REBECCA RILEY - 4 yo (2006) - Brockton MA

A South Shore mother was found guilty
yesterday of second-degree murder in the death of her 4-year-old
daughter, Rebecca, who went to sleep one night after being given toxic
levels of psychotropic drugs and never woke up.
Carolyn Riley, 35, showed no visible emotion when the 12-member jury returned
the verdict after 19 hours of deliberations in Plymouth Superior Court.
Riley, her upper chest displaying a “Rebecca 12-06-06’’ tattoo that
reflected her daughter’s date of death, was handcuffed as soon as the
word guilty was uttered by the jury forewoman.
Before sentencing, Judge Charles Hely permitted the reading of a letter from
Ashley Davidson, 17, Riley’s first biological daughter, who as a
toddler was removed from her mother’s care, placed in a foster home,
and eventually adopted. The teenager condemned her mother for the cruel
fate she delivered Rebecca, as well as the tormenting memories left for
her and Rebecca’s two other siblings, ages 14 and 9, now both in foster
homes.
“When I think that you are my biological mother, I sometimes wonder if it is in my blood.
Will I grow up to be a mother like you?’’ said the letter, read by her
adoptive father, Bob Davidson.
Riley, who has an additional tattoo on her arm with the name Ashley, listened and stared at the floor.
The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment, with the possibility of
parole after 15 years, the mandatory punishment for a second-degree
murder conviction. It was one of the lesser offenses that the jury of
eight women and four men was allowed to consider in this first-degree
murder case.
As officers led Riley out of the courtroom, she looked at her mother, Valerie
Berio, a constant presence in the 3 1/2-week trial who was sobbing
among the spectators. Riley quietly wept as she was taken our to be
transported to MCI-Framingham.
While Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz praised the verdict as “a
small measure of justice for Rebecca,’’ the mother’s defense lawyer,
Michael Bourbeau, said the decision, which he plans to appeal, reflects
the jury’s judgment of “what kind of a mother she was,’’ as opposed to
the evidence in the case.
He had argued to jurors that medical evidence showed that Rebecca died of
fast-acting pneumonia, not drugs, and that the mother gave medications
based on the sometimes-flexible instructions of her child’s
psychiatrist.
Riley’s husband - Michael Riley, 37 - will be tried separately on the same
charges, and his case is scheduled to go to trial next month unless
yesterday’s result leads to a plea bargain.
Rebecca’s case attracted national attention to the expanding use and potential
abuse of giving psychotropic drugs to very young children. When Rebecca
died, she and her two older siblings, Gerard and Kaitlynne Riley, were
each on three potent psychiatric medications for bipolar and
hyperactivity disorders. Each of them went on the drugs at age 2.
Prosecutors say Carolyn and Michael
Riley, Weymouth High School graduates who had been living briefly in
Hull when Rebecca died, deliberately sought the psychiatric drugs for
their three children to scam their local Social Security office into
approving disability benefits.
But behind the twists of the case is the all-too-familiar tale of a deeply
troubled, financially strapped couple whose capacity to harm their
children became catastrophically evident - to their many doctors,
psychiatrists, teachers, and social workers - only when it was too late.
The prosecutors, Frank J. Middleton Jr. and Heather Bradley, depicted
Carolyn Riley as an unusual form of child abuser, a woman who used
three sedating medications, including Depakote, Seroquel, and
clonidine, to control her energetic toddlers and induce sleep.
Remarkably, prosecutors said, Carolyn Riley managed to obtain the drugs routinely
through prescriptions from Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, a Tufts Medical Center
psychiatrist who faces a medical malpractice lawsuit in the death and
agreed to testify only after being granted immunity from prosecution.
On the night Rebecca received her fatal overdose, her father, who had been
prone to violent outbursts, became irate about the child’s pleas to be
with her mother. Rebecca had been battling a respiratory illness for
days, and that night, according to housemates, Rebecca kept trying to
enter her parents’ bedroom, moaning, “Mommy, Mommy.’’
Prosecutors said that the mother, whom they portrayed as routinely putting her
husband’s needs above her children’s, went to the pill dispensers in
their Hull home. That night, the state said, Carolyn Riley gave the
coughing and feverish child as much as twice the girl’s daily dosages
of clonidine at once, the equivalent of seven tablets of .1 milligram
each.
Rebecca’s lifeless body, clad only in a pull-up diaper with a teddy bear beneath her head,
was discovered by her mother around 6 a.m. on Dec. 13, 2006, next to
her parents’ bed.
Her defense lawyers, however, portrayed Carolyn Riley as an overwhelmed
mother deserving of sympathy, a former foster child who was doing her
best to raise a family in which the adults and children all had mental
health problems.
If the mother had some lapses, her lawyers said, they had to be viewed in
light of the difficult choices of a woman struggling with poverty and a
domineering husband.
In the year before Rebecca died, Michael Riley saw the children sporadically.
He was barred from living with the family in a Weymouth housing
development because he had been charged with trying to sexually assault
and show pornographic pictures to Ashley during one of her visits with
the family.
The father, who was convicted of only the pornography charge and served a 2 1/2-year
prison term that ended this year, remains behind bars awaiting his
trial in the death of Rebecca.
The attachment of Carolyn Riley to her husband was a recurring theme in the
lengthy trial. As the mother waited over three days for a verdict,
sitting on a bench reading a romance novel and playing games on her
cellphone, she responded readily to reporters’ questions.
When asked about the prosecutor’s argument that she and her husband wanted
only to maximize their disability benefits, the mother, who speaks with
a soft, girlish voice, disputed that point. She said that Social
Security awards more money in total to a couple who file as unmarried
singles.
But, she said that she and Michael, together for more than 15 years,
chose to remain true to their status as a wedded couple.
“We would have gotten more money if we weren’t married,’’ she said.

