More details emerge in DSS arrest
The cascading series of events that culminated in the arrest of a New Hanover County social worker accused of hampering a statutory rape investigation are detailed in documents filed to support the charge against her.
Those documents paint the clearest picture yet of the clash of professional duty and ethics between the social worker, Susan L. Taylor, and the sheriff’s investigator who charged her, Detective T.A. Smith.
New Hanover County Sheriff’s detectives arrested Mrs. Taylor on Oct. 20 at the New Hanover County Department of Social Services headquarters on Greenfield Street. She was charged with obstruction of justice.
According to a search warrant, she provided information to the victim and her mother, which allowed an abortion to be scheduled without a planned law enforcement presence. This prevented detectives from obtaining DNA evidence from the aborted fetus.
The DNA could have been used to help investigators charge a 27-year-old man with statutory rape of the girl, who was 14 when she became pregnant.
The Star-News does not identify victims of sexual assaults or juveniles involved in crimes.
After the case surfaced last week, questions focused on Mrs. Taylor’s legal and ethical responsibilities.
But details in case records show that law enforcement officers faced other daunting obstacles, including indecision and confusion on the part of the girl’s parents over how to deal with her pregnancy.
The parents are now concerned that Mrs. Taylor was arrested in the course of trying to help their daughter, said their attorney, Tommy Hicks.
“My clients are very distraught over the fact that a woman that did absolutely nothing but trying to help them has had this happen to her,” Mr. Hicks said.
“That doesn’t mean that they will take sides whatsoever, but still, they feel very upset about it,” he said. “I’m trying to determine if the Sheriff’s Office acted in any way contrary of my clients’ rights.”
Mr. Hicks said he brought the girl’s parents to a meeting Friday night with Mrs. Taylor’s attorney, Geannine Boyette.
Chief Deputy Tom Parker pointed out that a number of circumstances, including difficulty the parents faced making choices for their child, appeared to strongly influence choices investigators made.
The lead investigator in the case, Detective Smith opened her case file Aug. 11 after receiving word of the rape allegations.
At the time, the girl was between two and four weeks pregnant, according to documents. Her father mulled the question of whether an abortion pill available through a local medical services center would be safe for his daughter.
Detective Smith helped collect information about that abortion method from local medical professionals and the Internet and provided that information to the parents. Records show that Detective Smith also researched the pill to determine whether it would affect her ability to collect fetal DNA to be used as evidence.
The girl refused to identify the 27-year-old man as the child’s father, records state. In addition, investigators said she was uncooperative and unmanageable during questioning on Aug. 15.
“During this interview the juvenile victim was unstable in regards to language used towards parents, body language, refusal to follow instructions by remaining in the designated room with parents or parent, threats of tampering with [the] file and threats of assaulting [a detective] by spitting or throwing objects,” Detective Smith wrote in an affidavit.
The girl told investigators she was raped in an unrelated incident in January and that she was molested when she was younger.
“The juvenile victim also mentioned the names of other males that the juvenile victim had a sexual relationship with as to avoid any questions regarding (the perpetrator.)”
No clear answer has emerged about why the girl was involved with the Department of Social Services, with Mrs. Taylor assigned as her social worker. Documents do show that on Sept. 6, Detective Smith approached Mrs. Taylor with information about the case.
The girl, according to records, had already planned to obtain an abortion at Preferred Women’s Health Center in Wilmington.
After Detective Smith notified officials at the health center that police would become involved, the center canceled the procedure, documents show.
On Sept. 9, Detective Smith and the social worker appeared be cooperating in the case. Detective Smith played a tape for Mrs. Taylor of the tempestuous Aug. 15 interview with the girl, and told her that the girl might seek an abortion without telling anyone where or when. Detective Smith stressed to Mrs. Taylor that the evidence from the fetus was crucial to the statutory rape case.
In an affidavit, Detective Smith wrote that she needed to be present during an abortion “so that the product of conception could be collected immediately and the chain of custody not be tampered with.”
“[I] had to watch the product of conception leave out of the juvenile victim’s operation room, then place [it] in cooler on ice and transport [it] to [a] Burlington lab to see if there was DNA to collect that could be used.”
There are no indications that Detective Smith had a court order to collect the fetus or its DNA. Attorneys familiar with the case and constitutional law experts question whether a clinic would actually provide a fetus without such authorization.
Matters grew more complicated when the detective told Mrs. Taylor that she would be out of town for a number of days. Detective Smith told Mrs. Taylor that if an abortion occurred at that time, she would be unable to attend. She asked that Mrs. Taylor inform her if she learned that an abortion would occur, so that another detective could be present.
On Sept. 16, while Detective Smith was out of town, the girl underwent an abortion at a Raleigh clinic, documents show. No provisions were made for a detective to be present.
Four days later, Detective Smith learned that the girl’s father had recorded a conversation between the girl and the rape suspect. On the tape, documents state, the girl said Mrs. Taylor warned her that police would try to collect the DNA and had advised her to obtain an abortion.
“Juvenile victim stated on tape that social worker told her that (I) was on vacation and that the juvenile victim had like a week or so to do the procedure,” Detective Smith wrote.
On the tape, she said, the girl told the 27-year-old man that Mrs. Taylor accused police of “overstepping boundaries.”
The social worker, according to Oct. 12 interviews cited by Detective Smith, told the girl’s mother the detective was “too far in the case” and it was not necessary for law enforcement to be involved with the abortion procedure. The detective, according to her affidavit, was accused by the social worker of being “out for vengeance to get the tissue from the abortion.”
Legal and ethical experts agree that without a court order demanding the information, Mrs. Taylor was right not to inform detectives of the planned date and time of the abortion – if she indeed had that information – under penalty of strict state laws concerning confidentiality.
Whether warning her client of the police interest and the scheduling issues constitute obstruction of justice will be up to either District Attorney Ben David or the state attorney general to decide. Mr. David said an announcement concerning the fate of the case would be made Monday.
Nationally recognized experts, such as Robert M. Bloom of Boston University School of Law, expressed surprise upon learning of the case against Mrs. Taylor.
“It is an unusual situation where they would go after a social worker for obstruction of justice where she was probably looking out for the interests of her client,” said Dr. Bloom. “It seems to me like they are going through a lot of effort.”
Dr. Michael Davis of Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology teaches ethics for both law enforcement officers and social service workers.
He said officers are routinely called upon to do social-service related work. It was also not unusual for caseworkers like Mrs. Taylor to become closely entangled with some clients, noting the volatile nature of a 14-year-old girl with behavior problems.
Acts leading up to Mrs. Taylor’s arrest as detailed in the case documents, could have resulted from the officer and the social worker striving to maintain the ethical standards of their respective professions.
“To some degree ethics come into conflict,” he said.
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Posted by Editor at October 31, 2005 02:15 AM
