Girl's father was investigated for abuse in other states

CHEASPEAKE

The father of 5-year-old Carly Sawyer, who is charged in her June 11 death, had been investigated by social service workers in other states, according to a city memo, but their counterparts in Chesapeake never knew about it.

The information came in a memo about the case prepared for the Chesapeake City Council. City officials declined to elaborate.

One advocate said the case illustrates how difficult it is to track such investigations from state to state.

"There is no system in place to transfer cases from state to state," said Betty Wade Coyle, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Hampton Roads. "Even worse, there's no national registry of founded cases. Every case is kept state by state."

On June 10, one of the Sawyers called 911 after Carly became unconscious. Brandy Sawyer, Carly's stepmother, had spanked Carly and the girl had thrown herself to the floor, the parents told police.

The girl arrived at the hospital with cuts, bruises and burns and ligature marks on her wrists. Police say Joshua and Brandy Sawyer put Carly in a box as punishment, tied her up with mesh netting to keep her from getting food from the refrigerator, and hit her with a belt as a method of potty training.

Joshua Sawyer, who as a Marine corporal had spent time in Iraq, has been charged with second-degree murder. Brandy Sawyer has been charged with first-degree murder.

In court last week, prosecutors described what they call "long, systematic abuse" of the girl by her father and stepmother.

By the time she was 2 years old, Carly was involved in a custody dispute in Onslow County, N.C. Documents in that case say her mother had been involved in at least one social services investigation there in 2005. That investigation was terminated after Joshua Sawyer's parents got involved with caring for Carly, according to court records.

Carly's mother, Jennifer Kimery, said she'd again contacted the Onslow County Department of Social Services in the summer of 2006, after she'd driven up from Georgia to visit Carly and noticed her behaving strangely. Kimery said Monday that the department told her it had contacted Josh Sawyer, then dropped the case.

A few weeks later, Kimery took Carly with her back to Georgia. There, she said she brought her to the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany and asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to examine her daughter. She brought her to a hospital and gave a statement to investigators, she said. She said she never learned the outcome of the investigation.

North Carolina Division of Social Services would not comment on whether the agency had any cases involving Carly's family. A representative for NCIS said Monday that he wasn't familiar with the circumstances and that the service is checking its records.

In general, if a case has been closed - meaning there were no concerns about the child's safety or that those concerns had been addressed - the division does not alert other agencies out of state about the family, said Kevin Kelley, assistant section chief for child welfare services.

"If it's been closed and we felt like the child was safe, they're free to move about," Kelley said.

Sawyer told a judge last week that he'd moved to Chesapeake about a year ago, after leaving the Marine Corps.

Chesapeake did not have any prior involvement with the family, and social services workers here did not know that Joshua Sawyer had been investigated in other states, according to the June 15 memo to the Chesapeake City Council.

Officials with Chesapeake Social Services say they generally get calls or letters from social services officials in other states - but only if child abuse or neglect cases are founded or substantiated, and only if the agency knows that a family has moved.

Even if there is a substantiated case, social service agencies in other states aren't obligated to pass case information along to another state, Coyle said.

And "there's no way the agency in North Carolina would have known that they had moved" unless the agency was providing the family services at the time, Coyle said.

She said it is "very easy" for cases to get lost between states.

"The obligation is on the friends and family and parents of the child to make sure the system follows that child," Coyle said.

Mike Saewitz, (757) 222-5207, mike.saewitz@pilotonline.com