Experts say Child Protective Services failed slain Inland boy....

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Experts say Child Protective Services failed slain Inland boy

By SANDRA STOKLEY
The Press-Enterprise

In 2005, Riverside County's Child Services Division removed 3,209
children from their families while investigating allegations of abuse or
neglect in the home.

Three-year-old Michael "Mikey" Vallejo-Seiber was not one of them.

On Aug. 22, 2005, a worker from the division -- also called Child
Protective Services -- concluded that a bruise on Mikey's face that had
been reported by his pediatrician was not the result of abuse. One week
later, Mikey was dead, the victim of a savage beating inflicted,
Riverside prosecutors say, by his mother's boyfriend and the boyfriend's
roommate.

Now, after reviewing case files supplied by The Press-Enterprise, some
experts have raised questions about CPS's investigation, while CPS has
defended its workers.

Rubidoux resident Alex Kermith Mendoza, 28, who has spent time in prison
for drug and domestic violence convictions, could face the death penalty
if convicted of the boy's torture and slaying. He has pleaded not guilty.

His roommate, Richard Daniel Cox, 20, was convicted March 7 of
first-degree murder and assault on a child under 8 resulting in death.
He faces a maximum of 25 years to life in prison when he returns to
Riverside County Superior Court on April 13 for sentencing.


Lidia Vallejo places mementos at the grave of grandson Michael
Vallejo-Seiber at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside. Vallejo told
authorities in 2004 that Michael's mother was negligent. The mother was
not home when the boy suffered a fatal beating in 2005.

Mikey's mother, Pamela Seiber, is serving a six-year sentence after
pleading guilty to child endangerment in the case. She has filed an appeal.

Although she was not at home at the time her son was tortured and
beaten, prosecutors charged that Seiber failed to protect the boy when
she repeatedly left him in the care of Mendoza and Cox, including the
night Mikey was tortured. Seiber was at work in a strip club where she
performed.

Francisco Vallejo, the boy's father, was in prison before the child was
born.

In August 2006, then-CPS assistant director Sharrell Blakeley defended
her agency's August 2005 investigation of Mikey. "We did a lot of things
right," including responding within hours to the complaint phoned in by
the boy's pediatrician, she said. Blakeley has since retired.

CPS is mandated by state law to investigate allegations of child abuse
and neglect.

A CPS emergency worker went to Pamela Seiber's home the day the
pediatrician made the Aug. 15, 2005, report of Mikey's bruise and
suspicions that Seiber was on drugs. However, the worker did not find
Seiber at home.

CPS interviewed Mikey and his mother the next day at their Riverside
apartment after Seiber contacted the department. No questions were asked
about child care arrangements.

Six days later, a worker concluded Seiber was adequately providing for
her child, CPS documents show.

'Fundamentally Flawed'

Child welfare experts who reviewed Mikey's case file on behalf of The
Press-Enterprise said it raised troubling questions about the training
case workers receive in conducting investigations and about an
environment that appears to encourage a rush to judgment.

The file was released to The Press-Enterprise after the newspaper
petitioned Riverside County Juvenile Court. Presiding Judge Becky Dugan
ordered the file released after names of the reporting party,
caseworkers and other CPS officials were blacked out.

The caseworker who was part of the emergency response team that
investigated the Aug. 15, 2005, complaint did not follow the basic
protocols outlined in California's Department of Social Services Manual
by not interviewing others involved in the child's care, said Bill
Grimm, senior attorney for the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland.

No interviews were done with the grandparents, neighbors or the child's
physician.

Grimm said the worker also ignored an important diagnostic tool, a
questionnaire about previous CPS complaints, a history of drug or
alcohol abuse and the history of the caregiver, that could have found a
high risk of neglect for Mikey.

Cynthia Hinckley, director of Riverside County's Department of Public
Social Services, declined to discuss specifics about Mikey's case,
citing a legal claim filed against CPS by Salomon and Lidia Vallejo, the
boy's paternal grandparents.

