Parents, child welfare system created short, chaotic life
EVANSVILLE — The call to 911 came in shortly before noon March 31, 2008.
The man on the other end of the line was distressed because his 3-year-old son was hurt, badly. "OK. He's not breathing right now?" a dispatcher asked Terry Lay as the Evansville man performed CPR at the family's trailer in Eastbrook Mobile Home Park.
"No. His lips are purple, and he's not doing nothing," Lay replied.
In the background of that recording, a child can be heard gagging, struggling to breathe.
It was a fight Kalab Gene Lay ultimately would lose.
In some ways, that fight for life was a struggle Kalab had been fighting since he was born.
Kalab's autopsy revealed a life scarred by abuse and neglect. His death was ruled a homicide because of multiple blunt force trauma from beatings delivered over a period of days. Signs of recent as well as previous abuse were evident, said Annie Groves, then Vanderburgh County's assistant coroner.
"I think we realized right then and there the system wasn't working. There's no way that baby should have been given to those parents. Ever," she said. "I've said all along the system had failed that little boy. The system that should have protected him did not."
Kalab died April 1, 2008, and his parents faced formal charges three days later. It wasn't a first arrest for either Lay or Amanda Brooks.
Kalab and his twin sister, Kayla, had been reunited with Brooks and Lay in January 2008 after the pair finished serving time on methamphetamine-related charges in separate Illinois prisons. Lay's criminal history is a lengthy one.
The cruelty of Kalab's death and his sister's beating over a period of days in March 2008 cast a harsh light on the child welfare system charged with protecting those least able to protect themselves.
Kalab, less than 40 days from his fourth birthday, has the dubious distinction of being one of only two children to die at the hands of caregivers in Vanderburgh County in 2008. In December, Henderson, Ky., resident Carol C. Thomas checked into an Evansville motel, where she fatally shot her 3-year-old daughter, Brandi, before killing herself.
Tragically, Kalab's death was the first in a frustrating and heartbreaking string of violent child deaths in Vanderburgh County.
"We were pissed. They took this child away from the parents who raised him in the foster home and gave him to the parents, and they killed him," said Elaine Slicker, a founder of Break the Silence. The group, conceived in the "Your Turn" comments of courierpress.com, formed to raise awareness of child abuse and take action to stop it.
In December, Brooks, 34, pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent resulting in death. During that hearing, she also pleaded guilty to battery resulting in serious bodily injury to a person less than 14 years of age in connection with what has been described as the "savage" beating of Kayla.
Lay, 41, will stand trial in September on charges of murder and neglect of a dependent resulting in death as well as neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury.
"They just had that baby for three months, and they killed him, and that sparked anger in everybody," Slicker said. "And it's just kept happening with more babies and more babies ... It was like: Boom! Boom! Boom! All of the sudden, we'd had enough."
The momentum of community activism has been fueled by child abuse and neglect deaths in Vanderburgh County since Kalab's: In the first three months of this year alone, three children ages 16 months and younger, have died, reportedly as a result of action or inaction by parents or stepparents.
Their stories are three among thousands. Since Kalab died, an estimated 1,650 American children have died of abuse or neglect, and such fatalities are considered underreported.
Still, substantiated child abuse and neglect deaths outnumber those attributed to accidental falls, choking on food, suffocation or fires in the home combined, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
"It's senseless. I literally can't understand it," said Groves, who was elected Vanderburgh County coroner in November. "What we're starting to see is it's not one-time abuse. It's not that they snapped. These children had other signs of abuse, not just recent. They also had past trauma."
Although conceived with the best intentions, the child welfare system operates under a cloak of secrecy designed to shield the privacy of the children and families it serves.
Five years ago, efforts to examine the sequence of events culminating in Kalab's death likely would have gone nowhere. Records and investigative documents would have remained inaccessible to public scrutiny.
However, a bill championed by Rep. Dennis Avery, D-Evansville, in 2004 requires disclosure of investigations into the death or near-death of a child as a result of abuse, abandonment or neglect. Illinois and Kentucky are among approximately 27 states with similar provisions.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Courier & Press obtained a copy of Kalab's file — 3,000 pages of records and documents encompassing his history in child protective services.
The court records and notes and reports of caseworkers, counselors and medical professionals in both Illinois and Indiana tell the story of a boy doomed within a system torn between the sometimes conflicting priorities of protecting a child's best interests and reuniting him with his parents.
More than 80 percent of victimized children are abused or neglected by their own parents, according to the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. One-third of those victims grow up to abuse or neglect children of their own.
In Kalab's life, the cycle apparently began decades before his birth, when his parents entered a system in which they seemed unable to break free.
The friends who introduced Terry Lay, then 33, and Amanda Brooks, 26, at a party eight years ago likely could not have foreseen where the meeting would lead: The pair quickly forged a relationship, a union troubled by financial difficulties, arguments, drug addiction and incarceration.
Brooks, a high school dropout and married mother of two, had suffered abuse and neglect as a child, and she seemed condemned to repeat the cycle when she was charged in 1997 with neglect of a minor in Delaware County, Ind., according to Kalab's file.
Lay was a high school dropout and felon with a lengthy criminal record who had fathered two children, been convicted of their neglect and relinquished his parental rights to them.
Shortly after meeting Lay in 2001, Brooks and her then-husband divorced. She retained custody of their two boys, who divided their time living with her, their father and their maternal grandparents, according to case records.