There are mothers who get pregnant repeatedly but can't tolerate parenthood. Some men get woman pregnant repeatedly and beat the babies to death. IMO these people are psycopaths. Serial killers/abusers. It's not about poor parenting skills or poor anger control. Constantly getting a women pregnant or getting pregnant without wanting to parent a child is a deliberate act. They enjoy creating life then destroying it. As a society we need to look at all these cases differently IMO and stop pretending all these pregnancies were an accident. Look at Ron Cummings for instance. He's fathered 3 children to 2 young girls. I'm sure he would have got Misty pregnant too before long. He was a druggie who didn't work much over the years. Now one of his children is missing. That's no accident either in my opinion. Look at Ms Riley here. She's constantly got pregnant but clearly did not want to be a parent. They're psycopaths IMO and so are the women who get pregnant all the time and have numerous abortions. Pre-natal serial killers if you ask me. Like most serial killers they eventually need more stimulation so they go through with a birth and throw the baby in the trash can the minute it's born. Then they graduate to keeping it for a while and abusing it then they murder the child.

As for this new trend in America of having toddlers on these sorts of drugs.....WTF is up with that? In this case Riley had already been judged unfit to parent her previous children. This psychotherapist did not do a thorough evaluation of Rebecca and took the psycho mothers word for it that the child needed drugs. She got away with it. She is culpable to murder IMO. I'm bloody speechless!!!!!!!

