MARCHELLA PIERCE - 4 yo (2010) - Brooklyn/NYC NY

She was drugged, tied to a bed and died at 4 years of age

May 09, 2011 08:57




New York: She died in September by the ugliest means, weighing an unthinkable 18 pounds, half of what a 4-year-old ought to. She withered in poverty in a home in Brooklyn where the authorities said she had been drugged and often bound to a toddler bed by her mother, having realized a bare thimble's worth of living.

The horrid nature of Marchella Pierce's death produced four arrests. This week, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, is convening a grand jury to explore what he called "evidence of alleged systemic failures" in New York City's child welfare agency, which had monitored the girl's family.

An examination of Marchella's bleak, fleeting life, drawn from interviews with relatives, neighbors and law enforcement authorities, as well as from legal documents, shows that almost nothing went right for her. She entered the world prematurely with underdeveloped lungs. When she was not in a hospital, she was being raised in the uproar of a helter-skelter, combative family struggling with drugs. And when she came under the watch of the city's Administration for Children's Services, an agency remade a number of times after child deaths, her well-being fell to caseworkers who, prosecutors say, essentially ignored the family.

Marchella's household was brought to the agency's attention in late 2009, yet for several months after that it appears no one there knew that the girl, hospitalized for most of her life, even existed. After she was taken home from a nursing home, she was supposed to be looked after by not one but two sets of caseworkers, one set from the city and one from a private agency under contract to the city.

Although Children's Services ended that contract last year, records make clear that it had known for years that the private agency had troubles, including making insufficient visits to families.

Marchella's mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, 31, is charged with murder, and her grandmother, Loretta Brett, 56, with manslaughter. Both are in jail awaiting trial. Damon Adams, 37, a Children's Services caseworker, and his supervisor, Chereece Bell, 34, are charged with criminally negligent homicide; it is thought to be the first time that city child welfare workers have been incriminated in a death. Prosecutors said that Mr. Adams had not made required visits to the family and lied about it, and that Ms. Bell had failed to supervise him. Both have left the agency.

All four have said they are innocent. None would comment for this article.

Other relatives of Marchella are dismayed about what happened to her. "It's wrong," the child's great-aunt, Levonnia Parnell, said. "That's not a child that asked to be here. No child deserves what she got. She got a nightmare."

The Marcy Houses public housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is where Marchella's parents grew up and where their futures seemed to freeze.

Her great-grandmother Leola Brown lived in a jam packed apartment with her daughters, Loretta and Martha, and eventually Martha's two children and Loretta's daughter, Carlotta. Martha, a nurse, died young of cancer. Husbands and fathers were absent.

Loretta Brett and Carlotta, both wafer-thin, were known as truculent people with fiery tempers. Neighbors said they regularly smoked marijuana and crack. The police arrested Carlotta twice for criminal possession of marijuana and once for assault.

"Carlotta was a troublemaker," a neighbor, Evelyn Rizzo, said of Marchella's mother. "You'd look at her and that was enough to make trouble."

She said Ms. Brett-Pierce once threw a padlock at her, hitting her in the face. Another neighbor said in a police report that Ms. Brett had punched her while Ms. Brett-Pierce smashed her with a bat.

"They were just evil," said Elizabeth Soto, who also lived in the building.

Ms. Brett cut her in the head with a razor blade, she said. When Ms. Soto was pregnant, she said, Ms. Brett-Pierce threatened "to give me an abortion."

The police were called several times, and Ms. Soto said she got an order of protection against the two women.

Ms. Brett-Pierce listed herself on her MySpace page as a model and an entrepreneur, but relatives said she never worked. Years ago, she began dating Tyrone Pierce, who lived in a companion building. In 1996, at 16, he was arrested twice on drug charges.

Antagonized neighbors finally began a petition to have the Bretts kicked out. And the Bretts had another problem: The lease was in Leola Brown's name, and she died in 2001.

