Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

In explaining its decision to settle the Anchorage child abuse case of two teenagers for $2.4 million, the Palin administration chose the wrong words.

The two boys lived a nightmare existence, with parents who should have been prosecuted and a government that looked the other way. One of the boys was born with cocaine in his system, while the other was 6 months old when his father stabbed his mother, an early start to the physical and emotional abuse that marked the families of both boys.

After years of neglect, the boys ended up in an Anchorage foster home where the foster mom beat another child to death in front of them in 1999. To protect their identities, they were referred to in court as A.J. and D.D., now 17 and 18 years old.

Regarding the settlement, the news release from the Department of Law said the jury would have had to make “hard decisions” about what the state should have done in response to the reports of chid abuse dating back 17 or 18 years.

And it “would have been difficult to pass judgment upon the decisions made by the Office of Children’s Services without being affected” by the murder of the child in the foster home.

“For these reasons, the state has resolved these claims with these two young men, permitting closure on the events,” the Department of Law said Monday.

It is the phrase “permitting closure on the events” that I object to, as it suggests that this episode should be forgotten. But there are lessons to learn here.

The events need to be investigated by the Legislature and the Palin administration with a goal of protecting other children.

We aren’t doing enough to directly confront the ways in which the abuse of alcohol and other drugs robs young Alaskans of their childhood.

One of the boys threatened suicide as a 6-year-old, while the other was about the same age when he said he liked being at a shelter because he had food to eat and toys.

Twice during the Knowles administration, the state produced publications containing stories about hundreds of children taken into protective custody, referring to them as casualties of “Alaska’s hidden war.”

The war goes on, but it’s usually out of the public spotlight. Political leaders don’t pay much attention because the voters don’t get riled up about an issue that doesn’t attract headlines. In politics, out of sight means out of mind.

One of the recurring themes over the years is that the state has not had enough employees to handle the complicated and contentious task of sorting out family abuse allegations. Is that what happened with A.J. and D.D.?

Much of the harm done to the boys took place in the 1990s, when the focus of state government was avoiding new taxes while trying to deal with lower oil prices and the “fiscal gap.”

I don’t recall that we’ve ever had a detailed investigation of how the lack of staffing in child protection places children at risk in Alaska.

That there is a connection I have little doubt, especially given the time pressure created when everyone — perhaps even the victim — insists that nothing unusual is going on behind closed doors. Sorting out contradictory reports is always difficult. It might be impossible in complex human interactions when other pressing cases are demanding attention.

The newspaper doesn’t report on the hidden war the way it does on city council meetings because the facts about the casualties and the perpetrators are not easy to ascertain.

The consultant hired by attorneys for the boys, Peg Hess of Knoxville, wrote a 52-page report filled with allegations of repeated failures on the part of the state in dealing with these two boys and their families from when the two were born until the end of 2000.

Social workers have a tough job. When they knock on someone’s door, I imagine they often meet with hostility and complications that make it difficult to discover the truth. They have to balance respect for parental rights and the need to keep families intact with the contradictory task of removing kids from abusive parents, while recognizing the difference. That’s a lot to ask.

Where does individual responsibility end and state responsibility begin? None of this is simple.

For purposes of this column about A.J. and D.D., officials of the Office of Children’s Services said they would have no comment other than the news release I mentioned above.

The Palin administration will say it is making progress and that actions taken over the past couple of years in the department are showing positive results. A national child safety organization released a report a year ago on the internal workings of the Office of Children’s Services with recommendations for changes. The last annual report of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services says the “ultimate priority is to keep all Alaska children safe and better serve families.”

Even so, there should be an investigation into what is perhaps the most serious allegation in the report Hess submitted to the boys’ attorneys.

“This reviewer can only conclude that the grossly negligent practices afforded by the agency to the plaintiff children and their deceased peer were not unique and situational, but rather pervasive within the agency culture, and that ADHSS (Alaska Department of Health and Social Services) has failed to provide many children in their custody care and protection,” Hess wrote.

The consultant was acting as an advocate in the case, not an independent analyst, and her report deals with case files only until the end of 2000, but the most pressing challenge is to weigh the merits of her charge and identify what problems have not been corrected. Then it might be time to talk about closure.

Dermot Cole can be reached at cole@newsminer.com or 459-7530.