BROCKTON - Michael and Carolyn Riley are
still apparently deeply in love, relatives say, describing them as a
couple who married 16 years ago after graduating from Weymouth High
School and kept close as they struggled with mental disorders and money
woes.
But in a courtroom yesterday, prosecutors portrayed them as a murderous
couple who, on a December night in 2006, gave a fatal overdose of
psychotropic drugs to the youngest of their three children, 4-year-old
Rebecca. She was found dead the next morning on the floor next to her
parents’ bed in their Hull home.
Carolyn Riley, 35, was convicted last month of second-degree murder in the
case. Yesterday, the case that has drawn national attention focused on
Michael Riley, who is charged with first-degree murder.
During opening statements, prosecutor Frank J. Middleton Jr. portrayed the
father as a domineering, violent figure in the family who called
Rebecca “a little wench,’’ among other perverse names.
He said Michael Riley, in the weeks before Rebecca died, continually
ordered his wife to give the sedating medications to the three
children, each of whom had been diagnosed with bipolar and
hyperactivity disorders, so he could relax at home.
Sometimes, the prosecutor said, the children were medicated so they would fall asleep as early as 5 p.m.
Middleton said the 37-year-old defendant was the mastermind behind a scheme to
get all three children diagnosed with mental disorders so they would
qualify for Social Security payments.
The family’s sole income, Middleton said, was about $2,000 a month in federal disability payments.
“That is what’s driving the train - it’s all about money,’’ Middleton said to the 16 jurors.
Defense lawyer John Darrell, however, depicted the father as a man with bipolar
disorder who tried to do his best for his financially strapped family,
including trying to secure as much federal disability money as possible.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed to say, ‘I’m in hard times, I need help,’ ’’ Darrell said.
Darrell suggested the child’s tragic death on Dec. 13, 2006, was largely due to
the girl’s psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts Medical Center. He
said she wrongfully prescribed three potent psychiatric drugs for
Rebecca and failed to instruct the mother on the dangers of excessive
dosages.
While saying that Carolyn Riley was the sole parent who administered the drugs to the
girl, Darrell did not directly blame the mother in the girl’s death.
“This is a family that constantly and regularly had taken care of its children,’’ Darrell said.
As the prosecutor portrayed the father as unemotional in the hours after
Rebecca’s death, Darrell said such superficial observation said nothing
about his true feelings. Yesterday, as the prosecutor showed jurors a
blown-up photograph of Rebecca’s dead body, clad only in a pull-up
diaper and with foam coming out of her mouth, Michael Riley put his
head into his hands and grimaced.
Even as they both faced first-degree murder charges and the possibility of
life imprisonment without parole, the couple has never blamed each
other in their legal defense. During Carolyn’s three-week trial before
Judge Charles Hely, her lawyers portrayed the father as a volatile
tyrant; however, they never went so far as to blame him for ordering
dangerous overdoses of medications or say that Carolyn was scared to
defy him.
The couple, both behind bars, have had limited contact since their arrest in February
2007. Michael Riley has been held at the Plymouth County House of
Correction awaiting trial. Just last fall, he finished serving a
two-year prison term for showing pornography to Rebecca’s 13-year-old
half-sister during a 2005 visit to the family’s home.
After a jury convicted Carolyn Riley of the lesser charge of second-degree
murder, following 19 hours of deliberations, she was sentenced to a
mandatory life sentence, with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
Her defense was largely that she followed Kifuji’s orders and that Rebecca
died of aggressive pneumonia, not an overdose of clonidine, one of the
three drugs that the girl was on.
Darrell said yesterday that he has not made a decision about whether to put Michael Riley on the stand.
However, if the father were to take the stand, his past criminal record - likely
to be considered relevant if he testified - could be elicited by
prosecutors.

South Shore father of three was convicted today of first-degree murder
for killing his 4-year-old daughter with an overdose of a psychotropic
drug that he and his wife had nicknamed "happy medicine."
Michael Riley, 37, faces a mandatory sentence
of life in prison without parole for the murder of his daughter
Rebecca. In a separate trial in the same case, his wife, Carolyn, 35,
was convicted Feb. 9 of second-degree murder.

The preschooler's body, clad only in a pull-up diaper, was found
lifeless on the floor next to her parents' bed during the early morning
hours of Dec. 13, 2006. Prosecutors said the girl was given a lethal
overdose of clonidine the night before when the child kept crying out
“Mommy! Mommy!" while battling a severe respiratory illness.

The jury rejected the father’s defense that he and his wife simply
followed the dosage advice of Rebecca’s child psychiatrist and that the
girl’s death was due to a fast-acting pneumonia.After the verdict, Plymouth District
Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said he believes the psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko
Kifuji, who prescribed the drugs to Rebecca, should not be allowed to
practice medicine in Massachusetts, and he will ask the Board of
Registration to reopen an investigation into her medical care.

"Dr. Kifuji is unfit to have a medical license," he said after the
verdict was announced. "If what Dr. Kifuji did in this case is the
acceptable standard of care for children in Massachusetts, then there is
something very wrong in this state."

Shortly after Rebecca died, Kifuji had entered into a voluntary
agreement with the board to halt her practice. But two years later,
after a grand jury declined to indict her and the board conducted its
own inquiry, the board last fall allowed her to return to practice. She
is currently seeing patients at Tufts Medical Center.

