This document discusses child abuse in Colorado and the challenges of identifying and prosecuting abuse cases. It describes a case of severe child abuse where 4 boys were found living in filth and neglect. It also profiles Dr. Kathryn Wells, who conducts medical examinations of abused children, and Detective Teresa Gessner, who investigates abuse allegations. The document examines the complex issues around balancing parental rights with child protection.

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o u r
c h i l d r e n
More than 180 kids are born in
Colorado every day, and as many as
one in four will be abused or neglected
by their caregivers during their early
years. Why is it so difficult to stop this
from happening—and even harder
to find justice for victims?
By Natasha Gardner
i l l u s t r a t i o n b y H s i a o - R o n C h e n g
o u r s e l v e s

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$210,000 per abused or neglected child. Prevent Child Abuse Amer-
ica, a national advocacy group, estimates that child abuse and neglect
can result in investigations, medical treatment, foster care, and more
that could cost the United States around $200 million per day.
Our judicial system long ago established and enforced the right of
parents to raise their children as they see fit.“Parenting your own child
and being raised by your own parents is a constitutional liberty inter-
est in the United States,” says Katie Smith, director of the Human
Services Section of the Denver City Attorney’s Office. “You have a
right to raise your children unless there is evidence that you cannot do
so.”Although there is no direct mention of “child”or “offspring”in the
Constitution, most famously in Meyer v. Nebraska, the U.S. Supreme
Court affirmed in 1923 that parents have the
right to “establish a home and bring up chil-
dren.” The message is persistent and simple:
Stay out of my house.
Simultaneously, the American govern-
ment has also said that to protect a child’s
well-being, it will invoke a legal concept
called “parens patriae,”Latin for “parent of the
nation.”That idea helped created a preventive,
sometimes punitive, system that mandates
child removals, family supervision, interac-
tions with human services departments, and
criminal prosecutions. Under certain circum-
stances the government will intervene in your
home in the most personal of ways—by tak-
ing away your kids.
Dr. Kathryn M. Wells steps into a small room
at the Family Crisis Center in southwest
Denver and flips on the light. Painted on the
wall is a soothing beach scene unlike anything
you’d see in Colorado. A seagull perches on a
log. Brightly colored umbrellas poke out from
the sand as the ocean laps against the shore.
On the room’s examination table, a roll of
crisp white paper is stretched lengthwise, like
a beach towel laid in the sand.
Next to the table is a piece of medi-
cal equipment called a colposcope. During
routine annual exams, OB-GYNs use the
instrument to take photos and videos of
cervixes and vaginas, as does Wells; the dif-
ference is that she’s investigating allegations
of trauma and sexual abuse of children. As
one of only eight board-certified child abuse
pediatricians in the state, Wells and her staff
handle the medical examinations of many of
the Denver youngsters who enter the child
welfare system. In 2015 Wells’ office saw
925 patients for abuse or neglect, conducting
598 physical abuse evaluations and 85 sexual
assault investigations.
Wells’ speech usually matches her stride:
precise and fast, as if she doesn’t have time to
waste on small talk or ambling steps. But if
she thinks she’s lost you or is moving too quickly, she’ll slow down.
Keeping conversations moving without losing her listeners is a savvy
tool when working with patients,and even more so when she interacts
with law enforcement, politicians, district attorneys, caseworkers, and
anyone else trying to identify, stop, and punish child abuse.
presumably from crying.His shirt is dirty and torn at the collar,and it
looks like he hasn’t bathed.A gash on his arm is bleeding,and another
bruise, turning green and yellow at the edges, looks a bit older. Is this
child abuse—or just a kid who fell while climbing a tree?
Or let’s say you and your five-year-old daughter attend her friend’s
birthday party. The parents settle in with a round of beers while the
kids bound upstairs to play.You give your daughter your phone to take
pictures of her friends. Later, you realize that one of the photos taken
at the party is of a girl’s naked torso. When you ask your daughter
about it, she says,“Hannah always takes off her clothes for pictures.”
Which scenario indicates abuse? The answer is neither, or both.
