Report faults DCF in tossed baby case

Foster care caseworkers were so focused on helping 17-year-old Jasmine Bedwell succeed, they overlooked her romance with an abusive man and underestimated the danger he posed to her infant son.

Early on, they even encouraged her boyfriend, a violent criminal with a history of domestic violence, to help care for her baby.

"The focus of the safety interventions appeared to be primarily focused on Ms. Bedwell's situation, lacking a distinct and separate perspective for the welfare of her child," officials wrote in a state report released Wednesday.

Workers neglected to run a background check on Richard McTear Jr., 21, of Tampa, when he got involved with Bedwell, who was living on her own but being supervised by the state.

Twice she told those watching out for her that McTear had beaten her. She said he had threatened to kill her son. Still, they trusted her when she agreed not to see him again and allowed her to decide whether to take her son to live elsewhere.

McTear is accused of kicking down her door May 5, hitting her, throwing 3-month-old Emanuel Murray Jr. on a concrete floor, then kidnapping the baby and tossing him from a car window along Interstate 275.

Emanuel died. McTear remains jailed on murder and kidnapping charges.

"We dropped the ball," said Jeff Rainey, chief operating officer of Hillsborough Kids Inc., the Tampa agency that oversees local foster care programs for the state.

The 13-page Florida Department of Children & Families investigation comes three weeks after a preliminary report found Bedwell was a capable mother doing everything she could to keep her son safe.

"It would have been nice if we would have looked a lot harder at Mr. McTear as a potential threat to the child, and that was not done," said Nick Cox, regional director for DCF's SunCoast Region, which includes Hillsborough County.

It is unclear when the background check on McTear was completed.

DCF questions whether Bedwell should even have been enrolled in the Independent Living program, which allows responsible teenagers in foster care to live independently before they turn 18. The program provides support so the teens can learn life skills, such as paying bills, before they age out of protective custody.

In hindsight, Cox said, Bedwell wasn't ready for such freedom.

But the teen adamantly opposed going back to a foster home, Rainey said. Her caseworkers feared she would run away. At least in the program, they could monitor her and Emanuel, though he wasn't in state custody, and offer support.

"We felt like it was the right choice at the time," Rainey said. "It will be something all of us struggle with for a long time."

The report also notes that the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, which investigates child abuse and neglect, deemed the threat to Bedwell as "intermediate" based on the criminal histories of Bedwell and McTear.

That threat dropped to "low" after Bedwell filed an injunction to keep McTear away and said she would follow through on a court order. She didn't.

DCF officials said the investigator "took appropriate steps ... but missed an opportunity to more accurately assess the risk" by not fully considering the implications of McTear's previous criminal charges, including kidnapping and burglary.

Caseworkers visited Bedwell more than 60 times in the past year. A supervisor and other team members documented reviews almost monthly. The workers had a "positive rapport with Ms. Bedwell and a genuine concern for the well-being of Ms. Bedwell and her baby," investigators said.

But somewhere along the line, they got too close, especially one worker.

"She almost became like a sibling or a friend, which is fine," Cox said. "She was working that hard to make her Bedwell succeed. But we've got to remember we sit in the role of the parents when a child is in our care."