Cruz said he will collect all the information involving Kifuji that
surfaced during both trials -- she was called as a witness in both cases
-- and forward it to the state board in hopes they will act against the
doctor.

The case drew national attention to the use of psychotropic drugs in
young children, and the way parents can exploit the medical and social
service system designed to help indigent families.

When Rebecca died, she and her two siblings, then 11 and 6, were each
diagnosed by Kifuji with bipolar and hyperactivity disorders and put on
three mood-altering drugs.

Prosecutors said Rebecca’s parents wanted the children prescribed
psychiatric drugs so the children could be quieted down at will, and to
help them qualify for federal benefits to help low-income families with
mentally or physically disabled children. Neither of the parents
worked, and they also qualified for adult disability benefits.

While she faces a medical malpractice suit filed by the administrator
of Rebecca’s estate, Kifuji has resumed practicing at Tufts Medical
Center with no restrictions.

In closing arguments in Michael Riley’s trial, both sides lambasted
Kifuji for her careless attention to Rebecca. The father's attorney,
John Darrell, said that Kifuji “authorized every piece of that poison”
that killed Rebecca; and prosecutor Frank J. Middleton referred to her
as a “quack” and a “disgrace” to the medical profession.

Darrell declined comment after the verdict.

Michael Riley

But prosecutors emphasized to jurors that it was the parents who
actually delivered the lethal dosage of medication to Rebecca, acting as
a team devoted more to each other than to their children.

In both trials, the medical examiner and other toxicology experts
said the girl’s dead body contained a toxic level of clonidine – a
blood-pressure medication that is also used as a sedating drug for
children with hyperactivity disorder. Other medical experts did testify
that the girl also had an aggressive pneumonia at the time of her death.

Both parents, who graduated from Weymouth High School around the same
time and last lived in Hull, have alleged that they simply followed
Kifuji's instructions in dispensing medications, and that the doctor
allowed some flexibility in dosages.

They said the science of measuring clonidine in a dead body is
unreliable. Their lawyers have also argued that the girl died of a
fast-acting pneumonia, and her death could not have been anticipated by
any reasonable parent.

But the prosecutor told jurors that Michael and Carolyn Riley were
far from loving parents and instead were callous individuals who turned
to psychiatric pills to silence their children when they made
inconvenient requests.
“It’s such an outrageous case of child abuse,” Middleton said.

Before the father was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Charles Hely,
Ashley Davidson, a high school student and the half-sister of Rebecca,
delivered a victim impact statement, faulting both parents.

"Knowing I will never see Rebecca again – you don't know how much
that hurts,'' she said.

Michael Riley's conviction will automatically be reviewed by the
Supreme Judicial Court.