That ambiguity—where privacy, parenting, and the public interest
in children’s well-being intersect—is under
continual debate. Although the federal gov-
ernment has established basic guidelines
for identifying child abuse and neglect to
determine prevention funding amounts, the
responsibility for defining child abuse falls
on each state. About 702,000 kids are abused in the United States
each year. Based on anonymous, self-reported behavior, six percent of
parents in Colorado engage in child abuse that could legally qualify
as criminal.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
estimates that public expenditures for child maltreatment are about
the same size,a possible indicator of devel-
opmental delays. None of them were potty
trained; even the six-year-old wore a dia-
per. Although their list of ailments went
on, one of the most shocking revelations
was that the boys didn’t appear to know
how to talk, communicating instead with
grunts and gestures.
The Colorado Department of Human
Services (CDHS) prepared a 19-page
report of the incident that called the case
“egregious.” CDHS routinely investi-
gates child fatalities, but after a series of
deaths in 2012 heightened urgency among
state legislators to reform—or at least
improve—Colorado’s child welfare pro-
grams,CDHS also began addressing “near
fatalit[ies]” and “egregious incidents.” The
adjusted approach is designed to catch
system failures before children die at the
hands of caretakers,and it also reveals how
child abuse often occurs behind closed
doors—or, in Sperling and Bailey’s home,
how it continued.
Bailey ultimately pleaded guilty to two
Class 5 felonies and received 90 days in
jail.Judge J.Eric Elliff sentenced Sperling
to five years, meaning that at his manda-
tory release date, his youngest child will
be seven years old. (Sperling may not
serve that full term; he became eligible for parole this fall.) At
the sentencing in 2014, before Sperling left the court, Elliff said,
“You’ve got to treat your children with dignity and respect. They’re
not pets.They are not possessions.They are human beings that need
to be carefully nurtured.”
If you think spotting child abuse or neglect should be easy, con-
sider this hypothetical: After a long day at work, you come home
and notice your neighbor’s eight-year-old sitting under a tree, crying.
You’re friendly with the kid; he likes to help you drag the trash to the
curb each week, and you stop to chat. You notice his cheeks are puffy,
It wasn’t the first time Sperling had appeared in court; it wasn’t
even the first time he’d lost custody of his kids. In 2006, two of his
children—four and two years old—were found playing without
supervision on East 18th Avenue, the one-way, multilane road that
shuttles more than 14,600 vehicles a day between City Park and
downtown.The call prompted a child welfare assessment of his fam-
ily. Sperling and the children’s mother, Lorinda Bailey (then in her
late 20s), received probation, were advised to attend parenting classes,
and retained custody of their three kids, including a three-month-old
baby. By 2008, as the couple’s problems persisted, child welfare offi-
cials had moved all three of the children into foster care.
Sperling and Bailey retained custody of a fourth child who had
been born in 2007, and they subsequently had three more sons. Den-
ver Department of Human Services (DDHS) received more reports
about the couple in 2011, 2012, and 2013 that expressed concerns
about the family. DDHS assessed just one of those referrals, in which
someone reported seeing unsupervised children on a window ledge
about eight feet off the ground. When Bailey took her youngest
son—who was two years old—to nearby Saint Joseph’s Hospital on
September 29, 2013, there were no open cases on the family.
Bailey said the child fell off the toilet and hit the left side of his
head. While stitching up the cut, the emergency room doctor noticed
bruising and swelling on the boy’s right ear. Bailey claimed one of
the boy’s brothers had thrown a toy at him, but the doctor thought it
looked more like he’d been pinched, which initiated a series of events
fairly typical in cases of suspected child abuse or neglect, starting with
a home visit by a DDHS caseworker and some cops.
When the door of the Uptown apartment opened, a smell so foul
wafted out that the visitors lurched back. Inside, the odor was worse.
The floor was covered with a thick layer of feces, pools of urine, and
maggots. Amid the filth was a thin pathway to the bedroom, where it
appeared that all the children slept on mattresses on the floor and in a
crib.One mattress had moldy stains,flies were everywhere,and about a
half-dozen cats wandered around.Sperling told the visitors he tried to
keep the place clean but having four boys between the ages of two and
six made it difficult,which was why the apartment wasn’t “spotless.”
