About 1,000 children die by homicide yearly. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n Eighteen-month-old Jeremiah Ruiters should not have died.<\/p>\n The toddler\u2019s ordeal could have ended soon after he was admitted to Cape Town\u2019s Red Cross Children\u2019s Hospital \u2014 with a broken arm \u2014 prompting doctors to suspect that he was a victim of abuse. Perhaps, it could have ended after Jeremiah returned to the hospital less than a month later with a badly injured finger, prompting doctors again to flag the case with social workers. If the social worker assigned to the case had paid more attention when she visited Jeremiah\u2019s home, instead of deciding that the child was not at risk, his life could have been saved.<\/p>\n Instead, on 12 June 2017, Jeremiah was raped and murdered by Ameerodien Peters, his mother\u2019s boyfriend and the man who had caused the injuries twice flagged by doctors.<\/p>\n More than three years later, in August 2020, the Western Cape High Court sentenced<\/a> Peters to life imprisonment after convicting him on charges which included child abuse, rape and murder. Jeremiah\u2019s tragic death reflects the alarming combination of a dysfunctional system, overworked social workers and a mess of red tape in the systems meant to keep children safe.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Ruiters. Photo supplied<\/p>\n Professor Shanaaz Mathews, Director of the University of Cape Town\u2019s (UCT) Children\u2019s Institute, has been researching fatal child abuse since 2012 when she co-authored a mortuary-based retrospective survey<\/a> on child homicides resulting from child abuse and neglect.<\/p>\n The study, commissioned by the Gender and Health Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council, looked at the records of 38 mortuaries to identify all instances of child homicides in 2009. It found that almost half (nearly 45%) of the 1,018 child homicides that year were due to child abuse or neglect. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of the victims were babies and children aged four or younger. And, in 18% of cases where there was rape and homicide, the victims were aged five or younger.<\/p>\n The findings were confirmed by a second study, part of a child death review pilot study<\/a>, which looked at records generated between 1 January and 31 December 2014 at the Salt River Mortuary in the Western Cape and Phoenix Mortuary in Kwazulu-Natal. The study found that 44% of child homicides were attributed to fatal child abuse.<\/p>\n Researchers found that police didn\u2019t consider solving young children\u2019s murders a priority. Most cases in the report were not properly investigated and very little was done to hold people accountable for child deaths from abuse and neglect. Researchers also inquired about social welfare involvement in the investigations; they found none.<\/p>\n In September 2015, the failure of social workers to identify and intervene in child abuse cases was emphasised by Mathews in a presentation<\/a> to Parliament\u2019s Portfolio Committee on Social Development.<\/p>\n She highlighted two cases where young children had been left in dangerous situations and died as a likely result:<\/p>\n These deaths were preventable, said Mathews.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Ruiters was in part a victim of this dysfunctional system. Advocate Bonnie Currie-Gamwo, a former Deputy Director of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and now Special Director of Public Prosecutions: Sexual Offences and Community Affairs Unit, says social workers missed several chances to save the toddler\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Currie-Gamwo worked directly on the prosecution of Jeremiah\u2019s killer, Ameerodien Peters. (The little boy\u2019s mother, Abigail Ruiters, was convicted of child neglect<\/a>.) Currie-Gamwo was also part of the Child Death Review project in the Western Cape, an initiative of the UCT Children\u2019s Institute first piloted in 2014.<\/p>\n The project brings together a panel of representatives from law enforcement, child protection and social services, a paediatric nurse, a paediatrician, a forensic pathologist and a prosecutor to review child deaths on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Jeremiah\u2019s case was among those reviewed \u2013 and it quickly became clear how his case had slipped through the cracks before his death<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we have people from Red Cross on the panel, we immediately picked up that this child had been seen by a doctor who wrote on the form that this is a child at risk,\u201d said Currie-Gamwo.<\/p>\n \u201cSo immediately there should be intervention from social services.\u201d<\/p>\n A social worker did visit the home, but did not do a proper investigation, Currie-Gamwo says.<\/p>\n \u201cShe only ticked the boxes, as per the form, based on a home visit that lasted no more than 30 minutes. She left the file with her supervisor who was supposed to deal with it further down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n The Child Death Review team recommended that the Department of Social Development \u201ctake steps\u201d to discipline the social worker. Currie-Gamwo said this had happened and the social worker had been cleared of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t particularly happy with that. But it\u2019s their process. We cannot dictate to a department,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Galled by the failures in Jeremiah\u2019s case, Currie-Gamwo and Mathews wrote to the then-Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, in August 2017.