Court papers say Ms. Brett and Ms. Brett-Pierce forged Leola's name on documents after she was dead, to try to claim the apartment. In 2005, the New York City Housing Authority evicted them.

They moved nearby, and then to a third-floor apartment on Madison Street, also in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Mr. Pierce, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to robbery in 1998 after being accused of a string of thefts as well as drug possession. In June 2004, he was released from prison on parole, which he violated several months later by going to South Carolina for his mother's funeral without permission. Returned to prison, he was in a cell when his son was born. He got out in September 2005. Soon, Ms. Brett-Pierce was again pregnant, with twins.

The Longest Odds

Marchella weighed 1 pound 4 ounces when she was born, prematurely, on April 3, 2006. A relative recalls thinking she was about the size of a one-liter Pepsi bottle. A twin sister, born first, died. Her name was Miracle.

Marchella had a fluty whisper of a voice. Too fragile for the outside world, she lived amid a swirl of doctors and nurses, shuffled among at least six health care facilities. To help her breathe, she had a tracheal tube, which required regular cleaning.

In mid-2009, in final preparation for family life, she entered the Northwoods Rehabilitation and Extended Care Facility at Hilltop, near Schenectady, N.Y., about 170 miles from Brooklyn. For years, the State Health Department had faulted it for myriad violations, including neglect and medication errors. In 2007, regulators put Northwoods on a federal watch list of homes with persistent serious problems. It was in bankruptcy until a new owner bought it last summer.

Marchella's parents visited her and told relatives they got training at Northwoods to care for her. Ms. Brett-Pierce would take a cab,for $130 each way. "She took cabs everywhere," Shaquanna Parnell, her sister-in-law, said. "That was her."

By then, the parents had separated. Ms. Brett-Pierce was also pregnant with her third child.

The household was anything but peaceful. "They fought a lot," Ms. Parnell, a school crossing guard, said. Ms. Brett-Pierce, furious that Mr. Pierce did not help financially, would refuse to let him see his son, Ms. Parnell said.

"She would call me and leave messages on my machine, 'I'm going to hurt him,' " Ms. Parnell said, adding, "Carlotta talked a lot of mouth."

On February 9, 2009, Mr. Pierce called the police, saying his wife would not let him get his clothes. When they arrived he was gone. That October, the authorities said, she called the police about him, saying he had slapped her. The police said she had a cut inside her lip. He was gone when they arrived. They returned several times but did not find him.

Mr. Pierce, 31, would not comment for this article. After Marchella's death, he said he knew nothing of her being abused.

In November 2009, the family came to the attention of the child protection agency. Ms. Brett-Pierce gave birth to another son and tested positive for drugs. The case was assigned to the Child Development Support Corporation; since 1987, it had had a contract to furnish preventive services to at-risk Brooklyn families. Ms. Brett-Pierce was enrolled in drug treatment but was far from compliant. And according to Children's Services, the private agency never made anything near the specified number of visits to the home.

On December 7, the police stopped by Madison Street again, following up on the October assault complaint.

Ms. Brett-Pierce would not let them in, but they found Mr. Pierce outside and arrested him. It is unclear what happened to the case, but he served no jail time.

Police protocol is to notify the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment when domestic abuse occurs and children are in the home. The police did not do so, because, they said, they were unaware there were children in the home.

Two months later, on February 9, 2010, after 10 months at Northwoods, Marchella was discharged. It is not clear if the nursing home knew that the parents were feuding and that the mother was a drug user being monitored by Children's Services. Both Children's Services and the private agency said they doubted they knew then that Marchella even existed; she was still in the nursing home when the complaint about her mother's drug use came in, and it is not known whether caseworkers had compiled a full family history.

And so a girl weighing a slight 26 pounds entered the chaotic world of her mother to begin the final sequence in a life that had had no good ones.

The Madison Street apartment was cramped. One bedroom was used for storage. Ms. Brett-Pierce shared another with her two sons. Marchella slept with her grandmother in the third. Ms. Brett-Pierce's cousins took the living room.

