KHALIL WIMES - 6 yo/ Accused: Parents-Tina Cuffie and Latiff Hadi - Philadelphia PA

The death of yet another apparently malnourished child who ultimately
succumbed to abuse has Philadelphians once again asking how these
tragedies can be avoided.
For all the improvements made within the
city's Department of Human Resources since 14-year-old Danieal Kelly
starved to death six years ago, there are still children who end up
dead.
The latest is Khalil Wimes, 6, who died last week of
blunt-force trauma to the head. He weighed only 29 pounds. Medical
examiners said he had suffered tremendously before being taken,
unconscious, sunken, and sallow, to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
The
child's parents, Tina Cuffie, 44, and Latiff Hadi, 48, have been
charged with murder. The mother said Khalil had slipped in the bathroom,
but she could not explain the scars on his arms, face, back, and neck.
How do such people retain custody of a child?
Cuffie, previously
convicted of welfare fraud, had five older children removed from her
care. Both parents reportedly had drug addictions. Yet Khalil and his
3-year-old sister, Maya, stayed in the home. More astonishing is that
Khalil was thriving with other family members until age 2, when a judge
gave him back to his mother.
That's when DHS closed his case. It
reportedly received no subsequent reports about Khalil being
mistreated.Nonetheless, Mayor Nutter has promised a full investigation
and full disclosure about what transpired. That's the only way to avoid
repeating any mistakes that might have been made.
Also good to
hear is that DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose plans to start a new
initiative to help community members identify warning signs and alert
authorities earlier to help prevent more cases like Khalil's.
That's
so important. When neighbors or relatives suspect children are being
mistreated, they must report it. Authorities can't even attempt to
intervene if they don't know what needs to be investigated.
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/144459055.html

How city agencies failed to save 6-year-old Khalil

April 24, 2012|By Mike Newall, Inquirer Staff Writer

When police arrested the parents of Khalil Wimes and accused them of
starving and torturing their 6-year-old son to death, Mayor Nutter
decried the boy's demise as tragic, but said the city could not have
prevented it.
Philadelphia's Department of Human Services had no
official oversight - no "open case" - for Khalil Wimes, the mayor
stressed. "None," Nutter told reporters in March. "Next question."
In
fact, Khalil had spent the final months of his life beaten, bone thin,
desperately ill, and out of school - and DHS had failed to see what was
right in front of it.
An Inquirer review of Khalil's death -
including interviews with his siblings, foster parents, and other family
members, and a review of police reports, court documents, and DHS files
- found the city missed many chances to save him.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-04-24/news/31393170_1_dhs-social-workers-parents

Posted: Thu, Apr. 26, 2012, 3:01 AM


Parents held without bail in death of Khalil Wimes


By Mike Newall

Inquirer Staff Writer

A medical examiner needed 61 minutes Wednesday to fully list and
describe the sea of scars that covered 6-year-old Khalil Wimes'
emaciated body.

"They are too numerous to put a number on," Assistant Medical
Examiner Aaron Rosen said, trying to count all of Khalil's healed and
recent wounds from autopsy photos.

"This is a child who had been severely beaten over a long period of
time," Rosen said, adding that Khalil had 15 visible scars across his
face alone.

"How many did you count on his right hand?" asked Assistant District Attorney Carolyn Naylor.

"Give me a moment," Rosen said.

"At least 14," he said, finally.

Rosen offered this grim testimony during a preliminary hearing for
Khalil's parents, Tina Cuffie, 44, and Floyd Wimes, 48. After the nearly
three-hour hearing, Municipal Court Judge Robert Blasi held both Wimes
and Cuffie without bail on first-degree murder charges in Khalil's March
19 death.

The hearing came one day after Mayor Nutter announced that the city
had removed from active casework a social worker who had regular contact
with Khalil in the final months and weeks of his life.

While reviewing the agency's handling of the case, DHS will examine
all other cases handled by the worker and the worker's supervisor,
Nutter said.

"If systemic changes are required, we will make them," Nutter said.

Those actions were prompted by an Inquirer review that found DHS
staff had missed many opportunities to rescue Khalil from abuse.

In the last eight months of his life, DHS staff assigned to two of
Khalil's siblings spent time with Khalil during eight supervised visits
at a DHS facility and the family's South Philadelphia apartment, where
Khalil slept on a soiled plastic mattress on the floor of a latched and
otherwise empty bedroom. The worker that has been placed on desk duty
had visited the apartment and saw Khalil just two weeks before his
death, but failed to recognize he was a child in great danger.

