DETROIT – Two years after a 6-year-old boy was killed at home by his mother’s girlfriend, a state report about Michigan’s Child Protective Services -- the agency that investigates child abuse -- keeps getting delayed.
Terry Adams was killed in December 2021 while CPS was investigating the abuse of the boy. His family said they’re not surprised at all by the delays of the State Auditor’s new CPS report.
Terry was 6 years old when his mother got a new boyfriend. His family became alarmed when the school started making reports that said he had bruises all over him. One report said he had a large chunk of his hair ripped out.
The injuries kept getting worse, leading to hospital visits.
“He had blunt trauma to his head, he had black eyes, his arm was sprained,” recalled his grandmother, Dawn Joseph.
“And he had a busted eye, a blood vessel,” said Shannon Grabowsky, Terry’s aunt.
In 2021, Terry’s family said there were numerous complaints made to CPS’ investigations unit. They said they pleaded with CPS to intervene on Terry’s behalf.
“All of the horrific things that were done to him could have been prevented if CPS did their job,” Grabowsky said.
The family said Terry’s mother offered different explanations about how her son kept getting injured.
“And she kept saying, ‘Oh, he did it to himself. He did everything to himself, or his little sister did it,’” recalled Terry’s father, Gary Adams.
“They could have taken her rights away like they told us they were going to do,” Joseph said.
The family said CPS removed Terry from his mother’s custody twice, but each time he was returned to her. Terry was killed in December 2021. He was held underwater and drowned in the bathtub by his mother’s boyfriend. His 1-year-old sister was home at the time.
A jury found Hunter Locke-Hughes guilty of first-degree child abuse and involuntary manslaughter in February 2024.
Terry’s sister, who is now 4 years old, was returned to Terry’s mother -- who has never been charged with any crime related to her son’s death.
In 2018, three years before Terry Adams’ abuse began, the state took a hard look at the effectiveness of its Child Protective Services Investigations Unit. An audit found the department was “insufficient” in meeting many of the state’s requirements for child abuse investigations. It also found that CPS did not accurately assess the risk of future harm to children in more than 35% of the reviewed investigations.
The effectiveness of CPS is once again being examined by the state. A new audit includes an examination of CPS child abuse investigation between June 2021 and May 2022 -- the same period Terry Adams’ family said they called CPS for help numerous times.
In 2023, the Office of the Auditor General said it would release the audit by the end of the year. When that came and went, the state said the new CPS audit would come out in January 2024, then “early 2024” before being changed to June. The State Auditor now says it plans to release the audit at some point in July.
The Michigan Office of the Auditor General told Local 4 that more time is needed for the new audit because of the complexity and sensitivity of the subject and that its office has been short-staffed. The full statement can be read below.
“In summary, we may change our tentative release dates for several reasons. For this project, we needed more time to follow up on the large number of prior material findings (17); this follow-up required more sampling because of the complexity and sensitivity of the topic; we had a couple of key staff reassignments during the project to account for a retirement and the need to move resources briefly to our mandated financial audits; and, we are allowing more hours than projected to finish our due process step with the agency that includes their time to offer more documentation if necessary and prepare their preliminary response for our report.”
Michigan Office of the Auditor General