FLORIDA: DCF foster care decision has fatal outcome
When Florida child welfare administrators vetted Michael Beer’s 2013 application to be a foster parent, they missed something: Two decades earlier, the same agency had “verified” an allegation that Beer failed to aid a 2-year-old girl in his care who suffered egregious child abuse: a cracked skull, broken arm, multiple bruises and welts and bruised ears.
They gave him the license.
A year later, when Beer and his wife asked to renew their license, the Department of Children & Families discovered the 1993 abuse investigation. The case is mentioned in a background check that began in March, but the report on the background check is neither dated nor signed in a public document provided to the Herald. And the document says the now-21-year-old incident was “not an automatic disqualifier.” They renewed his license.
Beer’s run as a foster parent ended tragically last week when police in Port St. Lucie charged him with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. His alleged victim: a 2-year-old boy who had been sent by DCF in July to live in Beer’s home, along with two of the boy’s siblings. Police reports say Trysten Eli Frank Adams died of blunt force trauma, sustaining “severe lacerations” to his liver, along with bruising to his kidney, gall bladder, pancreas and rib cage.
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