State officials brief media on investigation into handling of Boone County child’s death | News, Sports, Jobs

PROVIDING ANSWERS – Cynthia Persily, cabinet secretary of the Department of Health, Michele Blatt, the state’s education secretary, and Maj. James Mitchell, the chief of staff of the West Virginia State Police, answer questions about the state’s involvement in the case of a Boone County girl who later died of malnutrition. – Steven Allen Adams

CHARLESTON — Representatives from West Virginia’s child welfare, education and law enforcement agencies answered questions from the press regarding the state’s involvement – or lack of involvement – in the case of a 14-year-old girl who died in April.

Brian Abraham, Gov. Jim Justice’s chief of staff, hosted a one-on-one press conference Thursday afternoon in the governor’s reception room on the death of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller of Boone County. Sheriff’s officials found Miller dead in April in what they called a “skeletal state.” Miller’s mother and grandparents have been charged with child abuse resulting in death.

The state Department of Human Services, which oversees child protective services, declined to provide the press with information about past contact between child protective services, Miller or her family. In an April 22 news release, the department cited state code that says all records about a child maintained by the department are confidential.

However, the same section of the law allows the release of information about child deaths and near-deaths as long as the identity of those reporting or making complaints about child abuse or neglect is not disclosed. The Department of Health believes it complies with this law by providing an annual critical incident report.

Since April, several media outlets across the state have filed Freedom of Information Act requests with state and local authorities, with Justice being questioned about the case during virtual briefings and public appearances.

It has since been revealed that Miller’s name had appeared in two previous CPS cases in 2009 and 2017 involving her family. Miller attended virtual classes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and dropped out of public school in 2021. She was homeschooled without any follow-up required by Boone County Schools. And the West Virginia State Police conducted a welfare check on Miller in the spring of 2023, with an officer indicating in audio recordings that he was making a CPS referral and GPS data showing that he went directly to the regional DoHS office to make the referral in person.

Abraham said the governor’s office launched an internal investigation in April into state authorities’ handling of the Miller case.

“After we gathered the information, the governor again asked us to speak to all agency representatives about what, if anything, happened that could have prevented the situation, whether anything happened that caused the situation, and whether there are things we could have done or done differently to prevent this from happening in the future,” Abraham said.

That investigation found that the now-retired officer had failed to follow procedures in place since 2015 for using the Department of Health’s child abuse and neglect hotline, 1-800-352-6531. Abraham said that since 2015, all new officers are now trained to use the hotline and calls from law enforcement agencies are given priority.

Abraham said one of the two officers – one of whom he personally interviewed – actually drove to the regional CPS office. According to Abraham, state police found Miller healthy and not malnourished, found no abuse or neglect, and had no intention of making a referral to CPS despite what was stated in the radio recordings. Informal contact occurred between the officers and CPS staff, during which they told staff that Miller had said she was afraid of COVID.

One of the police officers, whose name was not disclosed, was able to give the names of the CPS officers he had spoken to, but they could not recall meeting the officers, nor could they say that no such meeting had taken place.

“There was informal contact with the caseworkers … they passed the information on to those caseworkers with no intention of making a formal referral or allegation of abuse and neglect,” Abraham said. “In fact, (the officer) states that the girl indicated to him on her own that she was afraid of COVID and did not want to be around people because she was afraid of COVID.”

“The office thought it was odd that someone of that age would have such a belief, and he wanted to go to the department and at least bring it to their attention and see if someone would call her and talk to her about it,” Abraham continued. “The Department of Health did not consider it a formal referral because there were no allegations of abuse and neglect. Nothing further was done after that day.”

Abraham said that based on their investigation, there was no wrongdoing on the part of police officers or CPS caseworkers. Although CPS had contact with Miller’s family in 2009 and 2017, Miller was not involved in either contact, even though her name was included in both of those case files.

Cynthia Persily, cabinet secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, urged the public and reporters – those who are required by law to immediately report suspected child abuse and neglect – to use the Department of Health’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline. Anyone who shows up at a Department of Health office to report abuse and neglect in person will also be directed to the hotline or given a room and phone to call the hotline. People reporting an immediate emergency are encouraged to call 911.

Persily also said the Department of Health has contracted with a company to develop a new response system that will route calls that do not involve abuse or neglect to other department services.

“If the referral meets the criteria for abuse and neglect as set out by law, an investigation will be conducted, as we are currently doing,” Persily said. “If the criteria are clearly not met, the case will be discarded. But there is a middle ground, and I will tell you that most of the time it is related to poverty. We do not equate poverty with abuse and neglect, but there is that middle ground. What we will do is refer these cases to additional services in our system.”

State schools superintendent Michele Blatt said she plans to work with the West Virginia legislature to tighten reporting requirements for homeschooling families. Homeschooled students must undergo an evaluation every three years.

If a homeschooled student fails to complete the assessment, the school system may consider the student a truant and take further legal action. However, many districts, including Boone County Schools, do not follow these requirements.

“There was a gap of over three years where no one in the school system had the opportunity to see her or demand anything of her,” Blatt said. “The West Virginia Department of Education really wants to work with the legislature to really see how we can strengthen the guardrails around the homeschool reporting requirement.

“We know that we have a lot of parents who homeschool their children, who do it right and take care of their children. For those families, that’s the best choice. I think our 7,000 children in foster care are proof that not all parents are doing what’s best for their children,” Blatt continued.

On the question of when and how much information government agencies should release publically related to the death of a child, Abraham said the government wants to improve the way it releases information in the future, while maintaining confidentiality.

“I think we quite frankly didn’t understand that because at the beginning of this search we generally denied that we had anything to hide,” Abraham said. “Jim Justice wants us to be 100% transparent.”

Thursday’s press conference almost didn’t take place after attorneys for Miller’s mother, Julie Miller, tried to get a district judge to stop the press conference during a hearing on Wednesday. The attorneys claimed that a CPS investigator tried to question Julie Miller without consulting her attorneys.

Abraham said the CPS investigator was sent by the local CPS office without the knowledge of the Department of Health or the governor’s office. The investigator was trying to complete a CPS investigation into Kyneddi Miller’s death, but Abraham called the local CPS’s actions “stupid.”

“I don’t have the words to explain how incredibly stupid it was for this employee to go into this facility and try to question this individual, given what we’re doing here today and given the fact that he was in the governor’s office just last Friday being questioned about this,” Abraham said. “Someone should have raised their hand and asked a supervisor in the department, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to do this?’ That wasn’t done…that was done at the county office level.”