3 dead in standoff at Deerfield Beach RV park; two others badly hurt

By Juan Ortega and Wayne K. Roustan, Sun Sentinel

3:15 p.m. EST, February 10, 2012

A Port Orange man's trip took a bizarre turn when he drove his family to a recreational vehicle in Deerfield Beach, killed someone unknown to him there and then stabbed himself, his wife and two sons, the Broward Sheriff's Office said Friday.

The incident led to an hours-long standoff with SWAT team members, and it ended with three people found dead: The alleged attacker, William De Jesus, 41, his 9-year-old son, Jeshiah De Jesus, and one of the RV's occupants, Ovila Plante, 76, a snowbird from La Tuque, Quebec, the Sheriff's Office said.

Meanwhile, De Jesus' wife, Deanna De Jesus, 37, and his 7-year-old son remained hospitalized in serious condition on Friday, officials said.

During part of the ordeal, Plante's girlfriend also was held captive inside her RV at Highland Woods, a community of recreational vehicles at 900 NE 48th St. Pierrette Beauchemin managed to escape, run to safety, and was unhurt.

"This was initially just a bizarre and senseless crime," sheriff's spokeswoman Dani Moschella said of how the standoff unfolded. "And over the course of the evening, it became more horrific."

About 6:20 pm Thursday, De Jesus drove his red Mustang into the RV park, accompanied by his wife and sons.

De Jesus approached the RV at Lot 61, occupied by Plante and Beauchemin, even though De Jesus and his family didn't know the couple, officials said. "We do know that they were strangers to them," Moschella said.

According to the Sheriff's Office:

De Jesus started yelling at Plante, and Plante pushed him away. De Jesus pulled out a revolver and shot Plante in the chest. Plante fell to the pavement outside his home, and De Jesus approached him and shot him again in the head.

De Jesus led his family into the RV, still occupied by Beauchemin.

Later, Beauchemin fled from the vehicle and ran to deputies outside. De Jesus spoke to law enforcement by telephone early during an hours-long standoff, but later stopped talking to them.

About 12:30 a.m., the SWAT team entered the RV and found De Jesus and Jeshiah dead. De Jesus' wife and other son were found seriously wounded.

"There was a sense of elation when everyone realized there might be survivors inside: SWAT team members rescued the woman and the 7- year-old," Moschella said.

According to the Sheriff's Office, detectives determined that De Jesus stabbed his sons with a knife from the RV's kitchen before stabbing his wife and himself.

A motive hasn't been identified, and it was unknown where the Port Orange family had been before showing up at the Deerfield Beach trailer park.

"It's just so tragic and horrific when you think about the loss of life for seemingly no reason," Moschella said. "These two little boys must have been so frightened. It must have been a nightmare for them."

jcortega@tribune.com or 954-356-4701.

Original Article

DCF let Deerfield RV park killer keep sons despite molestation allegations, report says

By Carol Marbin Miller, The Miami Herald

9:10 p.m. EST, February 21, 2012

William DeJesus' youngest son called him the "Monster."

At a Polk County foster home, the boy shrieked from nightmares and insisted the Monster was hiding under his bed.

He had good reason to fear: DeJesus had been accused of beating, stabbing and raping the boy's mother, who, in turn, once told authorities the couple had repeatedly molested the boy and his older brother.

But the "Monster" didn't remain under the bed.

Two weeks ago, DeJesus, 41, drove his family to a Deerfield Beach trailer home, killed the occupant and held police at bay for seven hours while he stabbed each member of his own family before killing himself. DeJesus' oldest son, 9-year-old Jeshiah, was pronounced dead at the scene; born disabled, he never uttered a word in his short life. His brother, 7, was hospitalized with a knife blade stuck in his head. He remained impaled for a day before a surgeon could remove it.

The youngster and DeJesus' wife, 37-year-old Deanna Beauchamp, are now recovering.

