Parent of burned boy was investigated at least six times over eight years

Bill Hirschman:

The fatal scalding of 3-year-old Jaquez Mason on Christmas Day -- punishment for soiling his diaper -- was the last act in a tragedy of violence and family strife stretching back to 1997, authorities said.

Valerie Love Kennedy, who gave birth to 10 children, has been investigated at least six times for abuse allegations, state and county records show.

Most recently, Kennedy, 30, was accused Oct. 12 of using drugs in front of a 10-month-old and a 2-year-old in her Coral Springs apartment, according to a report from ChildNet, the private agency supervising state placements.

Both of those children showed "physical abuse" when a doctor examined them this week, Assistant Attorney General Phillippa Hitchins said in court.

In 2001, "medical neglect and physical abuse" led the state to remove five other children from Kennedy's house, authorities said.

That case laid enough of a foundation to allow the state to remove Jaquez from Kennedy two months after his premature birth in 2002, according to ChildNet and the Broward Sheriff's Office.

Jaquez was placed with his maternal grandmother, Annie Love Williams of Deerfield Beach, with the ruling that Kennedy could have no contact with the child.

But Williams allowed mother and child to spend Christmas together at Kennedy's apartment. Within hours, Kennedy had plunged him into a tub of scalding water, investigators allege.

For a week, Williams swabbed ointment over second- and third-degree burns covering half Jaquez's body. But she did not seek a doctor, sheriff's reports state. The boy stopped breathing on New Year's Day and died about a half-hour later from complications of the scalding, a medical examiner said after a preliminary autopsy Tuesday.

Kennedy was charged with murder Monday and held without bail. Williams, 51, was charged with aggravated manslaughter and is free on $10,000 bail.

On Tuesday, Broward Juvenile Court Judge John Frusciante removed four children from Williams' home and two from Kennedy's. He put them under the supervision of the state Department of Children & Families.

The relatives "have to be able to abide by the court orders. They can't go ahead and on their own decide `This is Christmas and the child should be with the mother and therefore I should be able to allow that to occur,'" Frusciante said.

Before the hearing, Kennedy sat with her hands cuffed behind her back. She repeatedly brushed her face against her shoulder, trying to keep tears from trailing down her face.

Williams did not appear at the hearing and did not have an attorney present. A sheriff's official testified that Williams told her that her defense attorney had advised her not to appear.

The six children apparently have four different fathers, said Hitchins, the assistant attorney general representing DCF. Two of the fathers, Ellis Kennedy and Demarest Stevenson, asked Tuesday for their children to be placed in their custody or with a relative. A third father is in prison and the fourth cannot be found, Hitchins said.

The murder charges have not ended detectives' investigation into conflicting, confusing reports. But pieces of Kennedy's past emerged from records and interviews with officials.

By age 30, Valerie Love Kennedy had given birth to 10 children. Two died at birth, and the others are ages 1 to 12.

She filed paternity claims in court against at least four men other than Kennedy. One of them, Wilbert Ulysse of Delray Beach, said he received custody of his daughter five years ago after a teacher reported she had bruises "that didn't happen from a kid being clumsy."

Accusations of child abuse began in 1997. Another followed in 1998 and another in 1999. But the Department of Children & Families investigation found no evidence, said sheriff's spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright.

When a fourth complaint was filed in 2000, the Sheriff's Office "found some evidence of neglect," Coleman-Wright said. A fifth investigation in February 2001 led to a judge removing five children and placing them in Williams' care.

Authorities would not discuss specifics of the complaints or who made them.

Love married Ellis Kennedy in April 2004. A few months after that, she gave birth.

Records are sketchy, but it appears the state considered taking that child away from the couple. But by then, the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach had ruled that the state cannot try to sever a parent's legal ties to a child solely because the parent previously lost custody of a child.

By September 2004, she asked the court for a protective order against Kennedy, claiming he had kicked and beaten her. A judge initially barred the husband from contacting her, but he lifted the order two weeks later for lack of evidence, court records show.

In December 2003, a call to the Florida Abuse Hotline alleged that Williams had ignored a child who had tied a string so tightly around her finger that it cut off circulation. Eventually the tip of her finger was amputated, ChildNet reported. Williams later said the girl never mentioned any pain.

A caseworker argued that the children should stay with Williams because they "shared a strong bond" and she had responsibly cared for other medical problems. A sheriff's investigator argued that the children should be taken away. But the caseworker defended the placement. Williams took parenting classes and the children were enrolled in day care and after-school care.

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