Three visits preceded boy’s death

Jason Rimer was no stranger to Clark County's child welfare agency.

Three times during the disabled boy's four years of life, investigators from the Department of Family Services visited his home to look into abuse or neglect allegations. Each time, the claims were ruled unsubstantiated, and the cases were closed.

Sixteen months after the last visit, the boy who could barely walk or speak was dead, forgotten in his family's sport utility vehicle for 17 hours.

For critics of the county agency, the Rimer case is a glaring example of how those responsible for protecting Southern Nevada's most vulnerable children are failing, despite a wave of reforms following a similar child death in 2005.

"We've got another dead kid, and nothing has changed," children's advocate Donna Coleman said.

She compared Jason's death to that of Adacelli Snyder, a 2-year-old with cerebral palsy who died of severe malnourishment in a mobile home infested with lice and littered with animal feces.

Adacelli's family had been under Family Services' watch for a year before it closed the case. A year later, the girl was dead.

Her mother and the mother's boyfriend were sentenced to 10 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder by child neglect.

That case, along with other deaths of children under the agency's watch, helped spark a state review of the troubled agency and led to changes in leadership and policy. But critics said those changes were mostly cosmetic.

"It's the same old deficiencies, the same old practices," said Bill Grimm, a lawyer leading a federal lawsuit to reform the county agency. "Nothing has changed regarding the protection of children in the county. That's what's disturbing about this."

Coleman and Grimm shared concerns about the county's handling of the Rimer case.

The first allegations against the family came in 1988.

In the next two decades, the county received 21 reports of potential abuse or neglect involving Stanley and Colleen Rimer and their eight children, according to a document Family Services completes in child fatality cases.

Fourteen of the complaints were investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. A 1988 complaint including physical abuse and medical neglect was substantiated, as was a 1991 complaint involving a lack of supervision.

The other five complaints were either folded into ongoing investigations or filed as "information only" because the allegations weren't severe enough to warrant investigation, Family Services spokeswoman Christine Skorupski said.

Five of the 21 complaints came after Jason's birth in March 2004.

The first came in December 2004 and led to an investigation of possible medical and environmental neglect. Six months later, the investigator closed the case after finding "no evidence to support abuse or neglect," according to the child fatality document.

"The family complied with all requests for services, and the child was doing well. Therefore, the investigator closed the case," the document said.

It said two related calls were made within three days of each other in July 2006 involving physical neglect allegations. An investigator who visited the home four weeks later determined "no indication of neglect was observable," and the case was closed.

Six months later, another pair of complaints were made to Family Services with allegations including physical abuse, domestic violence and sibling sexual abuse.

The investigator who visited the Rimer home warned the parents about the potential consequences of excessive physical discipline and told the children they could talk to school employees about their problems at home, the document said.

The investigators closed the case, finding the allegations unsubstantiated.

"The little boy is dead. Is that substantiated enough for you?" Coleman said.

Jason was disabled with myotonic dystrophy, a genetic disorder that attacks muscles and other body systems and hinders brain development in children. Jason had been walking for only six months and functioned at a 2-year-old level.

Las Vegas police arrested his parents Wednesday on charges of second-degree murder and child abuse and neglect. The couple's four minor children remained in protective custody at Child Haven, where they were taken after police discovered they were living in a filthy, cluttered house.

Grimm, of the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, Calif., said the Rimer case highlights an ongoing problem with the county's child welfare investigators.

"This case ... and others we've reviewed illustrate that there are many, many staff at the Department of Family Services who don't know, in fact don't have a clue, how to do an effective child neglect investigation," Grimm said.

Many investigators are too willing to take caregivers' stories at face value and don't dig deeper into allegations, he said. For example, they might interview children in front of their parents or not talk to neighbors, teachers and others about allegations, he said.

Child welfare investigators need to approach cases more like police, who are trained to look beyond the surface for evidence, he said.

If any family required a harder look, it was the Rimers and their extensive history of complaints, Grimm said.

"Where there's smoke, there's probably fire," he said.

He also criticized the county's investigators for requiring too much evidence to substantiate a complaint.

Grimm blamed those problems on a lack of training.

The Family Services spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing the Rimer cases but that state law prevented her from discussing any details not included in the child fatality document.

The agency could change policies based on its findings, Skorupski said.

All complaints to Family Services are screened and forwarded for investigation or logged as "information only" depending on the allegations, she said.

If a complaint is investigated, the investigator must find a preponderance of evidence to substantiate the allegations. If such evidence is not uncovered, the case is closed.

The case worker can recommend services for the family, but no follow-ups are conducted, Skorupski said.

The agency's investigators are among its most experienced employees, with at least two years of child welfare experience, she said.

The department is improving its training program and recently began a pilot program that puts trainees in the field to learn alongside seasoned investigators, she said. The program was recently completed in Washoe County.

Coleman and Grimm had little hope that much would change at Family Services, which they said is pulled down by a culture of retaliation and mistrust among its workers.

The Rimer case is just the tip of the iceberg, they said, adding they feared more children under Family Services' eye would die.

"There are going to be more kids dead, and it's not because they fell through the cracks," Coleman said. "It's because they slipped through the fingers of a case worker."

Contact reporter Brian Haynes at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.