In the weeks since Jeshiah's death, Broward Sheriff's Office detectives have tried to figure out why DeJesus chose to execute the man in the quiet Broward neighborhood and why he tried to wipe out his own family.

But there is also this question: How could state child-protection administrators' actions toward the family have ended so tragically?

The inquiry centers on a petition the Department of Children & Families filed — and later withdrew — seeking to permanently sever the rights of DeJesus and Beauchamp to their young sons.

A foster mother had warned darkly that she was "afraid for the children if they are returned."

But returned they were.

Said Joe Follick, the Department of Children & Families spokesman: "Obviously this is a terrible tragedy. Our immediate focus is in ensuring that the surviving child receives everything he needs."

Records of the case — 500 pages of which were given to The Miami Herald under the state's public records law — paint a picture of an agency acting swiftly to strip DeJesus and Beauchamp of all parental rights until an abrupt about-face in May 2009. Then, agency workers were equally determined to keep the family intact — even in the face of warnings that the boys were in danger.

The surviving child is not being named to protect his privacy.

DeJesus' involvement with child-protection workers actually began several years earlier, when New York state permanently severed his right to children from a prior marriage. Records show DeJesus had been accused of abusing his former wife and molesting their children. The wife obtained an order barring DeJesus from contacting her or the children for five years.

By 2007, DeJesus and Beauchamp were raising two boys in Florida. Jeshiah was 4 and suffered from autism. His brother was 2 and was also being tested for a developmental disability. DCF's child-abuse hotline received a report on Sept. 18, 2007. During a drinking binge, DeJesus had choked his wife and punched his children's bedroom door, leaving a hole.

A police report on the incident said DeJesus had a handgun on the couch when officers arrived. Beauchamp was crying. "Thank you, thank you," she said. "You saved me."

The abuse had gone on, Beauchamp said, for eight years, and she showed an investigator scars to prove it. Beauchamp said DeJesus had stabbed her, punched her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage, and pushed her in the bathtub, leading to a back injury.

DCF filed a dependency petition in court, asking a judge to order the family to accept the agency's help and supervision, but the children were not taken into protective custody. "No evidence of physical or sexual abuse to the children, nor is any suspected," an investigator wrote.

But the evidence soon followed. In February 2008, after Beauchamp left DeJesus and went to a domestic violence shelter, she told authorities that both parents had been molesting the children.

"She stated that he had told her that his family had shown their love by touching the children's privates," a report said. "He had made her believe that this was the way to show the children their love."

And, she told investigators, there was another reason she molested her own children: "She was afraid William would kill her if she refused."

A child-abuse investigator took custody of the boys immediately.

While the children were in foster care, new allegations arose. A therapist and a court-appointed guardian both reported seeing DeJesus repeatedly touch the boys between their legs while engaging in "rough" play during a supervised visit.

But the agency soon confronted a serious obstacle: Beauchamp was once again living with DeJesus and she now recanted the molestation allegations.

Records provided to The Herald do not make clear why the children were returned to Beauchamp and DeJesus, but a July 2009 notation in the file says the agency required "clear and convincing evidence" that the parents were unfit." Follick, the agency spokesman, said: "The mother recanted her accusations. …Within the bounds of the law, there were no grounds to remove the children at that point."

Having decided to reunite the family, child welfare administrators and a judge in Daytona Beach, where the family was living at the time, turned to another thorny question: how to begin visitation as the children transitioned back to their parents. A therapist for the boys testified in court that the children's odd behavior did not result from their disabilities, but "was due to severe abuse and neglect." She also warned that "exposing" the boys to their parents again would be "traumatic for them."

For the next two years, the couple was given, first, supervised visits with the children, and, later, unsupervised contact while completing parenting classes and counseling.

When the visits began, there were, once again, troubling signs: In August 2009, the younger boy told his foster mother that the "Monster" was going to kill him. The younger boy experienced a "significant decline" in his behavior. Both a therapist and court-appointed guardian reported the two children were "terrified" of their father.

