DFCS workers felt jobs at risk in colleague’s case
Fayette County child welfare workers say their superiors at the state office pressured them to protect Cylenthia Clark, a high-ranking colleague accused of beating her own child with a belt, according to a file obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The workers say that Mary Dean Harvey, director of Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services, specifically berated them for corroborating findings that Clark had abused her 9-year-old daughter and accused them of “aiding and abetting” Clark’s ex-husband in his battle for custody.
The workers felt so threatened by their bosses that they asked state investigators to tell Gov. Sonny Perdue they were afraid of losing their jobs.
“If these allegations are true, there is a lot of cause for concern,” said Tom C. Rawlings, Georgia’s child advocate, whose office serves as ombudsman for the state’s child welfare system. “One of the biggest concerns in any child welfare system is when the front-line workers are afraid that any move they make will be second-guessed by higher-ups and will come back to haunt them.”
In an interview for this story, Harvey denied that the workers’ jobs were ever in jeopardy.
“No employee’s job is ever threatened when they are doing the right work,” Harvey said. “There is no basis for people to fear for their employment.” She said the state office did not protect Clark.
Clark did not return calls seeking comment.
Clark was a top DFCS administrator in Fulton County when Fayetteville police arrested her last March on child cruelty charges. She is awaiting a trial date for allegedly striking her daughter 34 times with a leather belt, leaving bruises on her back, arm and leg.
Last spring, Perdue asked the state Office of the Child Advocate to ensure that DFCS was treating Clark as it would any parent.
The advocate’s investigative file shows that Fayette County DFCS workers believed that Clark was getting preferential treatment from the state office and if the county workers did not endorse that tack, they might be fired.
Clark was hired on the personal recommendation of B.J. Walker, commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Human Resources, which oversees DFCS. Walker has previously said that she exerted no pressure to hire Clark.
“The way the state office has acted is to try and to protect Ms. Clark,” said Dee Simms, Georgia’s former child advocate, who oversaw the investigation. “They have acted reprehensibly with regard to the director in Fayette County. All she did was do her job.”
Fayette County DFCS director Mary Davis told investigators that Harvey brought up “a big custody battle” playing out between Clark and her ex-husband and directed Fayette County DFCS workers to place the couple’s four young daughters with Clark’s mother. The father has since been awarded custody and the children are living with him in Chicago.
Davis also told investigators that Harvey accused Fayette County DFCS of siding with the father and that she would be held “personally responsible” for the case and that her office would be “under particular scrutiny.”
Davis further said that Harvey rebuked her office and implied that it was incompetent in its finding of abuse. She quoted Harvey as saying: “I’m sure that you’ve never spanked your child, but if you had, you would know that they wiggle and you will hit everything but the back end.”
Davis declined to be interviewed for this story and referred questions to the state DFCS office.
The advocate’s office concluded that Fayette County DFCS “followed all polices and procedures in regards to this investigation” in a letter to Walker.
The letter also stated that the advocate’s office “is gravely concerned that Ms. Clark remains employed by the state agency charged with the protection of abused and neglected children.”
Following her arrest, Clark was transferred from Fulton County DFCS to DHR and currently coordinates training on a database that tracks families in Georgia’s child welfare system.
Rawlings, who replaced Simms as Georgia’s child advocate in July, said that if true, “a reasonable person would interpret Ms. Harvey’s remarks as a threat.”
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