Khalil weighed 29 pounds when he died, which placed him in the lowest 5 percent on weight charts for boys his age.

His parents said they were "home-schooling" him.

DHS had questioned Cuffie about Khalil's appearance and schooling, but did not investigate further, The Inquirer found.

After Wednesday's hearing, First Assistant District Attorney Edward
McCann, who is handling the case, said he found it "extremely troubling
that someone from the outside would have seen this child in the last few
weeks of his life and not made any reports."

"To weigh what he weighed, and to have the amount of injuries he had -
and to have visible injuries. Clearly, he had injuries on his face, and
his hands looked like he worked with cement, like he was a manual
laborer."

Until he was 3, Khalil lived in the safe care of his foster parents,
Alicia Nixon, and her then-husband, J. Evans. DHS had already removed
seven other children from the care of Wimes and Cuffie.

But in 2009, over the fierce objections of Khalil's social worker,
his court-appointed child advocate and his foster parents, Khalil was
returned to Wimes and Cuffie after they had passed three drug tests, got
an apartment, and took a parenting class, records show.

DHS monitored Khalil for a year after he was returned to Wimes and Cuffie, and Khalil remained healthy during that period.

Wimes and Cuffie's abuse of Khalil began immediately after the monitoring stopped in 2010, McCann said.

"I have a huge, huge problem wrapping my head around how a kid who's
being cared for very well by loving parents like the Nixons ends up in
the hands of monsters and ends up dead like this, and that everyone
could just kind of throw up their hands and say, 'Oh, that's how the
system works,' " said McCann.

"I refuse to believe that's an answer that people should accept."

McCann also handled the prosecutions of three social workers who were
found criminally negligent after the 2006 death of 14-year-old Danieal
Kelly, who died starved and abused and weighing just 42 pounds.

"There's a huge difference legally between this case and Danieal
Kelly," McCann said. The workers in the Kelly case were specifically
assigned to Kelly, and had committed acts of criminal neglect and
attempted to cover up their actions.

"It's a different situation, but obviously we will investigate," he said.

The Nixons hope action will be taken against anyone who failed to protect Khalil.

"None of this would have happened if a judge hadn't made a decision
to put him back in that home with those monsters," said La Reine Nixon,
who was Khalil's foster grandmother. "And some of this wouldn't have
happened if those workers had done something."

Wednesday's hearing provided a brutal glimpse into Khalil's life with his biological parents.

Neither Wimes nor Cuffie showed any emotion at the sight of the autopsy photos. Wimes yawned.

Khalil was covered with "loop-like scars," including one across his
nose, that investigators believe came from regular beatings with belts
and extension cords.

He had "linear" scars that showed beatings with other objects.

In her statement given to police after the killing, which was read
into the court record by a homicide detective, Cuffie told police she
beat Khalil with a belt almost every day.

Sometimes she would make him stand in the corner and then throw books and shoes at him, she said.

She would do this if Khalil was "misbehaving or messing in things he had no business in," she said.

Other times, Wimes and Cuffie would punish the sickly child by making
him do "calisthenics" like sit-ups and push-ups. They locked him in his
room at night.

Khalil had been vomiting constantly for months, but the couple did
not take him to a doctor in more than a year. Indeed, Khalil was rarely
let out of the apartment.

They were worried that a doctor would see the scars on Khalil, Wimes told police in his statement.

In his final months, Khalil vomited in his bedroom nightly. And they beat him for it, Wimes said.

"I felt like he was doing it on purpose," Wimes said.

Cuffie would often say of Khalil that "she wished she never had him," Wimes said.

This is how Cuffie described to police the final day of Khalil's life:

After she woke him around 7:30 a.m. so he could use the bathroom,
Khalil slipped on the wet bathroom floor while trying to put on his
pants.

"Move," Cuffie said she yelled. "Get up."

Then, she "popped" him in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor, she said.

"He fell flat on his face and split his lip," she said. "He didn't even try to break his fall."

She lugged him into the living room and knew she had hurt him.

"He wasn't responding,"she said. "He was staring right through me."

He couldn't talk and was wobbly on his feet, she said, and his arms dropped when she lifted them up.

Wimes was busy playing the video game Call of Duty, she
said, but when Khalil suddenly began to scream, Wimes said "I got this"
and carried the child into the bathroom and splashed water on his face.

They put him back in his bedroom and left him alone. Wimes fixed himself a steak lunch and watched Let's Make a Deal before going out.

Cuffie went to Popeye's.

When they checked on Khalil around 9:30 p.m., he didn't wake up. They
finally took him to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. They told
doctors he had slipped.