Things quickly fell apart. A month after Marchella came home, Ms. Brett-Pierce took her to the hospital because the breathing tube had malfunctioned. Doctors found the mother oddly insouciant, and she refused to be taught how to tend the tube. A call was made to the child abuse registry.

Children's Services sent an investigator to the home, about the only action it found appropriate in a blistering post-mortem investigation of its actions in the case. The mother was reported to be hostile and in need of evaluation.

The agency assigned the family to one of its own caseworkers, Mr. Adams, who had joined it in 2006. He was a graduate of Tufts University, where he studied psychology and childhood development and was a star athlete. For the next three months, both he and the Child Development Support Corporation were supposed to be looking out for Marchella.

In 2005, the city had put the support corporation on a watch list for poor performance, and the next year the city gave it a "needs improvement" rating. In March 2008, an audit by the city comptroller found it made insufficient visits to families and did not test parents in substance abuse treatment.

The corporation's contract expired at the end of 2008. Despite the negative audit, Children's Services renewed the contract to June 30, 2010.

According to Children's Services, the private agency recommended in May that the Pierce case be closed, saying the home was stable and the children were safe. Yet there was only one visit in which Marchella was reported seen. Moreover, the drug treatment program had told the private agency that Ms. Brett-Pierce continued to abuse drugs and had threatened an employee.

When Ms. Brett-Pierce tested positive again for marijuana, Children's Services decided to keep the case open.

Marcia Rowe-Riddick, the executive director of the support corporation, said it felt its work was improving. But in April 2010, when the city announced new contracts, it was not allowed to bid because of "performance issues."

Ms. Rowe-Riddick said that Children's Services had the records from the Brett-Pierce case and that she did not know whether her agency had done anything wrong. Those assigned to the case, she said, are gone, laid off after the city contract ended.

John B. Mattingly, the Children's Services commissioner, declined to be interviewed for this article, saying it was inappropriate with the pending grand jury inquiry.

In the Madison Street home, drugs remained common. In June, Loretta Brett was arrested for possession of marijuana; she had four prior arrests, including ones for robbery and assault.

By July 1, Mr. Adams was the only caseworker for Marchella's family. Colleagues said that he was diligent and that caseworkers juggled impossible workloads. They said they were forced to assign their own priorities and decide which households to visit and which to skip. "You ask yourself, if I don't do a visit, will this child die?" said Kelly Mares, a city caseworker supportive of Mr. Adams and his supervisor, Ms. Bell. "That's horrible. But that's what we have to do. The truth is any child can die if you don't make a visit."

The arrests have made things worse, she said. "I don't know how to do this job," she said. "We're terrified."

Children's Services, in its own investigation, said it was "questionable" that Mr. Adams had ever seen the family. After the child's death, the agency said, Mr. Adams documented visits he supposedly had made, and Ms. Bell documented meetings she said she had had with Mr. Adams. Ms. Bell had been with the agency 12 years, a married mother of two young children who was working on a double graduate degree.

Her lawyer said Ms. Bell had wanted Mr. Adams transferred because his work was substandard.

Mr. Adams, his lawyer said, knew of no transfer plans.

Relatives of Marchella said the girl had spent much of the time with her grandmother, Ms. Brett. As for Ms. Brett-Pierce, "she would shop, shop, shop," Shaquanna Parnell said.

Marchella kept losing weight. "She was thin but she didn't seem like a difficult child," said Keyba Wright, a sister of Mr. Pierce. She had trouble with solids, and Ms. Brett-Pierce sometimes fed her liquid nutrition products.

Levonnia Parnell, the great-aunt, invited Ms. Brett-Pierce and her children to a party in Harlem last July for her own son's high school graduation. It was the last time she saw Marchella. She wrapped the child in her arms.

She said Marchella's bones were visible through her flesh. She recalled, "People said, What happened to her?"