Even more troubling was the boys’ health. The officials removed
the children for examination, and the resulting reports described
them as “feral,” malnourished, and suffering from what was later
determined to be lead toxicity. The boys needed substantial medical
attention.Despite their age differences,some of the boys were roughly
When67-year-oldWayneSperling
appearedinaDenvercourtroomfor
sentencing on December 30, 2014,
his long,snow white beard and button nose made him look like a real-
life incarnation of Kris Kringle. But he more accurately resembled a
sinister character from OliverTwist.Sperling faced 10 felony charges
related to child abuse but pleaded guilty to just one, a Class 5 felony
that carried a sentence of up to eight years in prison. He’d already
lost custody of his children. Now the judge would determine what
justice would be in a case that had horrified the Denver community.
HELPING HANDS
Dr. Kathryn M. Wells works with
multiple organizations to identify
child abuse victims and coordinate
medical assistance for them with
other state and local agencies.
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although she knows that identifying false outcries (reports of abuse)
is an important part of her investigation. She sometimes interviews
victims but also relies on using a forensic interviewer, an independent
contractor trained to ask nonleading questions to minors. In Denver,
most of those interviews happen at the Denver Children’s Advocacy
Center (DCAC), a mini-campus of three Victorian homes that have
been converted into high-tech recording studios,medical exam rooms,
and therapy spaces. Jodi Byrnes, the DCAC’s forensic interview pro-
gram director, has conducted more than 1,000 such interviews and
testifies in court several times a month. “The more they talk and the
less I talk, the better interview I have,” she says of her process. “We
want their words, not mine.”
Byrnes records her interviews; there’s even a ceiling camera that
zooms in on children’s drawings—useful tools for explaining what
happened when they don’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Occa-
sionally, nothing criminal has occurred. Sometimes kids are ready to
tell the story about the worst thing that ever happened to them.Oth-
ers are more reluctant; maybe they’re protecting someone they love,
or maybe they don’t comprehend that their experiences aren’t normal.
Gessner watches it all on a screen from a back room and takes
notes on things to follow up on.Because reports about abuse are often
delayed, it’s not unusual to find no physical evidence. Children may
be unable to pinpoint exactly when an attack happened, but without
those details, Gessner likely won’t have a case.
So she starts to dig.She notes small details the victim mentions: It
happened before my little brother was born. It was in the winter because I
had my blue coat with me. It was in the bedroom because there was a pic-
ture of a Broncos player on the wall.Then she circles back to the adults
to confirm details. Of course, that means relying upon family mem-
bers being truthful and not covering for the accused. Gessner keeps
asking questions until she thinks she has enough facts to say what
happened and when—and maybe even get a confession. “Sometimes
you are absolutely disgusted,”Gessner says.“I’ll go out after the inter-
view and wash my hands because I feel so gross.”
There might be no better place than Denver to stop child abuse.
That’s because our modern understanding of the problem—and the
efforts to remedy it—developed here in the early 1960s. The New
York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children dates to 1875
and was modeled after an existing effort to prevent cruelty to animals.
But it was parents raising baby boomers in the comparative comforts
of a post–World War II world who shifted child-rearing trends away
from basic daily survival to “what’s next?”questions.
The person who brought child abuse into the public discourse—
into living room conversations—was C. Henry Kempe, a Denver
pediatrician. Kempe began to notice patterns in certain children’s
injuries that seemed to defy what can naturally occur with the myr-
iad bumps, bruises, and scratches all kids accumulate. In particular,
he noticed some children under three years old showing “poor skin
hygiene, multiple soft tissue injuries, and malnutrition.” In 1962,
Kempe, with several co-authors, presented his findings in the Journal
of the American Medical Association in an article titled “The Battered-
Child Syndrome.” The authors laid out how
to Facebook and YouTube and it went viral, garnering more than
400,000 views within days.
An online petition circulated asking why Colorado law doesn’t
consider the behavior shown in the video as felony child abuse.
