Michigan CPS audit postponed again after child death

DETROIT – Two years after a 6-year-old boy was killed at home by his mother’s girlfriend, there are continuing delays in the release of a state report on Michigan’s Child Protective Service, the agency that investigates child abuse cases.

Terry Adams was killed in December 2021 while child welfare services were investigating the boy’s abuse. His family said they were not at all surprised by the delays in the state auditor’s new child welfare report.

Terry was 6 years old when his mother got a new boyfriend. His family was alarmed when the school released reports that he had bruises all over his body. One report said a large chunk of his hair had been ripped out.

The injuries became increasingly worse and led to hospitalization.

“He had blunt trauma to the head, black eyes and a sprained arm,” recalled his grandmother Dawn Joseph.

“And he had a broken eye, a blood vessel,” said Shannon Grabowsky, Terry’s aunt.

In 2021, Terry’s family said the CPS Investigations Unit had received numerous complaints. They said they had begged the CPS to intervene on Terry’s behalf.

“All the terrible things that were done to him could have been prevented if the CPS had done its job,” Grabowsky said.

The family said Terry’s mother gave different explanations for why her son kept getting hurt.

“And she kept saying, ‘Oh, he brought this on himself. He brought it all on himself, or his little sister did it,'” recalled Terry’s father, Gary Adams.

“They could have stripped her of her rights, as they told us they would do,” Joseph said.

The family said child protective services removed Terry from his mother’s care twice, but returned him to her each time. Terry was killed in December 2021. He was held underwater and drowned in the bathtub by his mother’s boyfriend. His one-year-old sister was home at the time.

A jury found Hunter Locke-Hughes guilty of first-degree child abuse and involuntary manslaughter in February 2024.

Terry’s sister, now four years old, was returned to Terry’s mother – who was never charged with any crime in connection with her son’s death.

In 2018, three years before Terry Adams’ abuse began, the state took a close look at the effectiveness of its Child Protective Services Investigation Unit. An audit found that the department “failed to adequately” meet many of the state’s requirements for investigating child abuse cases. It also found that the department failed to properly assess the risk of future harm to children in more than 35% of the investigations reviewed.

The effectiveness of CPS is being examined again by the state. A new audit includes an examination of the CPS investigation into child abuse between June 2021 and May 2022 – the same period in which Terry Adams’ family says they called CPS for help on multiple occasions.

In 2023, the Office of the Auditor General said it would release the audit report by the end of the year. When that deadline came, the state said the new CPS audit report would be released in January 2024, then “early 2024” before pushing it back to June. The State Auditor now says he plans to release the audit report sometime in July.

The Michigan Office of the Auditor General told Local 4 that more time was needed for the new audit because the subject matter was complex and sensitive and the office was understaffed. The full statement is below.

“In summary, we may change our tentative release dates for several reasons. For this project, we needed more time to follow up on the large number of previous material findings (17). Due to the complexity and sensitivity of the issue, this follow-up required more sampling. There were some staff reallocations during the project to account for retirement and to briefly shift resources to our required financial audits. In addition, we are planning more hours than planned to complete our due process step with the agency, which includes time to provide additional documentation as needed and to prepare their tentative response to our report.”

Michigan Office of the Auditor General