Twine on the Bedposts

Carlotta Brett-Pierce called 911 a little after 7 a.m. last Sept. 2 to say her daughter was unresponsive, her hands cold.

When an ambulance arrived, Marchella was dead. The police found marijuana and crack in the apartment, and signs of a horrifying existence.

Twine was knotted to the child's bedposts. Ligature marks scarred her ankles.

The authorities said Loretta Brett, the grandmother, told them Marchella had been tied up for part of each day for months, though Ms. Brett's lawyer denied she had said this. The girl had multiple bruises suggesting beatings, which prosecutors say both mother and grandmother inflicted. Blood speckled the wall and a video case the police fished out of the trash.

Prosecutors said Ms. Brett-Pierce had starved Marchella, force-fed her antihistamines and beaten her with the video case and a belt. Ms. Brett-Pierce told an officer she had tied Marchella to the bed because she was "wild" and would wake up at night to get food.

The coroner ruled the death a homicide and ascribed it to child abuse syndrome involving drug poisoning, blunt impact injuries and malnutrition.

Marchella's brothers, who were in good health, were taken by the authorities. Before her arrest, Ms. Brett, the grandmother, tried to gain custody, but she tested positive for marijuana.

Mr. Pierce is not working. Relatives say he never did. Since leaving prison in 2005, he has had 10 more arrests, including one in February for driving without a license and one in March for marijuana possession. He lives in Brooklyn with a girlfriend, a home health care aide who has several children.

Despite his instability and persistent arrests, he hopes to get custody of Marchella's brothers, now 6 and 1. They are with a foster family. He sees them one hour a week. At a recent hearing, his lawyer told the judge that Mr. Pierce wanted more time with them. A representative for the boys said that the older son had been asked and did not want to see his father longer -- that an hour a week was enough.

Woman accused of starving 4-year-old barred from court
By WILLIAM J. GORTA
Last Updated: 6:16 PM, September 14, 2011

The Brooklyn woman accused of starving and beating her 4-year-old daughter to death — and getting two ACS workers jammed up along the way — was briefly barred from returning to court today after copping an attitude with the judge.

Carlotta Brett-Pierce, who has already had several verbal dustups with Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Patricia DiMango, got tossed from her upcoming trial because she made disrespectful faces at DiMango and refused to sign an order of protection that the judge had just renewed.

“For the past year I been signing that,” said Brett-Pierce, who has complained bitterly about not seeing her other children. “I’m not signing it.”

DiMango twice asked Brett-Pierce to “please sign the form” before showing her the door.

“If she refuses to sign the order of protection . . . there’s no point for her to come to court,” DiMango said, adding that Brett-Pierce has “failed to cooperate, speaks out in court when she feels like it and is making faces – which I’ve ignored.”

DiMango eventually relented after Alan Stutman, Brett-Pierce’s lawyer, went downstairs to the holding cells and convinced his client to comply.

“In the calmness and tranquility of the pens, she did sign,” Stutman told DiMango.

“You are quite the persuasive attorney, Mr. Stutman,” the jurist replied.

Prosecutors revealed that Brett-Pierce and her mother, Loretta Brett, who is charged with manslaughter, had lengthy jailhouse conversations about the case that included admissions about acts against the child, assault, drug use and the weight of the victim, Marchella Brett-Pierce, who weighed just 18 pounds when she died in September 2010.

“We were talking about the charges – these ridiculous charges. Yes,” Brett-Pierce blurted out.

The two ACS workers, caseworker Damon Adams and his supervisor Chereece Bell, were also in court to try and have the criminally negligent homicide charges against them thrown out.

Lawyers Anthony Grandenette and Joshua Horowitz argued that the ACS workers’ inaction did not create the risk of death.