DCF ended its involvement with the family on Dec. 20, 2010. An Oct. 9, 2010, notation said the couple was receiving help to cope with the boys' "tantrums and manipulations."

"They show love for the children," a worker wrote Oct. 29, 2010.

Original Article

Wife who survived motor home killings was abused for years

By Carol Marbin Miller and Diana Moskovitz, The Miami Herald

7:05 p.m. EST, February 26, 2012

The abuse of Deanna Beauchamp dates back more than a decade. It reportedly involved fists, knives, sleeping pills and the threat of a BB gun.

The official record appears to begin on June 9, 2001, when Tampa police took an incident report in which Beauchamp said her husband, William DeJesus, raped her. He abused her, the report said, "physically, emotionally and sexually."

But Beauchamp stayed. The calls to police continued. And, DeJesus and Beauchamp kept custody of their two young sons, who child welfare workers feared were becoming victims themselves. Child-welfare records show one boy — who called DeJesus a "Monster" — accused his father of hurting him and touching his "pee pee." Accusations swirled that both parents regularly molested the two boys. The children went into foster care but were then returned.

DeJesus' last act of domestic violence was on Feb. 9. That's when he hijacked a Deerfield Beach travel trailer, shot dead a visiting Canadian inside the home, and held Broward Sheriff's deputies at bay for seven hours until he attacked his family with a knife blade, then killed himself, authorities say.

Beauchamp and the couple's 7-year-old son survived the rampage with knife wounds. The couple's 9-year-old, Jeshiah, who was disabled and never spoke, did not.

There had been warnings, flashes of rage and violence, along the way, although never enough for child-welfare investigators, who let the children remain with the warring couple, to take decisive actions.

On Friday — the same day a judge ordered that Beauchamp have no contact with her surviving son — the Department of Children & Families released about 200 pages of investigative documents to The Miami Herald under the state's public record law. Those records, along with more than 500 pages released last week, portray a tempestuous, nearly 13-year marriage punctuated by occasional calls for help. Beauchamp told authorities DeJesus had beaten, stabbed, and raped her. He had forced her to take sleeping pills and had seized all her ID cards so she couldn't leave him.

She never did.

Beauchamp's repeated refusal to leave her husband is unsurprising, said Lisa Wiseman, director of communications and public policy for the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

As is common in such cases, DeJesus convinced his wife, as well as authorities, that he would seek help and mend his ways.

"If you look at a batterer, part of what they are very good at is manipulating the situation. Their tactics are manipulative, so they make people believe that they are getting help, they are making progress. That's part of the dynamic," Wiseman said.

Beauchamp and DeJesus had been married for about two years when Tampa police arrived at their doorstep on Dec. 30, 2001. In a report, relatives staying at the home said DeJesus accused his wife of thinking about sleeping with someone else. He slapped her three times in the face and pushed her.

Beauchamp wouldn't call the police, one witness said, because DeJesus said he would kill her. A relative called police from a nearby pay phone.

When police interviewed her, Beauchamp denied the violence had occurred — the first of many denials and recantations. When asked why two purported "witnesses" would lie about it, she didn't have an answer.

Police charged DeJesus with one count of misdemeanor battery. But the charge was dropped, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records.

Three years later, on May 9, 2004, police in the Bronx took a report that DeJesus had slapped a son in the face, twice, during a fight with another relative. It is unclear whether the event involved family members from a prior marriage.

"Reporter also states that she is in fear for her children," the report said.

In 2007, after the couple had moved to Daytona Beach, police received the first report to draw the attention of child-welfare workers.

Beauchamp told police her husband had choked her after she suggested he had been drinking too much. When police arrived, a gun — later determined to be a BB gun — was on the couch.

Beauchamp later showed investigators two holes DeJesus reportedly had punched or stabbed in a wall and door. And she showed a DCF investigator scars on her body from previous violence.

