PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

In 2019, AJ Freund was beaten to death by his opioid-addicted mother.  One of the only reasons he made it to five years old is because of a law requiring DCFS to inform the state’s attorney’s office (“SAO”) when children are born drug positive.  AJ, at the time of his birth, was born with heroin in his system and suffered through weeks of painful withdrawal.  After learning of the positive test, the SAO filed a petition in court and began a non-punitive court process wherein all county and service agencies collaborate in making sure the baby is safe and mother recovers.  It was not until this case was closed, nearly four years after AJ’s birth, and court supervision ceased that AJ’s mother relapsed and the physical abuse resulting in AJ’s horrific and well-publicized death began.

Now, a group of doctors (remember, those whose “evidenced-based” practices brought us the opioid epidemic in the first place), through the Illinois Medical Society, are using their influence as a special interest to pass legislation that would eliminate the obligation of DCFS to automatically notify the SAO of a drug positive baby.  The basis, of course, is not science, but political pieties that forbid “stigmatizing” the mother, who though severely endangering her child by using drugs during pregnancy, is merely a faultless victim afflicted with the “disease” of substance abuse. 

But rest assured, they advise, DCFS, an organization that for decades has been defined by its failure to meet expectations, will be solely responsible for making sure the infant is safe.  What could go wrong?

Well, here is a recent example illustrating precisely what could go wrong.  In 2016, a child was born opioid positive to a woman with a long history of drug abuse that resulted in multiple prior treatment tours.  DCFS, despite its statutory responsibility, never notified the McHenry SAO of the positive drug result.  After the woman promised to again go to treatment, DCFS, in its broad discretion, took no other remedial action. 

Four months later, the woman was pulled over with the child in the car for a traffic violation.  During the traffic violation, an adult passenger was found with heroin in his possession and arrested.  Four months after that, the woman was involved in a domestic battery investigation and admitted to law enforcement that she had recently snorted heroin after police observed visible track marks on her arm. 

The following year, the woman was arrested for possessing heroin and admitted to using prior to her arrest.  The woman pled guilty and was placed in drug court, an intensive rehabilitation program.  After completing drug court, the child found the woman overdosing in a bathroom.  DCFS was again called and finally notified the SAO of the ongoing neglect of the child.   

Children born to substance abusing parents are in a desperate situation.  Study after study has shown that substance abuse is one of two primary causes of child abuse and neglect.  It is not hard to understand why.  A parent in the throes of substance abuse has a compulsion to focus and assign value to one thing above and to the exclusion of all else, which often includes the health and safety of their children.  A parent in this state is in no position to respond or react appropriately to the insistent and all-consuming needs of an infant without considerable help and structure that DCFS, as they have demonstrated, does not consistently have the wherewithal to provide.