One nightmare led to another for Buxton couple with baby

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

At right:

BUXTON - Barbara and Richard Hoyt once believed a state day-care license stood for something.

They thought it meant their 4-month-old son was in a safe place, that state workers regularly dropped in to check how children were treated. The state oversight helped them feel secure when they dropped Matthew off on their way to work.

Then their son ended up in a hospital emergency room with a black eye, scratches and a fat lip. The injuries, state records show, occurred when the day-care owner left children unsupervised.

The Hoyts' experience could hold lessons for thousands of Maine parents.

Parents today need the security of knowing there is safe and adequately regulated child care available.

Yet, the Hoyts learned that a state license to provide day care is no guarantee of a safe environment for children.

The Hoyts say they also learned that the Department of Human Services is an unsympathetic bureaucracy. It balked at providing them information about how their son was injured. The agency also seemed more concerned with helping the day-care provider than the parents whose child was injured, they said.

Perhaps most importantly, the Hoyts learned that parents must take the responsibility to judge if a day-care operation is safe for their children.

Taken all together, their experiences made the Hoyts feel there was a breach of trust by DHS.

Day-care providers ''can do whatever they want pretty much,'' Richard Hoyt says. ''You can get in more trouble for abusing an animal in a kennel than you can for abusing a child in a day care.''

Both Hoyts still work. Their son is in a new day-care environment, one they feel comfortable with. They would prefer not to rely on day care at all, but like most families, they have no choice.

Their peace of mind, however, is gone forever.

Their wake-up call came on Sept. 28, 1995.

'WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY KID?'

Hoyt, a petite woman with shoulder-length brown hair, recalls trembling with fear. ''Take him to Mercy Hospital,'' she said, hanging up the phone.

Hoyt and her husband arrived before the ambulance and watched as rescue workers opened the back doors to bring Matthew out.

''I went up into the ambulance to get him, and it was just horrid,'' Hoyt said. ''His face, his head, I mean it wasn't just a couple of bruises. His head was all purple and swollen. I was thinking, 'What the hell happened to my kid?' ''

State records show Matthew arrived at the hospital with ''cuts and bruises on his face, including a black-and-blue bruise under his right eye, a 'fat' upper lip with a cut under the lip.''

He also had small scratches under his nose and on top of his head and forehead ''that look(ed) like fingernail scratches,'' a DHS report stated.

The Hoyts spent the day at the hospital running their son through a battery of medical tests to check for more serious injuries. The child screamed when the doctors touched him, the Hoyts said. But except for the cuts and bruises, Matthew was OK.

They returned home with their child. Life did not return to normal.

Matthew would not go to sleep at night. ''He would scream and cry for two hours straight,'' Hoyt says. ''He never did that before.''

Hoyt quit her job because she couldn't contemplate putting her son in another day-care situation.

Both Hoyt and her husband had trouble sleeping. They blamed themselves for Matthew's injuries. ''The guilt was incredible,'' she said. ''We both beat ourselves up.''

They also become obsessed with trying to find out how their son was injured.

The Hoyts soon discovered the state wasn't going to give them an answer.

Twenty days passed before a DHS investigator - who has since left the investigations unit - interviewed Hoyt, or visited the day-care home where the injury occurred.

''They should have been there immediately, not several weeks later,'' Hoyt said.

After the visit, days passed and Hoyt still heard nothing back from the state.

She wanted to know what happened to her son. She wanted to know if the state was going to take action against the day-care operator.

Hoyt started calling the Department of Human Services for answers. She got answering machines instead of people. The runaround went on for weeks, she said.

Finally Hoyt became so frustrated she called the commissioner's office in Augusta to find out why no one would talk to her.

She got her call back.

Hoyt says the licensing worker she talked to would only tell her the basic circumstances surrounding her child's injury and would not provide details.

Hoyt also says she was told that DHS planned to let the day-care home stay open, if it met a few minor conditions.

Hoyt said the agency's indifference pushed her over the edge. She and her husband hired an attorney, Campbell Badger, and filed a civil lawsuit in Superior Court on Feb. 22, 1996, asking for an unspecified judgment against the day-care operator, Kim Field.

''I wanted to sit in a room with her (Field's) peers and let her explain to them and me how this happened to my child,'' Hoyt said.

DAY-CARE INCIDENT HAD NO ADULT WITNESSES

The lawsuit began to give the Hoyts a better understanding of how their son was injured, as their attorney got copies of investigative reports from the state.

