor, Suzanne Dakil of the Referral and Evaluation of At Risk Children Clinic, reported the injuries to CPS, suspecting that Sherin had been injured at the hands of her parents.

“I had no explanation other than this child had been physically abused,” Dakil said.

Sherin was found dead in a culvert Oct. 24, more than two weeks after her father reported her missing.  Wesley Mathews originally told police he had left her outside in an alley around 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk.  Later, he said that she had choked while he “physically assisted” her in drinking the milk, and he left her body in the culvert.

Wesley and his wife, Sini, remain jailed on charges related to the girl’s death.  Her father is charged with injury to a child with serious bodily injury and her mother is charged with abandoning or endangering a child.  Authorities say the couple went out to dinner with their other daughter, also 3, while leaving Sherin at the house alone.

The other daughter was placed with family members in November after more than a month in foster care.  She is the couple’s biological daughter; Sherin was adopted from India.

Court testimony this week showed that Sherin was treated for an elbow fracture in September 2016.  The family said her sister had pushed her off a couch while the two were playing, according to medical records.

Injuries in her upper-arm bones were suffered after Sini grabbed the girl to catch her from a fall on the playground, she claimed.  But Dakil told the court that the injuries weren’t consistent with the mother’s claims.

After more X-rays showed leg fractures, Dakil reported the family to CPS.

The agency reached out to Dakil about Sherin’s medical history, she said, but the CPS commissioner says that “they could have done a better job.”

Commissioner Whitman says he can’t say why Sherin wasn’t removed from her home after the report, but that “it breaks [his] heart.”

“I mean, to have a child go outside because they didn’t want to drink their milk or whatever, I mean that story was just not believable,” he said to WFAA.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know what was going through her father’s mind.

“It’s astounding to me why someone would do that to a baby.”

7 thoughts on “Head Of TX CPS Vows To Get Better”

    1. Irene, yes it is, but what most people don’t know is that this was a terrible case the day that Child was born.
      India is the world leader in slavery, right along with China, but that cass system they have promotes bond slaves.
      I have/had(?) some friends in Belgium, and they got real bad about spouting off about Our Country, about the high numbers which I use for abuse, sex abuse, and 80% of the time it happens at home or very near so.
      I flat out told them that this thing diddn’t start over here, and it is much worst and a lot more advanced over there than here.
      That slave highway that comes out of the south to sell people from all points on the African Continent to slavers in probably India, then it travels west, just north of the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic, then north and east into Belgium, and then on east, until finally it turns south, and eventually takes in Afghanistan, and all the muslim countries which all force abuse, slavery, and AIDS upon Children.
      Irene, I will never understand how anyone could be so GODLESS, heartless, and one of the lowest forms of sub-human species on this earth.
      Robert

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      1. Unfortunately, I think, those kind of abuse have existed for at least centuries, Robert. The case is, that now we are talking about it, which were not anything to talk about for not so many years ago.
        I have seen this in many kind of people with different religions and in some of them, it is even accepted as something happens.
        The worst for me is, when religious people talk loudly about, how others should behave and then behind the curtain are abusing by themselves.
        About the slave trades, I can only agree with you, this is so terrible. At the moment it is going on in some Arabic countries, where refugees by one or another way have been so unlucky to arrive.

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  2. People like this slip through the system while the Department of Child Services put mothers through hell taking their children away stripping children from loving parents who are deamed unfit because they’re victims of domestic violence. Absolutely ridiculous! In Washington state DV is the number 1 cause of CPS removing children from their mothers. While I’ve seen addicts use drugs and needles with their 5 yr old in the same room. CPS is doing more harm than good. They need to fix the system.

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