New York City Aid Workers Missed Signs Myls Dobson, Tortured To Death, Was At Risk


New York City child welfare officials admitted Friday that they could have done more to save 4-year-old Myls Dobson from his heartbreaking and horrifying fate. As reported by The Inquisitr, the helpless boy was tortured by a 230-pound transgender woman who was caring for him while his father, unbeknownst to the boy, sat in jail.

Myls Dobson died in New York City on January 8 during a fight with his confessed tormentor, 28-year-old Kryzie King.

The boy’s father Okee Wade, 37, was granted custody of Myls in August of 2012, despite a past criminal record. A family court judge ordered the New York City Administration for Children’s Services to check on the child’s well being.

Wade was already on parole. The judge also ordered the New York City caseworkers to maintain contact with Wade’s parole officer.

But somehow, according to a CNN report, Wade’s new arrest on bank fraud charges last September and his subsequent incarceration in Riker’s Island jail slipped under the gaze of the child welfare agency.

Case workers dropped in on the boy nine times between when Wade was arrested in 2012 and early 2013. Each time they found King with the child and were told by the babysitter that Wade was busy at the office, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“We were told that the father was working, and was working very long hours, 16 hours a day, and that’s why he wasn’t available,” said New York City ACS head Gladys Carrion on Friday. “Should we have done something differently? Yes, we should have.”

King confessed to inflicting various cruelties on Myls Dobson after after the boy became upset and uncooperative when days went by without his father returning home. The woman said she struck the 4-year-old with a belt buckle, including on his genitals, bound him, locked him in a dark bathroom and shut him on an outdoor terrace on a record-cold day.

The boy reportedly had not been fed in days and weighed just 37 pounds at the time he fell in the bathroom and hit his head during a fight with King.

“We can’t look at a situation like this and say business as usual is acceptable,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Friday. “We lost a child in such a horrible manner. It is very, very painful to know that this child went through such agony, that a child was lost that we believe there was more than one opportunity to save.”

Among reforms proposed by the New York City mayor would be a requirement that social workers would be granted access to arrest records, and that corrections officers would ask new prisoners how they have arranged for child care during their incarcerations, according to The Jamaica Gleaner, a newspaper from King’s home country.

The mayor also said he plans to set up a New York City “Children’s Cabinet,” with representatives from several law enforcement, public safety and child welfare agencies, to make sure that lines of communication remain open among all of them.

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