Sandy Hodson :
April 9, 2011
The first time Tom and April Beasley's oldest son nearly died, the doctors believed the child had excessive fluid on his brain.
Thomas G. Beasley Jr.: Man was sentenced to 110 years for the abuse of his sons, one of whom lives with permanent brain damage.
Herbert Kernaghan: Former judge sent the boys back to their parents several times when child services brought the case to court.
A month later, on Nov. 7, 2001, when they brought the screaming and temporarily blinded 3-year-old back to the Medical College of Georgia Children's Medical Center, the attending neurologist was suspicious. The earlier treatment should have worked.
The doctor ordered a full MRI. The test found that in addition to two brain injuries, the child had four healing rib fractures.
"Dr. (Yong) Park further added that there was no way to determine the age of these injuries, but there was no doubt that (the boy) was a victim of child abuse," Lee Woods, then a Richmond County detective, wrote in a report.
Richmond County Division of Family and Children Services caseworker Monique Duggins obtained temporary custody of the boy and his infant brother.
Dr. Elizabeth Sekul also told Juvenile Court Judge Herbert Kernaghan at a hearing on Dec. 18, 2001, that the older Beasley son was abused. She explained that the toddler had suffered a shear brain injury, which indicates shaken baby syndrome. Someone shook the child while squeezing him around the torso, she believed.
The physicians, the DFCS caseworker, and the Court Appointed Special Advocate all believed the children needed protection. But Kernaghan threw out the child advocate's testimony, and less than a month after doctors concluded that the 3-year-old suffered two life-threatening events, the judge sent the Beasley children home.
It was the first time the child protective services system failed the children, but not the last, according to approximately 5,000 pages of documents
The Augusta Chronicle reviewed. Police reports, hospital records, interviews, and reports by DFCS and Court Appointed Special Advocates show Kernaghan, and later social workers, ignored attempts to expose Beasley.
Because the system operates in secrecy, seven more years would pass before anyone outside this confidential circle learned what Beasley was doing to his children and how the system had failed to protect them.
As Assistant District Attorney Hank Syms would tell a jury in November, why Tom Beasley was able to abuse his sons for years -- until the older boy suffered permanent brain damage and both boys endured suicidal depression while still in grade school -- might never be understood.
THE PROSECUTOR'S FILE on the Beasleys revealed that several people tried to save the children, but the system brushed them off.
When Kernaghan sent the boys back to their parents, Duggins, the caseworker, was so concerned that she went to those in charge of the Augusta DFCS office, who consulted higher-ups in Atlanta. They got Special Assistant Attorney General Gary Glover to ask Kernaghan to reconsider his order, but the judge denied the request in July 2002, and nothing further was done.
Lee Woods, the sheriff's detective, sought to have Beasley prosecuted in late 2001 and into 2002, but the then-3-year-old son was too young or too scared to say what happened to him. That, compounded by the inability to determine when the boy was injured and who was responsible, made prosecution impossible, then-Chief Assistant District Attorney Bill Bowcutt explained to Woods.
Juvenile Court Judge Willie Saunders, who prosecuted child cruelty cases before leaving the district attorney's office for private practice, said it's common for an abused child to deny it. Sometimes, it takes prolonged age-appropriate counseling and time for a child to open up. And if a child fears he will be taken from his home, even an abusive one, it's traumatic.
Beasley and his wife denied the abuse, and Beasley had a script his wife and sons had to follow to explain the boys' injuries.
At first, Beasley was convincing, said Dan Hillman, the director of Augusta's Child Enrichment Center. When Beasley could no longer convince someone that nothing was wrong, he used intimidation.
"Everyone was scared of him," Hillman said.
The Beasley family flew under the radar for about two years. The boys, always clad in long-sleeve shirts and long pants, were not allowed to play with other children. Beasley, disabled by a back injury in 2000, was their full-time caretaker.
In February 2005, school nurse Tina Wisniewski at Sue Reynolds Elementary called Beasley. His older son had a fever and his stomach was swollen. Beasley refused to come for the boy until she threatened to call an ambulance. It was the third time the child nearly died.
Back at MCG again, Beasley refused to let doctors run a CT scan -- a similar procedure that led to the discovery of broken ribs and the first abuse allegations. The hospital chairman had to be brought in to settle the conflict between Beasley and the medical staff. The child required emergency surgery and several weeks in the hospital.
