Mourners seek answers Anguish,
frustration prevail at funeral of boy who died in foster care
March 17, 2005
By Megan Tench
 What
began with loving tributes to a 4-year-old boy who died in foster
care ended with a fiery eulogy yesterday that brought hundreds of
mourners to their feet and took top officials with the state
Department of Social Services to task.
The crowd attending Dontel's
funeral at The Greater Love Tabernacle Church in Dorchester stirred.
Some craned their necks, while others quietly gasped.
''I told them to come," Dickerson
said, his voice booming over the rising tensions inside the
sanctuary. ''This is God's house. And I wanted them to be here
because they needed to be here to understand the sentiment of this
church and the pain of this family."
If an autopsy finds that the boy
was slain, Dickerson said, the community should hold the agency
responsible. ''DSS needs to be challenged to change some of its
policies as they relate to the placement of children in foster
care," he said. ''If there are perpetrators, the perpetrators need
to be dealt with to the full extent of the law."
The words struck a chord with the
crowd, which interrupted the sermon with applause and shouts of
''Amen."
Frustration and anguish poured out
yesterday as a divided community tried to make sense of a death they
say should not have happened. On March 6, Dontel was rushed to the
hospital by his foster mother, a 24-year-old Dorchester woman, who
said the boy hurt himself while jumping on a bed. But his biological
family believes the bruises on his face and a swollen eye mean
something different. The family contends DSS placed Dontel in a
foster home where he was beaten to death.
Later, outside the church, amid
wails of grief-stricken family members and the quiet sobs of
community leaders, Spence said he felt partly responsible for
Dontel's death, and a deep sense of failure for not being able to
protect him. He vowed to tighten the screening process for potential
foster parents. Dontel's death, he said, was a hard lesson.
''We are constantly trying to
figure out what are the ways we can reduce the harm to any child,"
Spence said outside the church. ''So it is obviously always harder
for us when it is one of our own who is suspected of doing the harm.
Next time maybe we can get there earlier. Maybe we can prevent
someone intent on doing the child harm from actually doing the
harm."
Authorities are still investigating
the circumstances surrounding Dontel's death. Dontel was placed in
the foster home 11 days earlier, after state officials deemed both
of his parents unfit or unable to care for him. His mother had a
history of drug abuse and his father was deported to St. Kitts and
Nevis in the Caribbean after a domestic violence charge.
The boy was rushed to Carney
Hospital in Dorchester after his foster mother said she found him
unresponsive and called 911.
The state medical examiner's office
completed a preliminary examination last week of Dontel's body, but
as of yesterday test results had not yet been analyzed, said David
Procopio, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F.
Conley. Police are treating the death as ''suspicious," he said,
adding that the results of the tests will indicate whether Dontel's
death was a homicide or an accident.
''There has been no ruling yet that
it was a homicide," he said.
Mourners yesterday were raw with
shock, anger, and sadness.
Christal Claiborne, the boy's
biological mother, went weak as she approached the open coffin,
where her son lay wearing a tiny white suit, a white knit cap, and a
turquoise cross-shaped pin. Her hand clutched her pregnant belly as
family and friends surrounded her.
The Jeffers family clung to each
other. Family members tried unsuccessfully to delay the ceremony
until the boy's father, Elary Jeffers, who lives in the Caribbean,
could find a way to attend.
Dickerson, the Claiborne family's
pastor, asked the two families to unite, while urging the crowd not
to blame Dontel's biological family for the boy's death.
''They are the parents of Dontel
Jeffers," he said. ''They need your love. They need your support.
They don't need your judgment."
For Dontel's mother, Dickerson had
special words.
''Christal, you have other
children, a child here and a child on the way," he said. ''Pour your
love into them. Tell them about their brother. You don't have to
look back, or look down. All you have to do is look forward, because
God has got your back."
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