Years before she became a board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko
Kifuji was diagnosing children as young as 2 as bipolar and hyperactive –
and prescribing powerful cocktails of mood-altering drugs to quiet
them.
By the time Kifuji finally passed the psychiatric board exam – on her
fourth try – one of her youngest patients, Rebecca Riley, had a little
more than a year to live. Her parents murdered the 4-year-old by
overdosing her with one of the drugs Kifuji prescribed.
Both of Rebecca’s parents are in prison for her murder. Her mother,
Carolyn, was convicted in February; her father, Michael, in March.
Now the spotlight is on the controversial doctor who testified in
both trials in exchange for immunity. Kifuji and her employer, Tufts
Medical Center, face a malpractice lawsuit filed by Norwell attorney
Brian Clerkin, the court-appointed administrator for Rebecca’s estate,
which was created for the benefit Rebecca’s brother and sister, who
are now 14 and 9.
Glimpses into Kifuji’s background and treatment methods are part of a
lengthy deposition she gave in December in the civil suit. The final
pretrial hearing in the case is scheduled for June 1.
Kifuji diagnosed Rebecca Riley and her sister with mental illness and
prescribed drugs for both girls and their brother. Prosecutors in the
parents’ murder trials said the Rileys killed Rebecca because they
couldn’t get disability payments for her, as they had with their two
other kids.
According to the plaintiff’s lawyer in the malpractice suit, Benjamin
P. Novotny, of the Boston firm Lubin and Meyer, Kifuji said she
“trusted the mother” (Carolyn Riley) to tell her how the children were
behaving and reacting to the drugs. She relied almost exclusively on
what Carolyn told her about the kids when diagnosing them and ordering
increasing amounts of drugs for them.
Kifuji also trusted the mother to keep tabs on Rebecca’s heart rate
and blood pressure for signs of problems with the four drugs she was on.
Kifuji, a pediatrician who later became a psychiatrist, told Novotny
during the deposition that she didn’t realize she had a blood pressure
cuff in her office and could check the girl’s vital signs herself until
after Rebecca was dead. She said she didn’t take Rebecca’s pulse with
her fingers because Carolyn Riley told her the child’s pulse “was within
normal range.”
Kifuji also told Novotny during the deposition:
She prescribed clonidine – the drug that killed Rebecca – during the
child’s first visit to control the “impulsivity” that Carolyn Riley
described. Rebecca was 2 at the time.
She originally came to the United States from her native Japan in
1990 to research dust allergies in children. She switched her training
to psychiatry when she went to New England Medical Center in 1994.
In 2000, she took a job at Baystate Medical Services in Springfield
because it meant she wouldn’t have to return to Japan for two years and
wait for an H-1 work visa.
She diagnosed dozens of children as bipolar or having attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or both, and estimated that she
prescribed drugs for 99 percent of her pediatric patients.
She usually saw Rebecca for 20 minutes at each office visit because
she was seeing all three Riley children in an hour.
She explained that some researchers believe the area of the brain
called the amygdala is different in people with bipolar disease. But she
admitted she didn’t know where the amygdala is in the brain.
Kifuji’s medical career has taken her from Tokyo to Detroit and
Boston. She was living in Somerville as of December.
She grew up in Kumamoto, Japan, on the southwest tip of the island of
Kyushu, and graduated from Tokyo Women’s Medical College in 1981.
She’s been a permanent legal resident of the U.S. since 1990, and has
held a medical license here since 1999.
She worked at Baystate in Springfield from 2000-03. Her outpatients
there included the Rileys’ two older children, whom she also diagnosed
as bipolar with ADHD.
After Rebecca’s death in December 2006, Tufts Medical Center placed
Kifuji on paid leave after the psychiatrist agreed not to practice
medicine. The state Board of Registration in Medicine reinstated her
license this past September after Plymouth County District Attorney
Timothy Cruz announced that a grand jury would not bring criminal
charges against her.
In January, Tufts reaffirmed its support for Kifuji and her treatment
methods, saying she provided “appropriate” care to Rebecca Riley.
Kifuji began seeing patients again in the fall. As of December, she
was seeing five outpatients – four children and one adult – and working
with a state-funded child psychiatric access program.

OMG we have to do something. I can't believe anyone thinks it's ok for this woman to be anywhere near children! She should have had her license revoked and be in jail IMO. If Tufts think what she did was ok then they need to be investigated too. Who can we write to about this please? Do you have a child's commissioner or something? We have one - they are like an Ombudsman for children and we also have a Minister for children in Parliament. What childrens health departments do you have we can write too? Oprah Winfrey, LK? I don't know what to do but we've got to do something!

Kiwi:
The Massachusetts Medical Board would oversee her license.
Here's the link to the page for Physician Complaints:

http://www.massmedboard.org/consumer/complaint.shtm

Thanks Tom I doubt that I can make an official complaint but I'll make some noise and see what happens.

A four-and-a-half year-old child is discovered dead one morning on
the floor at the foot of her parents’ bed. Despite the fact that she
had apparently been ailing for a few days, neither parent made any
effort to seek medical assistance.
Did Rebecca Riley die a natural death from pneumonia, and were her
parents justified in not realizing the gravity of her condition? Or was
the main cause of Rebecca’s death the fact that Michael and Carolyn
Riley had been purposely over-medicating the child for most of her short
life?
Those are the questions at the heart of this trial from southeastern
Massachusetts, where 37-year-old Michael Riley stands trial for his
daughter’s murder. Coverage of MA v. Riley begins Tuesday on In Session.