McCann argued in court that it did not matter whether Cuffie or Wimes
struck the fatal blow; Khalil had another serious hemorrhage on his
head that Rosen said had occurred earlier. It wasn't just one blow that
killed Khalil, McCann said. It was all of them.

Alicia and La Reine Nixon sat in the first row during the hearing.

Khalil had called them Mommy and Mimi.

They wept the entire time.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120426_Parents_held_without_bail_in_death_of_Khalil_Wimes.html?viewAll=y

OMG, another one.

No wonder he fell while trying to go to the bathroom. His brain already had an injury that would have been fatal.

They will be treated humane in prison. Too bad they can't be tortured like poor little Khalil was.

I hope they are put in gen pop and get beaten to death. Slowly.

The tragic death of 6-year-old Khalil Wimes can inform efforts to
improve Philadelphia’s child-welfare system. The case showed that judges
end up making life-and-death decisions about child placement without
sufficient information; that parents with long histories with the city’s
Department of Human Services can regain custody of children as easily
as one-time offenders; and, most obviously, that neighbors and others
who should serve as the first line of protection often fail to report
suspected abuse.

In Khalil’s case, there were four critical junctures where the outcome might have been changed.

First, the courts should have gotten more information than they
apparently did. Khalil had been placed in the care of a distant relative
a week after he was born to a mother who had tested positive for drug
use while she was pregnant with him. Although Khalil was thriving in
that relative’s care, when his birth mother petitioned for custody, a
judge returned the then-1-year-old to his parents. Five days later, the
child was hospitalized for severe neglect and asthma.

Custody courts make important choices about children and their care.
Yet in Philadelphia, they make too many of those decisions with little
or no objective information, not even obtaining families’ DHS records.

The gold standard in these cases is a custody evaluation conducted by
a clinician, including multiple interviews, a review of records, and
psychological testing. But professional evaluations are costly, cases
are already subject to long delays, and more than half the custody
litigants in Philadelphia can’t afford a lawyer.

Other jurisdictions require a comprehensive evaluation in every case
and offer a sliding fee scale to accommodate poor families. Philadelphia
needs mechanisms to ensure that judges get a thorough assessment of
each child’s needs and the prospective caregivers’ capacity to meet
them.

Low threshold

Second, the system should have asked more of parents who had failed
seven other children before they could gain custody of another. When
Khalil was placed in foster care as a 1-year-old, his parents’ plan for
reunification with him was minimal, requiring only that they get clean
drug screens, counseling, housing, and employment — a low threshold more
appropriate for a merely overwhelmed new parent. When parents appear to
be in compliance with such minimal goals, a court has limited grounds
to terminate their parental rights.

One or both of Khalil’s parents — now facing murder charges in the
child’s death — suffered chronic addiction and perhaps serious mental
illness, judging by the extent to which Khalil was tortured. Moreover,
the court and DHS officials knew or should have known them well.

Given all that, it was too easy for Khalil’s parents to regain
custody. Parents with this kind of history should face greater hurdles,
including thorough proof of sobriety, performance requirements, in-depth
psychological evaluation, and intensive parenting education.

Moreover, adoption should happen faster in cases such as Khalil’s,
especially given that his parents had failed to care for so many other
children. Children deserve diligent lawyering, thorough judges,
expeditious litigation, and better communication between DHS and the
courts.

Watchful eyes

Third, Khalil died as much from his isolation as from his injuries
and neglect. Family members have reported that they witnessed his abuse
but failed to act. Although families are entitled to their privacy once a
court case is closed, children need continuing community connections
and watchful eyes to keep them safe.

A respectful approach would be to insist that parents maintain
supportive relationships in churches, schools, and neighborhoods that
will be in place once the professionals are gone. Additionally, plans
should include monitoring of a child’s health care and well-being.
Establishing a child’s primary-care medical “home,” where records are
kept and treatment is coordinated, can provide additional surveillance
of health and well-being. Health-care providers are required to alert
authorities to signs of mistreatment.

Finally, child-welfare workers must be adequately trained to
recognize signs of abuse and respond to them. In the months before
Khalil died, the DHS worker assigned to supervise his visits with
siblings noticed bruising, low weight, and other symptoms of child
abuse, but was reportedly satisfied by his mother’s explanations.

Recognizing the signs of abuse takes intensive training and
consultation with supervisors. Communication between health-care and
social workers about signs of injury or malnutrition can help. Most
important, even though workers may be assigned to another primary task,
such as supervising visits or helping siblings connect, a child’s safety
and well-being must be on the mind of every responsible adult, and it
must remain a collective priority for everyone.