A year later, DFCS caseworker Brian Wilson was called to the school to see the oldest boy. The child had returned to school on Feb. 28, 2006, after being absent the day before. There was bruising and swelling above and below his left eye. Wisniewski, the school nurse, told him it was the third time the child showed up with a black eye that school year.
A doctor who examined the brothers after they were taken into custody reported both had scars and marks indicating physical abuse. Wilson and the CASA volunteer recommended that the children stay in state custody, at least until the Beasleys underwent psychological testing and attended parenting classes. The older boy was admitted to the hospital again, this time because he was suicidal.
Three weeks later, Kernaghan, who died in 2007, sent the boys back to their parents.
THE BEASLEYS sold their Richmond County home and in July 2006 moved to Columbia County, away from teachers and the school nurse whom Beasley blamed for what he considered hounding by DFCS.
It wasn't long before the new teachers in Columbia County became suspicious. The first call to DFCS about bruises, welts and scratches was deemed unfounded when caseworker Kendall Jones asked the boys whether they had been abused, and they denied it, in June 2007.
About five months later, during the new school year, Michele Sherman, then principal of Greenbrier Elementary, called DFCS when the younger Beasley son's first-grade teacher realized he could barely sit. DFCS caseworker Dondiel Johnson closed the case because "no identified needs were found."
On Feb. 28, 2008, Sherman and teacher Jill Coleman took pictures when the older boy came to school with a knot on his forehead, and the younger with a bruise on his face. When the principal called DFCS again, she said she was told to stop calling.
Four days later, the Beasleys took their older son, now 9, to the Medical College of Georgia Hospital's emergency room. This time, the brain injury left the boy blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, partially paralyzed and intellectually damaged.
Beasley pressured a doctor to put in his son's medical records that the boy's injuries could have been caused, as he insisted, by a fall inside the house.
During the weeks that followed, Beasley refused hospital staff's requests for a parent to remain at night to ensure the little boy didn't fall out of bed. Beasley was adamant he would take the boy home instead of following the doctors' recommendation for specialized in-patient rehabilitation in Atlanta.
This time, Columbia County DFCS office director Linda Joesbury got involved in the case. The agency went to Juvenile Court Judge Doug Flanagan to get state custody. The older boy went to the Atlanta hospital, and his brother went to a foster family.
The once quiet and well-behaved 7-year-old became a terror in a series of foster homes and in three different schools, where he spent most of his time in the principals' offices.
On one occasion, he was holding the teddy bear Sherman kept in the Greenbrier office. "He pinches. Dad pinches (his brother) when he is sick. He digs his nails in as hard as he can," the principal heard him say to the bear.
For the younger son of Beasley, relating the tale of abuse came out in bits. He tried to explain what happened to his brother, but just talking about it was traumatizing. The boy said he saw his father snatch his brother up by the feet and drive his head into the wood floor.
When a dentist asked him how he got a scar on the inside of his lip, the child balled up a fist and aimed at his mouth. "Pow," he said. He was hospitalized twice with suicidal depression. The doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. His older brother couldn't remember what happened, but he had nightmares and crying spells.
Beasley and his wife were indicted June 25, 2008, on child abuse charges based on the physical injuries and the younger boy's account of what had been happening since they moved to Columbia County.
Beasley also held their heads underwater, forced them into too-cold and too-hot baths, and made them stay in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time, the boy said.
Once separated from her husband, April Beasley, who testified she was cowed by the years of abuse, confirmed her younger son's account. She testified against her ex-husband in November 2010 and pleaded guilty in February 2011 to child cruelty for the two-day delay in seeking medical treatment in March 2008. She received a probated sentence and is working to regain custody of her sons, who are now living with her mother and stepfather.
A COLUMBIA COUNTY Superior Court jury convicted Tom Beasley on Nov. 17 after deliberating less than 15 minutes. The judge, at the urging of prosecutors, imposed the maximum sentence possible, 110 years in prison.
According to the Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths, nearly 20 million reports of suspected abuse and neglect have been made in the past decade. Although about two-thirds are deemed unfounded, it is often only a matter of time before new reports are filed and abuse is substantiated.
By that time, as with the Beasley children, the damage is done.
"The cycle of abuse doesn't stop with the physical act," Saunders, the juvenile court judge, said. "The psychological and emotion scars can and do last a lifetime."
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2011-04-09/records-show-cycle-sons-vicious-abuse
