School staff at Evergreen Elementary and later a Chesterfield County middle school made five CPS reports about two brothers: one dated 2018, one 2019, one undated, one 2021 and one 2022. The reports described swollen eyes, bruised temples, bumps on the head and a child who said he was grabbed around the neck until his feet left the floor. A former CPS worker who reviewed the records says the pattern should have triggered a deeper response long before police finally got involved.
A Pattern Stretching Back to Kindergarten
The first report dates to November 27, 2018, when the older boy was in kindergarten and reportedly said his father hit him, knocked him over and struck the back of his head with a belt, according to WTVR. A second report nearly a year later, in October 2019, documented visible bruising on his nose and three bumps on his head, the station reported, along with the boy's own account of being pushed against a wall and grabbed around the neck until he could not breathe. That same October 2019 report noted he said he was repeatedly hit in the face with a pencil for doing homework incorrectly, when he was 6 years old.
An undated report in the same batch of records documented bruising around the younger brother's eye and temple, including a swollen left eye, a distinct red circle and a bruise on his right temple — injuries the child attributed to falling in the bathtub. Christa Moore, a former CPS worker and associate professor of sociology at UVA Wise who reviewed the five reports, said a child's age and the location and type of injury matter, especially when weighed against previous reports involving the same child.
The Promised Interview That Never Happened
A November 2021 school report documented a new injury to the older boy's face, including a dark bruise under his left eye, and stated that a police officer was expected to interview him before 1 p.m. that day. A later entry in the same record says the officer never showed, and the file notes that additional information would determine what happened next. Per the same account, CPS could not investigate the 2021 report because the child did not identify a parent or caretaker as the person who caused the injury.
Moore said subsequent head injuries, especially amid a pattern that includes head, neck or choking injuries, should have prompted follow-up, and that those facts together should have prompted a CPS response. She said CPS should have access to previous reports when assessing a new referral involving the same child, and that a typical CPS response to such a referral occurs within 24 to 72 hours, during which the agency would assess the child and determine whether medical attention or police involvement was needed.
Police Finally Step In, Find Years of Video
It wasn't until October 2024 that the case broke open. A student told a middle-school counselor they were worried about the older boy, he disclosed abuse, and Chesterfield police responded that same day, according to the station's report. A detective later reviewed more than 2,500 hours of home-security video and found multiple instances of abuse inside the boys' home. The boys' father and his fiancée were ultimately convicted and sentenced in connection with the abuse.
School records document what was reported to CPS but do not establish what the agency did after each report. A Chesterfield County spokesperson said the county could not confirm follow-up on the five reports because there are no records of them in the state's official child-welfare database, per CBS 6. In a related court proceeding, Judge David Johnson asked school counselor Allison Anderson whether she knew of follow-up to one of the reports; Anderson said they did not know of any.
Grandmother and Senator Demand Answers
Angela Fountain, the boys' maternal grandmother, said someone failed to protect the boys and that the abuse continued for seven or eight years. After the Chesterfield reporting, state Sen. Glen Sturtevant asked Virginia's Office of the Children's Ombudsman to investigate how the reports involving the brothers were handled, and the office agreed to initiate an investigation. The Office of the Children's Ombudsman has statutory authority to investigate complaints involving children alleged to have been abused or neglected, including children already receiving child-protective services.
Under the Code of Virginia, a teacher or other school employee who has reason to suspect a child is abused or neglected is required to report it — the legal duty that put these five reports on the record in the first place.
A Statewide Problem With Turnover and Follow-Up
Moore identified high turnover as a significant problem affecting child-welfare agencies in Virginia and nationwide, along with secondary and vicarious trauma among employees repeatedly exposed to difficult cases. She said resource gaps reduce the child-welfare system's capacity to respond. Those concerns echo the Office of the Children's Ombudsman's 2025 annual report, which found that CPS workers too often failed to reach back out to mandated reporters for more information — a follow-up gap the report said is particularly concerning when a child discloses abuse to a teacher or school counselor but then denies it to CPS workers.
A 2022 Office of the State Inspector General audit, cited by vakids.org, found that CPS screening was not always handled in accordance with code and CPS requirements, including cases involving serious physical harm that were assessed on a lower-response track than the facts warranted. Virginia received more than 93,000 CPS reports in fiscal year 2023, while the state's family-services workforce carries a 40% turnover rate, with roughly 650 positions, or 20% to 23% of the workforce, vacant at any given time.
Other figures point to a system under strain statewide. According to the The Virginian-Pilot, Virginia's 24-hour response requirement for certain infant cases went unmet in 806 cases in fiscal year 2026, and social-services departments established services in just 31% of assessed or investigated cases, down from 40% five years earlier. In 2026, Virginia legislation created a centralized intake system at the Department of Social Services, moving validity determinations to the state level.
