The Kids In The Hall

I guess the lesson from this is if you're going to drop a dime on someone for child abuse, have a pocketful:

They could have been saved.

Florida child-welfare workers had a chance eight years ago to rescue 11 New York foster kids imprisoned by a woman who pocketed more than $1 million in adoption cash, officials said yesterday.

A 1999 anonymous tip to the abuse hotline of the Florida Department of Children and Families said Judith Leekin was mistreating four children in her Port St. Lucie home, police said.

DCF investigators deemed the claim unfounded, and the matter was dropped when Leekin said she moved from the area, Florida officials said.

Leekin, now 62, could face more than 190 years in prison if convicted of abusing the 11 children - four of whom are reportedly disabled - whom she kept locked in her sprawling, well-manicured house.

Leekin adopted the foster children, now ranging in age from 15 to 27, before she moved to Florida from Queens in 1997, officials said. One of the children, a 19-year-old boy, fled Leekin's custody three years ago and is missing, said Officer Robert Vega of the Port St. Lucie Police Department.

It is not clear whether the teenager is even alive, Vega said. None of the children attended school, and many were burned, scarred or malnourished, he said.

"We've never had anything like this in Port St. Lucie before," Vega said. "They were bound together with handcuffs and shackles and were confined to just one hallway in her house."

An investigation by New York City's Administration for Children's Services revealed that Leekin used four aliases to receive approximately $1.26 million in adoption subsidies - a combination of city, state and federal funds - from the mid-1990s through last month.

For children 12 and older, the subsidy for a child classified as "normal" is $22.59 a day, ACS officials said. For a child with special needs - labeled "special" - the rate is $36.33, and for a child designated as "exceptional," it is $55.07. "Exceptional" children are often severely disturbed, officials said.

Leekin, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, was charged in Florida yesterday with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse and aggravated abuse of a disabled person. She is being held on more than $4 million bail.

Nine of the children were found at her Port St. Lucie home, and a 10th was discovered living on the streets, Vega said. All have been placed in state care.

Four New York City adoption agencies were involved in placing the children, officials said.

"This is really shocking," said neighbor Carmen Rodriguez, 65, who only remembered seeing one unhealthy-looking child at Leekin's home. "She said she had adopted this boy and he was always in the yard pulling weeds."

"He looked like he was 13 or 14, but she told me he was 28," she said

It was a sweet deal for the unwanted kid farmer: all of the money and none of the inspections. It brought to mind a story of the opposite extreme: the family of wealthy Miami pediatrician Michael Geraldi, whose wife Camille was named a Point of Light by President GHW Bush. Over the years they adopted about a ton of retarded kids. That didn't go over well with the neighbors, whose complaints were never of abuse but of potential harm to property values, and the family was forced to decamp to North Carolina. Said one of the neighbors, ""I do believe what she has done is an important thing, but she's moved beyond that," Mr. [Stuart] Reisman says. "I think 'points of light' are wonderful, but I don't want a point of light on a stick in my eye."

At least Ms. Leekin never annoyed the neighbors with her little hobby. I bet that quiet kid pulling weeds sure would have loved to live with the Geraldis though.