Bedrick case shows Suffolk CPS is still falling short

For five years, between 2018 and 2023, Suffolk County Child Protective Services workers knew Kerri Bedrick could not care for her young son, Eli Henrys. Report after report told a story of a mother unable to parent her child. She experienced rage, hallucinations and paranoia. She became delusional and heard voices. She used drugs and left her young son unsupervised.

Time after time, those reports were labeled with one determination: “Unfounded.”

That trend might have continued. But last August, Bedrick took methamphetamines, put 9-year-old Eli in her car, and drove up to 100 mph the wrong way on the Southern State Parkway until she crashed head-on into another car. Eli suffered the brunt of the impact and died. That tragedy was compounded when Newsday’s investigative reporting earlier this month found the long paper trail of other horrifying incidents involving Bedrick.

Five years ago, 8-year-old Thomas Valva died of hypothermia when his father, a police officer, hosed him down and left him in an unheated garage on a frigid night. CPS had received more than 10 reports filled with allegations of abuse against Valva’s father. Those reports, too, were labeled “Unfounded.”

These are just two examples of a broken system, one Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine has pledged to reform. Last year, county officials began using a “blind removal” process to redact information and avoid subjective decision-making on whether to remove a child from a home. That could help. The practice of regularly labeling abuse reports as “unfounded,” and the law that requires those reports be sealed, shield caseworkers from public scrutiny and make a full investigation nearly impossible to complete, a Suffolk County special grand jury found in its review of the Valva case.

What more could Suffolk County — and New York State — have done to protect Eli and Thomas? What more can they do to protect such children in the future, children who now are experiencing abuse only to have it labeled “unfounded”?

These are questions about which Suffolk’s new social services commissioner John Imhof likely has some thoughts. Imhof needs to make his plans known to Suffolk residents. County and state officials also should consider taking another look at specific cases where parents and caregivers have been the subject of multiple “unfounded” complaints. A closer look at such cases after Thomas died might have saved Eli. Perhaps it could rescue another child from a tragic end.

This is a complex issue; no one wants to assume the worst, or take a child from a parent. But it’s also about more than persistent insufficient staffing, which Suffolk’s municipal employees union maintains is the problem.

Five years after Valva, we’re still asking for improvements to policy, law, and training. State and county officials must take this as yet another warning. If sweeping change doesn’t happen, another child could die.