On the surface, the answer seemed simple. A 19-month-old child allegedly climbed into a crib with Hoyt's baby during nap time, according to DHS records. The older child brought along stuffed animals and his blanket.

A state investigator speculated the older child may have stepped on the Hoyts' son. Barbara Hoyt says her son weighed 12 pounds at the time. He wasn't old enough to roll over.

The truth is that no one knows for sure what happened, because there weren't any adult witnesses.

Field, the day-care owner, was cleaning in another part of the home when the Hoyts' child was hurt.

The DHS investigation found that Field was not properly supervising children in her care when the injury occurred.

Field, in a recent interview, disagreed. She said she was watching the children closely and checked on them every 15 to 20 minutes.

However, she acknowledges she was on a different floor of the house while the children napped. She said the television was on and she cleaned and vacuumed.

Conrad Thibault, who headed the DHS abuse investigation unit at the time, wrote an internal memo in January 1996 saying he had serious reservations about the day-care home because of the incident involving the Hoyts' son.

Field, he wrote, ''has demonstrated very poor judgment and if we're inclined to work with her, we need to establish some measurable way of doing it.''

'CONDITIONAL LICENSE'; A LACK OF SCRUTINY

The state issued Field a ''conditional license'' on June 23, 1996 - nine months after the Hoyts' child was injured.The license allowed Field to care for 12 children.

It required her to meet several conditions, such as not doing major housecleaning while caring for children and not forcing children to take naps.

If Field did not meet the conditions, the state had the right not to renew her license and even seek an emergency suspension.

Field said the state did not seem overly concerned about how quickly she met those conditions.

''Basically what they told me is, 'When you get these conditions done, call me.' Which I did,'' Field said.

The lack of scrutiny, she said, ''in a way, I kind of felt that was good. But then from maybe the parents' point of view that doesn't look very good they weren't checking up on me.''

State records show a licensing inspector visited Field's home twice during the following two years, once on July 2, 1996, and again July 16, 1997. She passed both inspections and met the conditions set by DHS, state records show.

The Hoyts pursued their lawsuit against Field and say they believe the state helped protect her in the case.

State documents show the Department of Human Services originally sent Field a conditional license stating she must supervise children more closely because the Hoyts' son was ''injured while you were housecleaning/vacuuming on another level of the home.''

That wording was challenged by Field's attorney.

''We took the position that (Field being in a different part of the home) didn't cause this incident and that nothing she did caused this incident. It was just an innocent misdeed by one child upon another child,'' Michael LaTorre, Field's attorney, said in an interview.

The state took the sentence out. A new license was sent to Field that makes no mention of a child being injured in her home.

Barbara Hoyt feels the change ''made a big difference in our case.''

The weakening of the language made it seem like ''the state was saying it was OK for what she did,'' Richard Hoyt said.

Nora Sosnoff, the assistant attorney general who handled the case for the state, said the conditional license was not changed to help Field.

Field, in a recent interview, said she is not responsible for what happened. She said she regularly checked on children at her home the day the incident occurred.

Yet Field also said that if she had not been cleaning on a different floor, she might have heard what was going on and been able to keep the child from being injured.

''I don't think there was a lack of supervision,'' Field said. ''I just think under the circumstances, I had something bad happen. I think it could happen to anybody.''

'PEOPLE ... THINK THE STATE IS WATCHING THESE PEOPLE'

For almost a year after the state sent Field a conditional license, the Hoyts continued their civil case in court - depositions, summonses and legal motions.

Then one day, Barbara Hoyt got another phone call.

''Our attorney called and said, 'I'm at the courthouse and the judge said he wants you to settle,' '' Hoyt said.

By this time the Hoyts were tired of it all.

Barbara Hoyt had recently gone back to work because the family could not survive on one income. Their son was doing fine and their anger over what happened had dulled with time.

''I'm not as angry with her (Field) anymore as I am with the state,'' Hoyt said.

They agreed to settle for $9,000, of which $4,000 went to their attorney. Money wasn't the point, they said.

The Hoyts had learned their lessons.

Because of what they went through, the couple put even more effort into finding a new day-care provider for their son than they had in the past.

They checked more references, dropped in unannounced several times and called the state to see if any complaints had been filed.

Even though they are happy with the new child-care provider, they still keep a watchful eye, Richard Hoyt said.''I'll bust in that house any time during the day without knocking,'' he said.

''I don't feel like I should have to do that, but that's what you have to do to feel safe,'' he said. ''People honestly think the state is watching these people. Until you have an experience, you really think that.''