Despite their rocky parenting histories and lack of financial stability, the couple wasted littl time starting a family: They had five children together in six years.
Their first son arrived in May 2002. His birth was followed by a daughter the next April, and then twins, Kalab and Kayla, in May 2004. Brooks gave birth to a daughter by another man in 2006, and she and Lay had a son, their fifth child, in 2008.
In 2004, the couple established a home together in a two-story beige unit in the Kermit Coffee public housing complex in Eldorado, Ill., a city of about 4,500, roughly 10 miles from Harrisburg, the Saline County seat.
Their apartment was at the end of a long building split into separate family units. It faced a parking lot and a basketball court.
Brooks later would tell medical professionals and caseworkers she was taking birth control about the time the twins were conceived and was unaware she was pregnant until she was more than four months along.
She admitted using methamphetamine during the first half of her pregnancy and said she smoked about half a pack of cigarettes daily.
Doctors described her prenatal care as "late and scant."
The first four Lay children all eventually were diagnosed with developmental delays.
Lay told social workers he was unable to find a job that paid enough to feed his family, so in addition to the handouts he could get from local churches, he began making and selling methamphetamine.
Kalab, weighing just more than five pounds, was born shortly after Kayla on May 10, 2004, when the twins arrived two weeks early at Heartland Medical Center in Marion, Ill.
Physicians soon became concerned about Kalab: He seemed unable to keep food down and was transferred to Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis for surgery to correct an intestinal blockage.
The infant had two feedings the evening of his birth before he began vomiting. Medical personnel determined Kalab was in abdominal distress and failing to thrive.
Months later, Dr. Deanna St. Germain of Union County Hospital in Anna, Ill., wrote the intestinal blockage likely was because of "in utero exposure to methamphetamine."
Kalab remained at Cardinal Glennon for two weeks. During that time, his parents' seeming indifference began to concern a variety of those involved in his case.
Dr. David McCay, a pediatric resident at Cardinal Glennon, noted the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services already was involved with the family before the twins' birth. Caseworkers, however, told the hospital there was no reason not to return Kalab to his parents.
Hospital social worker Nan Winters contacted the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services in Saline County, Ill.
She learned an investigation of the family had started five months before the twins were born, but there was not an open case.
Caseworker Marilyn Waite reportedly assured Winters she had made several visits to the home and found it to be very clean and the "family had necessary baby supplies," according to documents in Kalab's file.
A hospital spokesman said Winters and other personnel at Cardinal Glennon declined to comment about their reports regarding Kalab's treatment there, citing patient privacy and a need for parental consent.
Despite the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services assurances of a safe home, McCay repeatedly noted difficulties reaching Kalab's parents, who did not make the three-hour drive from Eldorado to St. Louis for Kalab's surgery and apparently did not visit during his hospitalization.
In a social services supplemental report taken at the hospital, Winters wrote that for at least two days, Brooks failed to pick up Kalab, even though he was ready for discharge.
Brooks reportedly told Winters she was having trouble arranging transportation because the family did not have a car, but Winters noted she had informed Brooks of free transportation and other services available through the hospital.
Ed Mackey lived a few doors down from the couple in the Kermit Coffee housing complex.
Since Brooks and Lay had no telephone, Mackey said hospital staff repeatedly called his phone in efforts to reach the couple regarding Kalab's hospitalization.
"They just kept calling here and asking for the mother," Mackey said.
"And I remember Terry and Amanda just fighting all the time, but I don't know what about. All I know is, eventually, Amanda called the hospital back and just said 'Do what you have to do,' but I don't know what she meant. I know they didn't have a car, and eventually a relative came and got her and they got (Kalab)."
In the days after Kalab came home from the hospital, Mackey and another neighbor, Mary Stallings, said Amanda acted in ways characteristic of a new mother, coming over to show them the newborn twins.
As the weeks passed, however, both grew wary of the couple's lifestyle.
Mackey said Lay was unemployed and always borrowing his phone.
"He would call all the churches for money, and I think one priest was getting tired of it," Mackey said.
"I remember (Lay) telling him he wasn't pulling his chain, he had mouths to feed and was waiting on a check."
Mackey said Lay told him he'd been hurt working a construction job and was awaiting a settlement check.
But when the check came in the mail, Lay was in jail. Mackey remembered Brooks trying to get a ride to the jail so she could have him sign it and cash it.
Stallings has lived in the apartment next door to Brooks' and Lay's former one for more than 30 years and said she's lived in the housing complex longer than anyone. Although she said she usually keeps to herself, Stallings recalled seeing Brooks outside with her young children and also seeing the twins shortly after they were born.
Stallings "had suspicions" about possible drug use in the home.
"I had suspicions about what was going on there, but I didn't associate with them," Stallings said. "I didn't say anything to anyone about it, because you don't do that around here."
Those suspicions were confirmed July 9, 2004, when Stallings said her daughter woke her before dawn, saying she'd seen police entering Brooks' and Lay's apartment as she came home from work.
Eldorado police officers had gone to apartment E5 after smelling ether coming from the complex at 1900 N. Main St.
Armed with a search warrant, police found three adults and four children sleeping in the midst of a meth lab and inhaling fumes from the meth-making process.
Kalab, Kayla and their two older siblings were malnourished and in poor physical condition when they were removed from the residence.
According to numbers from the Department of Justice, after their parents' arrest, the Lay children joined an estimated 783,000 American children in the foster care system.
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