Frank P. Cervone is executive director of the Support Center for
Child Advocates. Dr. Philip V. Scribano is medical director of Safe
Place: The Center for Child Protection and Health at the Children’s
Hospital of Philadelphia. They can be reached at fcervone@advokid.org
and scribanop@email.chop.edu.
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/151447605.html

It should be against the law for parents who have a history of drug use and neglect as parent to be allowed to "home School". Of course they weren't homeschooling him. How many times do we have to see children being abused to death and parents hiding the torture from the public by claiming to home school? It should have been part of the deal when the judge stupidly decided to uproot this poor child and return him to the dysfunctional parents that he attend school. It should be a requirement of any child when CPS is involved with the family.
These cases upset me more than any other, because their torture is sever and prolonged and every time the kids have been "home schooled". The home school system needs tightening so only genuine parents can legally do this.

Parents on Trial for 6-Year-Old Son's Death

By Dan Stamm and David Chang
Monday, Sep 23, 2013
Updated 12:57 PM EDT

The mother and father accused in the beating and neglect death of their 6-year-old son, a case that launched a review of how the Philadelphia Department of Human Services operated, went on trial today.

Tina Cuffie and Latiff Hadi are accused of murder, assault and child endangerment in the March 2012 death of their 6-year-old son Khalil Wimes.

It was ruled that Wimes, who weighed just 29 pounds at the time of his death, died due to blunt force trauma and malnutrition, which prosecutors say was the culmination of months of starvation and abuse.

During a preliminary hearing about a month after the death, details about eh alleged abuse emerged. An assistant medical examiner took the stand and described the boy’s body at the time of his death. He claimed it was covered with scars, both old and new.

Police say Cuffie told them on March 19, 2012 that Khalil fell when getting out of a tub. She allegedly hit him on the back of the head, causing him to become disoriented. She also allegedly told police that she often hit him because he was misbehaving or messing up. Finally, police say she confessed to not letting him out of the house for a month and that he was underweight because he wouldn’t drink water.

In court Monday, Cuffie's lawyers disputed that alleged confession.

Hadi allegedly told police they never took Khalil to the doctor because they were afraid they would call the Department of Health Services. Their five other children had already been removed from their care because of an alleged history of drug abuse, neglect and child abuse. Khalil himself was removed from the couple and lived with a foster family for three years. That family claimed a family court judge forced them to return Khalil to the Wimes after he turned 3 however.

“I’m horrified,” said Alicia Nixon, Khalil’s foster mother in the days after his death. “I couldn’t believe they could be those kinds of people.”

“He was defiant, they tried to break him and they couldn’t,” said La Reine Nixon, Khalil’s foster grandmother. “That’s why they did this to him.”

Investigators say a DHS worker had been in Wimes' home before Khalil died to check on another visiting child. After the incident Mayor Michael Nutter announced that worker had been relieved of duty pending an investigation.

“I find it extremely troubling that someone from the outside would have seen this child within a few weeks of his death and not made any reports,” said Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Wimes-Beating-Death-224855852.html

Brother: Starved Pa. boy ran laps day before death

Updated: 4:14 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013
Posted: 4:14 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013
By MARYCLAIRE DALE,The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — A 6-year-old boy who died of starvation was forced to stand in the corner for hours as punishment for vomiting and had to run laps in a hallway the day before his death, his brother testified Wednesday at the start of his mother and stepfather's murder trial.

Family members who raised some of Tina Cuffie's 10 other children sobbed as they heard about Khalil Wimes' childhood. Khalil spent his first three years in foster care with a relative and was gradually reunited with his birthparents, Cuffie and Latiff Hadi, also known as Floyd Wimes.

He weighed less than 30 pounds when he died in March 2012.

"So she's yelling at him to run up and down the hallway the day before he died?" First Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann asked the oldest brother, Aaron Cuffie.

Cuffie, 28, nodded, and said his brother sometimes collapsed.

"She would help him back up and make him do it again," he said.

Khalil is one of a string of Philadelphia children to die of starvation and abuse in recent years, often on the city's watch.

Danieal Kelly, who had cerebral palsy, weighed 42 pounds when she died at age 14 in in 2006. More than 10 people were convicted in her death, including social workers and her parents.

Two-month-old Quasir Alexander weighed just over 4 pounds when he died in 2010 at a homeless shelter, where his mother and her six children received many social services. She was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

And just this month, a 3-year-old disabled girl died weighing just 11 pounds, more than a year after she had last seen a doctor. Her parents, Carlos Rivera and Carmen Ramirez, were due in court Wednesday for a preliminary hearing. The hearing was rescheduled for Dec. 3 but not before a prosecutor announced plans to pursue a first-degree murder charge against the father.