DiMango said she would rule on their motion next month.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/woman_accused_of_starving_year_old_Sxzw8U4SaSRQV6n9hwQ0GJ

Brooklyn jurors today will begin reliving the horrific details in the
death of an emaciated little girl whose child-abuse case appalled the
city.
The murder trial of accused monster mom Carlotta
Brett-Pierce is set to open in Brooklyn Supreme Court, where jurors will
hear how she allegedly strapped her tiny daughter, Marchella
Brett-Pierce, to a bed and denied her food and water, leaving her skin
and bones.
The 4-year-old weighed just 18.9 pounds — about half
the size of a normal girl her age — when her battered body was found
inside her family’s dingy Madison Street apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant
in September 2010.
She was suffering from child-abuse syndrome,
including drug poisoning, blunt-impact injuries, malnutrition and
dehydration, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Marchella’s
6-year-old brother, Tymel, may be a key witness at his mother’s trial,
where he is expected to testify about seeing his mom smack his sister
with a belt and jam pills down her throat.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/mom_on_trial_in_kid_slay_horror_cSVpvzBOC5uKmRZoCEKubK#ixzz1sDGqcINK

The mother and grandmother of a 4-year-old found starved, battered and drugged went on trial Monday in the girl's death.
Carlotta Brett-Pierce and her mother, Loretta Brett, have pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter, respectively, in the death of Marchella Pierce.
The girl was found dead tied to a bed, and weighed 18 pounds, nearly
half the weight of an average 4-year-old. They say she died from
battered child syndrome.
Brett-Pierce's attorney has
said the woman was a good mother. Brett's attorney said the grandmother
was a caregiver and had tried to raise the children in the home, and
didn't know about the abuse. Two juries are hearing the case.
Two child welfare workers
assigned to Marchella's case also have been charged and are awaiting
trial; prosecutors said their negligence contributed to the girl's
demise. They have pleaded not guilty, saying they are being blamed for
crimes they didn't commit.
The Administration for
Children's Services became involved with the family after Brett-Pierce
gave birth to a boy who tested positive for drugs. Marchella had been
born premature with underdeveloped lungs and had serious trouble
breathing.
She had a breathing tube in
her throat and was allowed home for the first time from the hospital in
February 2011, when she weighed 26 pounds. By the time of her death,
she had wasted away. She had been tied to her bed for days, beaten and
had up to 30 adult doses of Benadryl and 60 doses of Claritin in her
system, prosecutors said.
After her death, the child
welfare agency announced it was enacting a series of changes to improve
how it handles families with complex medical issues. The City Council
also guaranteed $13.6 million in funding for services aimed at
preventing abuse and neglect.
The girl's death harkened
back to the 2006 case of Nixzmary Brown, a 7-year-old who died of abuse
and malnourishment under the noses of her teachers and ACS workers.
No caseworkers were charged in that case, but the agency also undertook a series of similar changes,
including adding more funding and implementing a new case tracking
system. Welfare workers have said they remain overwhelmed with cases.
Brooklyn State Supreme
Court Judge Patricia DiMango is presiding over the current trial, and
also presided over the trial for Nixzmary's mother, who was convicted
and is serving a prison sentence of up to 43 years. Nixzmary's
stepfather is serving 29 years on a manslaughter conviction for
delivering the fatal blow.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Battered-Drugged-Starved-Girl-Mother-Trial-Manslaughter-Murder-Carlotta-Brett-Pierce-147632705.html

April 19, 2012 4:59 PM

Boy, 6, testifies in death of 4-year-old sister, Marchella Pierce, who weighed 18 pounds when she died

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - The 6-year-old brother of a 4-year-old New York City girl who weighed less than 18 pounds when she died testifed in the murder case against his mother Thursday.

Tymel Pierce spoke from a closed-circuit TV in another part of the Brooklyn court while jurors watched.

The boy's mother, 30-year-old Carlotta Brett-Pierce, is charged with in the death of her daughter, Marchella Pierce.

The girl's grandmother, Loretta Brett, is also on trial in her death. Both women have pleaded not guilty.

Tymel Pierce said his sister rarely ate or was fed.

