Neighbors Reported Abuse Before Disabled Boy Died
By Shana Gruskin, Staff Writer
Originally published in the Sun Sentinel November 9, 2001
On July 14, the day the disabled boy who lived across the street died, Jovana Gomez angrily called the state agency responsible for keeping children safe.
It was her second phone call to the Department of Children & Families. She had placed the first about three weeks earlier, when she warned counselors at the state's abuse hotline that 9-year-old Michael Bernard and his two brothers were living in filth and going hungry. She was one of at least three neighbors to do so.
"When I found out Michael was dead, I called again," Gomez said. "…I said, 'Why didn't anyone come out when I called?' It's not fair he had to die in that manner."
Michael suffered from cerebral palsy, seizures and respiratory problems. He used a wheelchair to get around and made crying sounds to communicate. On the 14th, he suffocated in the plastic pocket of a screen enclosure that surrounded his bed. His father told police he put Michael to bed at 11 p.m. July 13. No one checked on him until 4:30 p.m. the next day, when his 11-year-old brother came home from a friend's house and asked his mother where Michael was.
When Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Detective John Carney arrived on the scene, he found insects in Michael's bed and throughout the house. In court documents, he described the home as "extremely unkempt, cluttered and generally in an unhealthy state."
This week police charged Michael's mother, Donna Deeson, 34, with aggravated manslaughter in connection with her son's death. Deeson has past arrests for burglary and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according court documents. As of Thursday night, Deeson remained in jail with bail set at $10,000, and authorities were looking for his father, David Bernard, 47, to serve a warrant charging him with neglect of a child causing great bodily harm.
Palm Beach Sheriff's Office records show police were called out to Michael's home, on Mercury Street west of West Palm Beach, at least 18 times in the past year and a half. Three of those calls, made before Michael's death, were child abuse-related.
Gomez and Kathi Oen, part of a neighborhood crime watch, said they called the abuse hotline in June after holding a captains' meeting. Oen said she had been encouraged to call by a Sheriff's Office official.
Deeson's home, both women said, always was crowded with people partying until all hours of the night. Oen said Michael's 11-year-old brother would spend days at neighbors' homes without his mother ever checking on him. And Deeson had been seen taking her 2-year-old son, who is deaf, out on cold nights with nothing on but a diaper, both women said.
Gomez said she had been to the home only once and was shocked by the deplorable condition. "There was filth everywhere on the floor," she said. "… When I went in, there was a pool of urine around [Michael]."
Oen said she could smell the house from the porch. "I got as far as the front door, I got a little peek inside. No way was I going in there. It was so obvious that the children were not being cared for."
Both said they never got a call back from a state child abuse investigator inquiring about the children. Nor did they hear of anyone from the department going door-to-door to check on the family.
"I don't feel bad for calling, I think they need to really look at their system," Oen said. "I know this is one child out of thousands, and I'm sure they get thousands of reports, but three phone calls…"
Laura Botting, department spokeswoman, said after Michael's death the state agency removed his brothers from the home and placed them in shelter care. Citing confidentiality, she has declined to comment on whether the department was involved with the family.
But on Thursday, David May, Children & Families district administrator in Palm Beach County, said he planned to petition the court for permission to release information about the case.
"I believe that it is in the best interest of children—and those that work to keep them safe—to inform the public about the department's involvement, findings and actions in this case," May wrote in a news release.
But for the neighbors, any intervention by the department has come too late to protect the vulnerable little boy.
"That's something they're supposed to take care of…," Gomez said. "It was pretty betraying for them not to come out and do something."