More than 1,500 U.S. children die from abuse or neglect each year, an unknown number of them from starvation.

"It's harder than we thought it would be (to watch the trial). We knew what happened. We didn't know the particulars," said Khalil's aunt, Bashera Abdul-Hadi. "They hid it. They hid it well."

She said she had taken in four of Cuffie's older children but ran out of room when Khalil was born. Another family member then stepped in. However, he was gradually reunited with his birthparents, at first under Department of Human Services' supervision. That contact later stopped.

Defense lawyers conceded at the nonjury trial that their clients may be guilty of neglect, but they challenged the murder charge and suggested that Khalil's vomiting affected his weight.

They attributed his scars and bruises to falls, eczema and bedbug bites.

Khalil frequently vomited, leading the parents to lock him in his room at night so he could not get up and eat, according to testimony and photographs of the exterior bolt. He was also spanked and struck with a belt, according to the older brother. And he was home-schooled — unlike his younger, plumper sister — and spent much of the day in his room.

"They didn't want anyone to see him and call DHS on them," Aaron Cuffie testified as Hadi shook his head to object.

Hadi had separated from Cuffie, returning only for visits, about four months before Khalil died, his lawyer said.

"I'm not saying that makes him a solid citizen, but he wasn't there," lawyer Derrick Coker said outside court.

http://www.wpxi.com/ap/ap/obituaries/2-child-starvation-death-cases-in-philly-court/nZ6rM/

Parents of 6-year-old boy who was starved, beaten, convicted of third-degree murder in Pennsylvania

Tina Cuffie and Latiff Hadi locked up little Khalil so he couldn’t get to food, severely beat him and made him stand until he collapsed, according to testimony. The parents abused him because he had a vomiting disorder, court was told.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, September 27, 2013, 6:15 PM



Frances Twitty/Getty Images
Philadelphia parents who horribly abused 6-year-old son by starving and beating him because he couldn’t control his vomiting were convicted of third-degree murder and aggravated assault Friday. Each faces up 40 years in prison.

PHILADELPHIA — The parents of a battered, starved 6-year-old boy were convicted Friday of third-degree murder amid evidence that his decline began soon after he was removed from a relative’s care three years earlier.

Siblings testified that Khalil Wimes endured frequent beatings as punishment for his chronic vomiting, a condition that a defense lawyer attributed to the separation from his foster mother.

He also had to run laps and stand in the corner for hours, until he collapsed.

Khalil weighed 29 pounds when he died, less than he had three years earlier, when he moved in with birth parents Tina Cuffie and Latiff Hadi, who is also known as Floyd Wimes.

He was the 10th of Cuffie’s 11 children. At least five older siblings had previously been removed from her care by the city’s Department of Human Services.

Witnesses said that Cuffie did not want to lose the youngest two children still at home with her, Khalil and a younger sister who was not abused.

She had home-schooled Khalil and kept him hidden from relatives, including the foster mother who sobbed as she sat through the trial.

They locked him in his bedroom so he could not get up at night and eat.

“Day after day, this child was screamed at, he was deprived of food, he was deprived of fresh air,” said Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann, who called Khalil’s death “inevitable” given the abuse.

Khalil’s death was only the latest in a string of homicide cases in Philadelphia involving vulnerable children who were starved or severely malnourished.

Both Cuffie and Hadi have high school degrees, and they seemingly provided at least basic care to the younger sister, who attended a public preschool.
Defense lawyers for both argued that their clients were guilty of only gross neglect for ignoring what they called Khalil’s medical problems.

Hadi’s lawyer, Derrick Coker, argued that his client moved out several months before Khalil’s death, and that Cuffie inflicted more of the beatings.

“Does that matter?” Judge Barbara McDermott asked Friday, cutting him off. The defendants had agreed to a nonjury trial, leaving the case in McDermott’s hands.
She told lawyers during their closing arguments that she was deciding between first- and third-degree.

She also convicted both parents of child endangerment and aggravated assault. They face at least 20 to 40 years in prison when they are sentenced on Nov. 26.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/pa-parents-convicted-third-degree-murder-horrible-abuse-6-year-old-boy-article-1.1470059#ixzz2gBvZqi8X

It is hard to believe that two parents could be so cruel and over such an extended period of time.  Third degree doesn't see like enough.  I hope and pray they both get the maximum sentence but they probably won't.

I hope their fellow convicts teach them a few things about beatings and torture.