In general, though, Hinckley said state law does not require interviews
with others -- even the person calling in the complaint -- if a report
is deemed "unfounded" or untrue. That was the case with the August 2005
allegation and the Vallejos' 2004 complaint, which Riverside County
dismissed in 2006.

Vallejo had complained that Seiber was a negligent mother, left her son
for long periods of time while she "partied" with friends and used drugs.

In September 2006, CPS adopted a new policy requiring that investigators
contact the person making a report, said Jennie Pettet, acting assistant
director for children's services.

The new policy was adopted because officials realized a reporting party
might have additional information, Pettet said.

Grimm said the case raised other red flags: the age of the child, the
location of the bruise and the Vallejos' complaint.

Grimm also was concerned with how easily CPS workers accepted Seiber's
explanation of Mikey's bruise despite conflicting versions in the case file.

The boy first told the pediatrician, "Mom hit me." Then when the
pediatrician asked if he had fallen on his toy and hit his eye, Mikey
said, "Yes, I fell."

Seiber told social workers that Mikey hurt himself when he ran into a
table or a counter when her boyfriend's dog came into the house. She
later said she wasn't home when the bruising occurred.

"A policeman would have asked to see the table. He would have measured
it and measured the boy," Grimm said.

In a closing summary completed after Mikey's death, the social worker
notes the conflicting versions of how the boy hurt himself, that Seiber
had a substance abuse problem and that she had left the boy alone with a
convicted felon.

"This person just wasn't trained and not supervised to do a competent
investigation," Grimm said. "It's a fundamentally flawed investigation."

'Gut Feeling'

Hinckley said she believes the worker took appropriate action.

A worker must find credible evidence of abuse or neglect in order to
take the traumatic step of removing a child, Hinckley said.

CPS investigations typically average 30 days and can involve contacting
the immediate family and talking to anyone having contact with the child
including family members, neighbors and school officials, Hinckley said.

Still, Hinckley and Pettet said it is not unusual for a worker to close
a case after one interview based on his or her perception of the family
situation, the general environment and the bonding between parent and child.

"This particular family situation had so much going for it in general,"
Hinckley said. "It just didn't come close to rising to the level where
we would remove the child."

In a narrative, the worker notes that the boy had no other bruises, that
Seiber volunteered to take a drug test and passed, that her apartment
was clean and that Mikey appeared happy.

Not everyone agrees.

"I had a gut feeling about that case. Something wasn't right," said
Scott Chase, who supervised the emergency worker who responded to the
pediatrician's complaint.

Chase no longer works for CPS and was interviewed by telephone at his
home in North Carolina.

Chase said he had concerns about the brevity of the investigation, the
lack of additional interviews and the inattention to the 2004 complaint
made by the boy's paternal grandmother.

While state law may not require additional interviews, "it's definitely
best practice," Chase said. "That means what is best for the child. It
means following the law plus something more. Following your gut feeling."

Chase said if there had been time, he would have sent the file back to
the worker for more investigation. The file was returned to him for
review five or six days before Mikey was beaten to death, Chase said.

Horrifying Abuse

Seiber would later tell investigators that she left her son with
Mendoza, a man she had known for three weeks, because she had problems
finding someone to watch the boy while she danced at night.

According to the CPS investigation narrative and testimony at Cox's
trial, over the course of several hours on the night of Aug. 27, 2005,
Mendoza slapped, kicked, stomped, burned, sodomized and pummeled the boy
as Mikey screamed, cried and pleaded, "Stop, Alex, stop." Mendoza and
Cox also forced the child to drink alcohol and eat dog food and his own
excrement, according to testimony.

Seiber and Mendoza brought the boy's cold, lifeless body to Riverside
Community Hospital in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 28. Doctors there
revived him and transferred him to Loma Linda University Medical Center
for more intensive care.

He died the next day.

Loma Linda doctors described it as the worst case of physical abuse that
they had ever seen, the case file shows.