According to the New York Post, the 6-year-old said Thursday that he never saw his mother beat his sister.

Marchella was found dead in September 2010. She was tied to her bed, beaten, drugged and starved, prosecutors said.

At the time of her death, prosecutors said her stomach contained one kernel of corn.

Complete coverage of the death of Marchella Pierce on Crimesider

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57417248-504083/boy-6-testifies-in-death-of-4-year-old-sister-marchella-pierce-who-weighed-18-pounds-when-she-died/

these "women" need to b punished. even if a child has health problems its no excuse for her to b starved to death.

The grandmother of a 4-year-old Brooklyn girl who died in 2010 after
being battered and starved was found guilty of manslaughter on Friday.


A jury found the grandmother, Loretta Brett, guilty of the most serious charges in the death of the child, Marchella Pierce, and she faces up to 15 years in prison.

The girl’s mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, was convicted of murder on Wednesday by a separate jury. She faces up to life in prison. Both women are scheduled to be sentenced on June 6.

Ms. Brett’s lawyer, Julie Clark, said she planned to appeal and noted
that her client had been acquitted of an assault charge.

Two caseworkers for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services have also been charged. They have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors said the girl weighed about half what a healthy 4-year-old
should. When she was found in September 2010, she had been tied to her
bed, been beaten and had dozens of adult doses of Claritin and Benadryl in her system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/nyregion/grandmother-is-convicted-of-manslaughter-in-death-of-marchella-pierce.html

A Brooklyn woman was convicted of murder on Wednesday in the
death of her 4-year-old daughter, who had been tied to her bed with a jump rope, beaten, drugged and starved.


4-year-old Marchella Pierce weighed just 18.8 pounds
when she died, about half the normal weight for a child her age.
Jurrors deliberated for less than an hour before finding the mother,
Carlotta Brett-Pierce, guilty of the most serious charge in the 2010
death of her child, Marchella Pierce, in a case that shined new light on cracks in New York City’s child welfare system.

As she was led away, Ms. Brett-Pierce said she had been falsely charged.
Her lawyer, Alan Stutman, said that he would appeal and that the case
was more about a system that failed a mother who needed help.

Ms. Brett-Pierce faces a possible life term in prison. She is scheduled
to be sentenced June 6 by Justice Patricia M. DiMango of State Supreme
Court in Brooklyn, who has presided over other prominent child-abuse cases and is known for giving stiff sentences.

A jury is expected to begin deliberations on Thursday in a manslaughter
case against Ms. Brett-Pierce’s mother, Loretta Brett, in Marchella’s
death. Two caseworkers for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services have also been charged,
making them among the first social workers in the country to be held
criminally responsible for the death of a child on their watch. They
have pleaded not guilty.

Ms. Brett-Pierce was on the radar of the city’s child welfare system
after she gave birth to a boy in 2009 who tested positive for drugs. She
was in drug counseling, but no abuse cases were opened, and the agency
admitted it did not do enough to help her or her three children.

In 2006, Marchella was born premature and with severe medical problems,
according to testimony, and she spent most of her life in hospitals. She
was finally sent home with her mother and grandmother in February 2010.
Seven months later, she was dead, her ribs visible through bruised,
scarred and scratched skin. When the police found her on Sept. 2, 2010,
she had 60 adult doses of Claritin
and 30 doses of Benadryl in her system, a medical examiner said. Her
stomach contained one kernel of corn. She weighed 18.8 pounds, half the
weight of an average child her age.

“To me, at the time, it didn’t look bad,” Ms. Brett-Pierce said while
testifying in the trial. “She looked like a child who wasn’t sitting on
her booty in the hospital all day. She was outside running around for
the first time in her life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/nyregion/in-marchella-pierce-death-mother-is-convicted-of-murder.html

i realize that there r cases where cps do fail the children under their supervision, but this case doesnt feel that way. brett-pierce seems like a selfish, mean woman to me. ppl make their own choices and should b held responsible for them.