Child services were called about toddler's family before 3-year-old died from drug overdose

April 04--In the year before three-year-old Logan Starliper died of an illegal drug overdose, someone alerted the county's children and youth agency about potential problems in her home.

Officials with Pennsylvania'sDepartment of Human Services confirmed Tuesday that the Franklin County office had launched an assessment and/or investigation into Logan's family within 16 months of her death.

It's unclear how recent the inquiry was, because under state law, officials only are required to confirm whether the investigation was opened within the past 16 months or not. That means a case could have been opened a few days before Logan died on Jan. 6, or up to 16 months before she died.

In addition, state officials would not say whether the inquiry had been completed sometime prior to her death and what the outcome was, or whether it was still open at the time of her death.

Logan was found dead in her bed in her family's tiny Greencastle apartment one night after her mother and mother's boyfriend injected methamphetamine in their home.

The couple said they put her to bed about 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 5 and did not check on her again for more than 22 hours. By then, she was dead.

Police have not said how the child ingested the drugs that killed her: methamphetamine and buprenorphine, a prescription narcotic used to treat opioid addiction, but police found three pipes with burned residue inside the home at 43 West Baltimore Street during a search warrant.

Logan's mother and her boyfriend also both had prescriptions of the narcotic opioid blocker found in the preschooler's system.

Toxicology tests from Logan returned last month showed she died from multiple drug toxicity.

Police then charged her mother, Brittany Higgins and her boyfriend, Brian Bennett, both 29, with five felonies including third-degree murder. Police also charged Rodney "Allen" Mower for allegedly selling meth to the couple on Jan. 5.

The couple and Mower had a preliminary hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning but they were never brought into a courtroom from the jail holding area.

Bennett's father and Logan's paternal grandmother showed up at the courthouse where they waited for hours to see if the preliminary hearing was going to go on as scheduled. The grandmother wore a purple shirt, Logan's favorite color, with the words "Team Logan," on it. She declined an interview.

The hearings eventually were continued to April 24 by defense attorneys.

A criminal complaint filed against Bennett and Higgins included details that indicated possible abuse and neglect of Logan and her older brother, who is about 10 years old, for at least six months.

Friends, relatives and neighbors "described mysterious bruises and large marks" on Logan, according to the affidavit of probable cause. "There was evidence in communications between Higgins and Bennett that they were physically abusing" Logan and her brother.

When it comes to potential child abuse deaths in Pennsylvania, there usually are many more questions than answers at this stage.

Among the unknowns in Logan's case are:

--What information exactly was relayed to children and youth services when the case was initiated?

--Was the case classified as a potential child abuse, or general protective services? The former requires an immediate response, while social workers are allowed to screen out many of the latter without making a personal home visit.

--If a home visit was employed, was it unannounced and was Logan examined by a medical expert?

Logan's death appeared to have been flagged with the state on Jan. 12 as potential abuse, according to the state's 2018 chart of fatalities and near fatalities. Her death marked the first suspicious child death of the year in Pennsylvania.

Since then, 15 more fatalities have been added to the list.

Child deaths potentially associated with child abuse or neglect trigger a local "child fatality review team" that is charged with identifying ways that the child interacted with any government systems and whether any red flags should have been raised.

If Logan's case was classified as potential child abuse, then the state should issue a report on the services provided to her and potential shortfalls by July 12, six months after her death was reported to the state, unless the district attorney files a request to seal the document.

But if the case was initially classified as the less-urgent general protective services, then no report would be generated.

The lack of information after a child's suspicious death can lead to a vacuum filled by rumors and second-hand information, said Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children's Justice in Pa.

"Because we don't have a higher level of transparency, it invites a lack of confidence in the proceedings," she said. "Are children really better served" by the initial secrecy surrounding death investigations?

In train or plane crashes, Palm noted, an independent national agency is brought in to investigate and provide timely updates to the public.

The philosophy of investigators is that "It's in all of our best interests to know why this train or plane crashed," Palm said, because other people are riding on similar trains and planes.

That's not how child deaths are treated in Pa., she said, even though the same threads interwoven in Logan's life are similar to other children.

Depending on the circumstances of Logan's case, Palm said, it's possible that children and youth services did everything they could with the information and authority they had at the time. But there are so many pieces of missing information at this point, "It can breed mistrust," Palm said.

Complaints relayed to county officials that a parent is on drugs, doing drugs or selling drugs is oftentimes not sufficient to be classified as a "child abuse investigation," Palm said.

"That in and of itself is not something in which CYS can easily intervene," Palm said.

Instead, those cases often are classified as general protection cases of which roughly half are "screened-out" by social workers without a home visit.

It's unknown how social workers decide which cases to screen out. The assistant director at Franklin County did not return PennLive's call requesting an interview.

Agencies have a lot of discretion, Palm said. Cases framed as "non-abuse" likely would surprise people, she said.

"Frankly, that's been a challenge in Pennsylvania for 10 years," she said. "A parent using drugs is not something that would typically rise to a child abuse classification in Pa."

Franklin County Commissioners declined to comment on what services the local children and youth agency provided or whether there could be improvements in light of the child's death.

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