Alan Madden story - Explosive Leadership Blog

Washington Post on January 29, 1981
“’System’ Betrayed 5-Year –old Boy, Dead of a Beating” by Wayne Slater, Associated Press
Quincy, ILL. Alan Madden was pummeled for perhaps four hours before he died, at times with fists, at
times with a wooden club wrapped with gauze and labeled “The Big Stick.” He was 5 years old. Police
found his frail body on the living room floor, his blond hair red with blood, his hands bruised from trying
to deflect the blows.
He died Jan 10. His mother and a boyfriend are charged with murder. But since his death, talk has
centered not so much on those who may have killed him, but on those who did not.
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On the uncle, who now says he would have told anybody about the bruises he saw—but nobody
asked.
On the school principal, who went through all the proper channels when Alan came to
kindergarten with blackened eyes.
On the assistant state’s attorney 100 miles away, confident that when investigators lay the
blame they’ll find “everybody did their job” by the rules in the county.
And on the judge, who says he was shown no evidence of child abuse before he ordered Alan
returned to his mother last August.
His mother, Pam Berg, 24, and his father, Gerald Madden, who disappeared years ago, had been
questioned about possible child abuse in 1975, when Knox County authorities investigated bruises on
the back and buttocks of Alan’s sister Tina, 7.
“I remember little Tina waking up with nightmares screaming, ‘Don’t Mommy, don’t!’ I saw bruises that
were suspicious on those kids...” said uncle Charles Kruger, who kept Alan and Tina for several months in
1976 while their mother served a prison sentence for forging a check.
After her release, Mrs. Madden headed for Colorado. Efforts to have Alan and Tina adopted were
unsuccessful.
She returned several years ago with a new boyfriend and a new daughter, Nicole, and said she wanted
her children back.
Hearings were held. The uncle wasn’t asked about abuse. Past problems were blamed on the father or
not discussed.
“She was very neat looking. She said she was going to school,” said Circuit Court Judge William
Richardson, whose hearing dealt only with the mother’s interest in the children, where she would live
and how she would pay for food and clothes.
Last August, Alan and Tina were returned to their mother, who was living with James Crain, 26. In
October, Alan came to kindergarten with his face so bruised he couldn’t be in the class picture. Principal
Rick Baldwin alerted the local Department of Children and Family Services office.
Baldwin later called the department again. A neighbor, hearing screams, called police, but everything
was kept confidential.
In December, just three weeks before Alan was killed, the Quincy office mailed a routine report to
Richardson. It said the family was doing fine.
This week, following an internal investigation of the “almost incomprehensive” case, two DCFS
employees were suspended pending dismissal: and a second superior was demoted, according to
Gregory Coler, state DCFS director. Six other social workers will be disciplined, he said.
Coler admitted his agency had ignored or failed to respond to warnings from a clergyman, school
official, a teacher and police.
Hundreds came to the funeral. Relatives didn’t claim the body, which would have required they pay for
the funeral, so the town donated a new set of clothes and a cemetery plot beneath evergreen trees.
Alan was buried with his teddy bear in a small blue coffin donated by strangers. (Harmon, 7-8)