Asshole of the Week

By now, we're sure you've heard the tragic story of Danieal Kelly, the 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who was found dead in a West Philadelphia rowhome almost exactly two years ago. This week, nine people were indicted by a state grand jury in Kelly's death, including her parents and a number of social workers who were assigned to see to it that she was cared for.

We like to keep things as lighthearted as possible with our Asshole of the Week columns, but there's simply no making light of this story. Everyone failed Danieal Kelly—her parents and the system. And to make matters worse, after Kelly passed away, the social workers who were in part responsible for her wellbeing proceeded to forge documents in an effort to cover up their own failures. The director of the private social welfare company contracted by the Department of Human Services, Mickal Kamuvaka, allegedly engaged in some particularly egregious fraud, using his employees to create phony home visit notes and quarterly reports.

Only time will tell why Danieal Kelly died. Obviously, it was because the system failed her, as did her parents. Maybe it was because we have been an overburdened, underfunded city department. Perhaps even the private company hired to handle her file was overworked. Maybe the company was simply greedy, took its $3.5 million contract and didn't provide the services it was hired to do for no reason other than to generate a higher profit margin.

We might not know the full truth, because grand jury reports such as the one in this case do tend to only give the worst side of the story. Or, maybe it really is as cut and dry as this week's newspaper stories make it sound. We just don't know. But we know Danieal Kelly shouldn't have died. So, for this week's Asshole of the Week, we are calling out the system that failed Danieal Kelly.

Image via Flickr user The Divine Miss M.