In the children’s name: NYC must learn exactly how a family fell through the cracks before the Coney Island drowning of three children
There’s an agonizing series of questions we’ve asked too many times to count after a New York City youngster has died at the hands of a caregiver despite the previous involvement of the Administration for Children’s Services: Why didn’t ACS do more? How did it fail to see warning signs? Could the life of a beautiful child have been saved if only those we pay to protect them had been more inquisitive or proactive?
We’re forced to ask those questions again, times three, after the news that 30-year-old Erin Merdy, charged with drowning her 7-year-old son, 4-year-old daughter and 3-month-old son on a Coney Island beach, had contact with the city agency before they met their end.
As this newspaper reported Wednesday, after the May birth of her youngest child led her to voluntarily check into a hospital with postpartum depression, Merdy was monitored by ACS. A source told the Daily News that on July 15, “someone in the Family Services Unit discharged her when they shouldn’t have. At the very least, a psych exam should have been done — and that wasn’t done.” (Merdy had also been investigated in 2020 after her oldest child stopped showing up at school.)
ACS is looking at what went wrong, but that’s not enough. The city’s Department of Investigation must conduct its own thorough inquiry to determine what must be done to prevent similar failures from repeating. Pull no punches. ACS often withholds details to protect children remaining in the household; tragically, that’s not an issue in this case.
We aren’t hunting for simple scapegoats. ACS staffers have very difficult jobs and heavy caseloads. They cannot see the future. Their work should be appreciated in the vast majority of cases where they make wise decisions about leaving a child with his or her family or pursuing interventions up to and including an emergency family removal.
But accountability is essential. Broken systems must be fixed. People who make consequential mistakes must be disciplined or removed. Shine a light, and make it bright.