In the coming days, Beauchamp wrote a two-page statement for the Daytona police. DeJesus, she said, wanted her to get a job.

But she was too afraid to leave the children with DeJesus.

"I am nervous right now…to work because I am considered a battered woman and feel he is not a fit father that I can trust with my kids," she wrote. "I have been abused for eight years and feel confused and lost. And do not know what to do. I feel my life threatened. He's threatened to kill me and my family.

"I really want to press charges on him because he's an alcoholic and a violent man that will kill me and my family," she added.

But days later, she changed her mind. "Called attorney to drop case," says a notation in a file. "Stated officer coached her … Not fair to her husband. Things are good now."

The DCF, acting on a call to the state's abuse hotline, asked a Volusia County judge to order DeJesus and Beauchamp to accept services from the state, such as parenting classes and domestic violence treatment. "The parents have a long history of domestic violence," a DCF report said.

The children were at risk, an investigator wrote, but also added: "The parents are perfectly capable of caring for the children."

"It will not happen again," the parents insisted.

As for DeJesus, he "seems to understand that if this occurs again the children will be removed from the home."

A Sept. 18, 2007, "safety plan" drafted by the DCF required Beauchamp to obtain a restraining order against her husband. Additionally, DeJesus was supposed to avoid domestic violence in front of the children and stop drinking alcohol.

But it didn't take long for the family to renege. In less than two months, Beauchamp abandoned the restraining order she had gotten.

The criminal case against DeJesus closed on Aug. 27, 2008. "No formal criminal charges will be filed at this time," wrote Assistant State Attorney Tiffany Stucker, who did not specify why.

Original Article

Florida May Investigate Fewer Child Abuse Calls

I understand that the budgets are being cut everywhere and that government offices are short on staff everywhere.  But, what I don't get is trying to limit the number of investigations that are done.  I would not be willing to cut back on the investigations for fear that a child that needs help for real would fall through the cracks of an already broken system.

...The hot line averaged around 31,000 calls per month during the last fiscal year. About 80 percent of the calls resulted in an investigation...

As it is, we see news stories and reports from all over that there are children being taken from parents that really have done nothing wrong, and at the same time we see reports of children that are being abused forced to remain in those homes.

Yes, I agree that calls should be screened as much as possible, that is the only way to do that.  However, cutting back on investigations is only going to hurt the kids that really are being abused. 

Florida May Investigate Fewer Child Abuse Calls - News Story - WFTV Orlando

del.icio.us Tags: abuse-cases,abuse,awareness,child-abuse,child-protection-services,cps,dcfs,department-of-children-and-family-services,victims

Toddler may lose legs after mother dips him in boiling water

Ok, well DCFS is at it again...WOW...when are they going to wake up? And, start actually protecting the children that NEED protection. Why was this child still in this home? Ok, so you say I shouldn't point fingers....well they were "investigating" which all too often lately means there was a complaint filed and they were sitting on their thumbs...I say "they" which in actuality was probably one lazy case worker that is under paid and over worked...and just doesn't give a crap anymore. I don't know how to fix it (well I have a few suggestions) but I do wish someone would figure it out and fast our children are dying and being maimed and scarred for life at an alarming rate in this country. I strongly feel that when an agencies drops the ball on child abuse cases, domestic violence, family violence, whatever you want to call it; that the person responsible should be held accountable in some way. Until then the case workers are going to keep on doing what they have always done.

Read the full story here: Quad-Cities Online

The Associated Press: Texas officials looking at possible abuse among FLDS boys

For those of you following the FLDS YFZ case in Texas...

Texas officials told legislators Wednesday that they're investigating the possible sexual abuse of some young boys taken from a polygamist sect's ranch, as well as broken bones among other children.

In written and oral testimony provided to lawmakers Wednesday, officials with the state Department of Family and Protective Services said interviews and journal entries suggested that boys may have been sexually abused....The Associated Press: Texas officials looking at possible abuse among FLDS boys