Judge Rebukes Katz’s DCF in Acquittal of Defendant.
You don’t see this often. In acquitting Douglas Wirth of all charges of physical and sexual abuse in a Monday verdict, Judge Julia Dewey, according to The Hartford Courant, rendered this striking indictment of the Department of Children and Families:
“Indeed, DCF was aware of many of the allegations, yet did not sustain any of the complainants’ earlier complaints,” Dewey said. “Given the brigade of social workers, educators, [DCF] personnel and medical providers who provided intense services to the complainant and his siblings, it is inconceivable that not one of these disinterested persons saw any signs of physical abuse.”
Dewey also criticized DCF and others for their failure to comply with court orders to release all documents related to the case. Prosecutors, she added, were under the impression that they had already received all documents.
“The litigants prepared under the misapprehension that they were in possession of all relevant government and medical records,” Dewey said. Instead, on the eve of the trial, DCF delivered 10,000 to 12,000 pages of documents to Dewey for review. She turned over about 2,000 pages of those documents to the lawyers.
But that wasn’t the end of the trickle of documents related to the case, the judge said.
“Most incredibly, the pre-adoption history of the complainant and his siblings had never been made available to either counsel,” Dewey said. “The state never should have proceeded to trial without this material. This comment bears repeating. Before this trial began, none of the counsel has seen the pre-adoption records. These records contained extraordinarily exculpatory information.”
Prosecutors also did not see “all of the critical narrative summaries prepared by DCF workers who testified as prosecution witnesses,” the judge said. “The state had an obligation to secure and review all relevant material before it began the criminal process. The glaring absence of these records should have alerted the prosecution that something was amiss.”
Katz, no longer thought of as a protector of fundamental rights, has offered no credible explanation for her department’s failure to comply with court orders in a timely matter. Katz took a direct interest in the case.