Judge: Bosses wrongly got away scot-free

PHILADELPHIA, July 16 (UPI) -- Human services bosses should have been charged with caseworkers in the death of a 14-year-old disabled Philadelphia girl, a judge said in sentencing a worker.

"That the people at the top walked away from their positions, and even advanced, without any significant consequences is a crime which almost equals or maybe surpasses the crime in this case," Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner said before sentencing social worker Laura Sommerer, 34, to four years of probation for pleading guilty to child endangerment.

Sommerer pleaded guilty in the death of Danieal Kelly, who had cerebral palsy and starved to death Aug. 4, 2006, in her mother's apartment. Her body, pocked with bone-deep bed sores, weighed 47 pounds.

Two months later, Philadelphia Department of Human Services Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner resigned, her deputy was fired and a regional state welfare director was demoted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Acting Health Commissioner Carmen Paris resigned days before the release of a scathing grand-jury report. And seven DHS administrators or supervisors were suspended without pay.

But only Sommerer and DHS caseworker Dana Poindexter, 52, Sommerer's predecessor on the Kelly case, were criminally charged, the Inquirer said.

Both were supposed to have ensured that contract caseworkers visited Kelly's house twice weekly to make sure she was well. An investigation found the girl had not been visited for almost two months before her death.