Madison Avenue home kicked off police investigation into child protection agency
Jun. 27—Dogs jumping out of broken windows at the Madison Avenue home caught the attention of Scranton's animal control officer on a Friday morning in October.
The decrepit conditions inside — animal feces and urine saturating the floor and walls, rotting trash, buzzing flies and a smell that forced another officer to wear a respirator — prompted a city police investigation. That led Tuesday to the arrest of Lackawanna County Office of Youth and Family Services casework supervisor Sadie Coyne (O'Day).
Coyne is charged with endangering the 9- and 11-year-old boys who lived there by failing to remove them from a filthy home and a mother who didn't feed, clothe, shelter and otherwise care for them properly. Coyne never followed up on complaints of physical and sexual abuse and medical illnesses caused by the conditions, even though she had a duty to protect the boys, city and county detectives charge in an arrest affidavit.
The case against Coyne stretches from February 2021 to October 2022, but the family's problems date back further. The Times-Tribune is not naming the mother to protect the children.
The mother, removed at age 9 from her own mother's home because of neglect, admitted to Scranton police to "substantial and long-term behavior" that exposed her boys "to abuse and neglect that was consistently ignored and overlooked by OYFS and supervisor (Coyne) in particular," according to the arrest affidavit filed against Coyne.
Investigators found the little food the family had was often spoiled because of exposure to dog feces and urine. Electrical extension cords ran throughout the home because only one or two rooms had power. Urine on the walls short-circuited electrical outlets, investigators wrote in the affidavit. The residence had no gas (heat) because the mother never turned on the heat.
At one point, the boys slept on air mattresses, which dogs later destroyed. In a locked third-floor room, a police officer found a hoard of cats, a shredded mattress and swarms of fleas. The mother called Coyne and a different caseworker for help, but told police she was ignored until the October visit.
"Suddenly OYFS was in almost daily contact with her," investigators wrote.
The Madison Avenue home's property manager said he managed three previous homes where the family lived and each was eventually condemned for similar reasons.
All the while, the family was an OYFS client.
Neighbors said the boys "would come over every day and beg for food," according to the affidavit. Neighbors reported poor living conditions as abuse multiple times, but caseworkers told him and other neighbors "this is not abuse." One boy's badly rotted teeth created medical issues a dentist couldn't treat.
When in-person instruction resumed after the COVID-19 pandemic eased, the 9-year-old boy showed up at school in pull-up diapers.
In nine years, no one had potty-trained him. Three days with his foster parents solved that.
The school also cleaned his feces- and urine-coated clothes, gave him new uniforms and fed him.
Coyne, who worked for the county since 2011, didn't get involved in the family's case until December 2020, according to the affidavit, but the family had OYFS caseworkers since just after the 11-year-old was born. At one point in 2018, the mother's boyfriend, a convicted sex offender, was living with them.
After Coyne became involved, the agency received allegations the children were victims of sexual abuse, but the mother refused to allow them to be interviewed.
Coyne closed the case instead of referring it to police, according to the affidavit.
Over and over, neighbors and others reported problems only to have Coyne declare the referrals invalid, investigators say.
On Oct. 14, the day an animal control officer and police arrived, a Scranton housing inspector condemned the mother's latest home and police took custody of the children.
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.