The boy had bruises of varying ages over his entire body, severe head
and abdominal trauma, a lacerated liver, a ruptured spleen, injured
kidneys, a broken rib, burns and injuries to his genitals and rectum.

Lidia Vallejo, who has attended Mendoza's court hearings and Cox's
trial, said she and her husband were advised by Corona attorney Michael
J. La Cilento not to pursue the lawsuit against CPS but does not recall why.

La Cilento did not respond to repeated calls and a written request for
comment.

Seiber's parents, William and Roswitha Seiber, did not respond to calls
and a letter seeking comment.

Rush to Close

Randi Miller, professor and chairwoman of the Sociology Department at
Cal State San Bernardino, said CPS appeared to be in a rush to close the
case.

Miller spent about five years evaluating and providing training for a
program run by the San Bernardino County Department of Children's
Services and Children's Network of San Bernardino County that assisted
families in need, some of them grappling with domestic violence.

"There was a failure on the part of CPS to develop the full picture of
what was going on," Miller said. "They seemed to have closed the case
without following through, especially with the medical people and the
caretakers."

A third expert said his review of the case file showed an adequate
investigation that resulted in a reasonable conclusion. Richard Wexler,
executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection
Reform, said it is easy to criticize CPS with the benefit of 20/20
hindsight.

"Look at what we have here," he said. "A child who gives conflicting
accounts of his injury; no other injuries on the child; a mother who is
cooperative to the point of getting in touch with CPS after the workers
couldn't find her; a mother who goes for a drug test and it comes back
negative."

But an area in which all three experts agreed is that CPS might have
missed a golden opportunity to derail the forthcoming tragedy by failing
to offer help -- in-home assistance, counseling and daycare options --
in response to Vallejos' 2004 complaint.

Chubby Hands

In a spare bedroom of the Vallejos' comfortable Riverside home, one wall
is given over to photos of Mikey. In one, the boy sprawls on his
grandfather's chest, laughing at the camera.

The Vallejos doted on their first and only grandchild -- a boy they said
had chubby hands, his father's nose and who loved horses, dogs and tools.

The Vallejos' son Francisco, 23, met Pamela Seiber at Lincoln
Continuation High School in Riverside in 2000.

Francisco and brother Salomon Jr. were incarcerated for attempted murder
months before Mikey's birth.

"He's never held him," Lidia Vallejo said in Spanish.

The Vallejos took care of the boy most days, and he usually spent two or
three nights at their house, Lidia Vallejo said.

That all changed when Pamela Seiber met Mendoza. Seiber took Mikey from
the Vallejos, and mother and son began spending most of their time at
Mendoza's. The Vallejos saw the boy rarely during his final three weeks
of life, they said.

But it was Lidia Vallejo who took Mikey to the pediatrician on Aug. 15
for treatment of an ear infection and the bruise on his head.

More than 18 months after Mikey's death, the couple remain grief
stricken and holds CPS as well as Mendoza, Cox and Seiber responsible
for their grandson's death.

Lidia Vallejo said she was frustrated that CPS declared her 2004
complaint unfounded and believes the department should have made
unannounced visits, talked to Mendoza and given Seiber a hair follicle
drug test in the 2005 investigation.

"At the end, when Mikey was already severely injured, then they (CPS)
got tough with her," Lidia Vallejo said, tears running down her face.
"Then it was too late."

Reach Sandra Stokley at 951-368-9647 or

Child-abuse investigations

In 2005, the year Child Protective Services investigated the case

of Michael "Mikey" Vallejo-Seiber, Riverside County received 23,051
allegations of child abuse or neglect

17,009 referrals resulted in an investigation.

3,209 children were removed from 1,509 families.

As of January 2007:

1,492 of the 3,209 children were reunited with their families.

1,111 children remained with foster families or family members.

178 children transferred out of Riverside County.

83 children were awaiting a placement change or were listed as runaways.

345 children had their cases closed for reasons such as termination of
parental rights, adoption and emancipation.

Source: Riverside County Department of Public Social Services