<\/p>\n This letter added to mounting civil society pressure on the Western Cape government to do something to intervene in the high rates of child murders in the province. In 2018, the provincial government adopted an Action Plan<\/a> which noted that among the \u201cgaps in early detection, referrals, and protection of children at risk\u201d was the failure of social workers to do proper \u201crisk assessments\u201d.<\/p>\n Since then, training and procedures have been improved and adherence to a Safety and Risk Assessment Tool is now mandatory for all social workers, the department has said. But is it being used?<\/p>\n The Safety and Risk Assessment Tool<\/a> for child protection investigations was developed by Professor Vollie Spies, an associate professor at the Department of Social Work and Criminology at the University of Pretoria<\/a>, at the request of the national Department of Social Development. It was intended to be a step-by-step protocol because there was nothing like it available for social workers at the time, Spies says. Staff in the department\u2019s offices all over the country were trained in the use of the tool in 2015.<\/p>\n But, Spies suspects, many social workers did not make use of the tool to its full potential.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, and I\u2019m saying this with regret and sadness, like all other professions, people find their own ways, which is not always the scientific way,\u201d said Spies.<\/p>\n Asked about the use of the Safety and Risk Assessment Tool, the Western Cape Department of Social Development responded at length<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tool has assisted both DSD and designated child protection organisations\u2019 social workers with early intervention and prevention services. The assessment identifies the level and type of risks, and appropriate support given before a child is removed. This can be measured by the number and type of interventions done with the families, and adherence to the safety plan,\u201d said Esther Lewis, the department\u2019s spokesperson.<\/p>\n Social workers do not bear the blame alone when the system fails children. Interviewed on condition of anonymity, social workers with experience working in both government and in civil society agencies said they struggled to balance their obligations with the often dangerous aspects of their jobs and an overwhelming workload.<\/p>\n One social worker said social workers are often abused or attacked while investigating child abuse reports. As a result, many do not do all they should to investigate child abuse or to place a child in a safe place, she said.<\/p>\n Some areas are so dangerous that social workers need a police escort.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to go to the actual police station, tell them that there\u2019s a particular case and possible risk, and they then send out a police van with you.\u201d Sometimes a shortage of police vehicles meant that social workers could spend hours waiting for an escort.<\/p>\n \u201cI had one case like that which was horrific. When we got to the house, there were gangsters, there was a shebeen, it was so bad and the police just left me there. I was 21 years old, it was my very first job, and here I am in this house where there\u2019s possible abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n She said some social workers made up their case notes to protect themselves, pretending, for instance, that they had visited a house but no-one had opened the door.<\/p>\n A lack of supervision is a serious problem, she said.<\/p>\n The supervisor in the Jeremiah Ruiters case, for instance, should have questioned the social worker. \u201cThe normal process is that you have to actually wake up that kid, you have to take the child\u2019s clothes off, even to the point where you have to take that child to be assessed medically and that\u2019s what that social worker needs to do, but it often doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSocial workers are coming out of institutions with all the theory, but are then thrown into a landscape of violence and social ills and are required to do so much that they\u2019re not really prepared for,\u201d said another social worker, with 24 years experience.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can never be about one person, a social worker, having to make such a profound definitive decision regarding families\u2019 lives or a child\u2019s life on their own. Where was the supervisor in [Jeremiah\u2019s case]?\u201d<\/p>\n All the social workers interviewed complained about the laborious, slow paper-based system for case management. Work had often to be duplicated, sometimes reports were sent to the wrong jurisdiction repeatedly, and the absence of electronic records and data search facilities made tracing cases very slow.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/generalpics\/school-20220513-img_0401hr.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
\n
<\/a><\/p>\nA dangerous job<\/h2>\n