(Flores Kennedy was charged with three misdemeanors and pleaded
guilty to one in October; the child was temporarily removed from
the home after Flores Kennedy’s arrest.) The answer lies somewhere
between the parallel judicial systems that protect kids: criminal and
civil. Detectives and DAs work on the criminal side. Caseworkers,
guardian at litems (court-appointed advocates that represent chil-
dren’s interests), and human services reside in the civil realm. Both
systems are reactive: People call in reports,they get investigated,and
families become case numbers.
The CDHS has distributed a flowchart
of the civil process that tracks what hap-
pens once they receive a report.It includes
more than two dozen possible pathways
to the final tier, which lists “reunification
with family” and “independent living”
as goals. The chart only briefly notes the
criminal process.
If that track were fleshed out, it would
explain that cases begin with investigations,
which in the Denver Police Department
(DPD) are often handled by the Missing
and Exploited Persons unit staffed with
people such as 15-year veteran Detective
Teresa Gessner. She doesn’t dress like a
cop, opting instead for tailored slacks and
shirts, but her clipped way of speaking
makes her sound like one.She’s got a quick
laugh that softens her face, a mannerism
that must come in handy when interview-
ing witnesses and victims.
This wasn’t Gessner’s dream career.
If anything, it found her. She was work-
ing as an EMT in New York City and
remembers holding the hand of a girl all
the way to the hospital after she’d suffered
a subdural hematoma from being thrown
down a flight of stairs. “Every time she
breathed, it was a little cry,” Gessner says.
“That stuck with me for years.”
She was still thinking about it after she moved to Colorado,where
she joined the DPD and eventually ended up investigating child
abuse allegations.Now she spends each workday tracking down infor-
mation about crimes that her colleagues don’t want to hear about over
beers after work: Kids covered with bruises from being hit with cables.
Families in which one kid is beaten and not another. Sexual abuse
allegations that expand to multiple victims.
Once someone has been arrested for alleged child abuse, Gessner
has just 72 hours to compile enough evidence to present her findings
to the DA.“I always start from a place of believing the child,”she says,
The quality of the footage—taken on April 30 in Colorado—is
grainy and rough.There’s a living room and what looks like a kitchen,
all cast in an orange-yellow hue.The screen shakes. Dogs and people
wander in and out of the frame.In the background,a voice,both shrill
and gravelly, screams:
“You fucking bitch!”
“You’re going to die!”
“Where’s my fucking charger?”
“I’m going to kill you!”
“You’re a fucking piece of shit!”
The shouts are directed at a two-year-old boy. After nine minutes
and 41 seconds, the boy’s mother, 27-year-old Katrina Flores Ken-
nedy,“raises the booster chair above her head
and violently slams it into the playpen near
or on the victim,” reads the arrest affidavit
from police in Lochbuie, a town northeast of
Denver. As the child cries, Flores Kennedy
walks away but returns and “begins to hit on
or around the victim again and again.”
Usually, law enforcement would collect video evidence like this,
make an arrest (or not), and file charges (or not), all without the
public ever hearing about it. That is probably what would have
happened here, but someone uploaded the Flores Kennedy video
Child abuse pediatricians often work in limbo, simultaneously
within and outside the system. Wells works at both Denver Health
and Children’s Hospital Colorado. If she’s seeing a child, that means
a civil proceeding with the kid’s caretakers may have begun, and what
Wells finds during her examination may prompt a criminal case.She’s
interested in the incident—abuse, assault, neglect—that brought the
child to her, and she’s a medical version of Sherlock Holmes who
works to glean whatever information she can about a child’s health.
She uses what she finds to create medical passport files, which she
calls “medical homes,” for children that will follow them from place-
ment to placement—or back to their families.
From a legal perspective, one of Wells’ tasks is to identify serious
bodily injury (SBI). If she discovers it, the
DA can pursue up to a Class 3 child abuse
felony. Absent SBI, charges can drop to a
lesser felony, which comes with substantially
lower penalties,or even to a misdemeanor.The
medical definition of SBI is fluid. Some doc-
tors limit SBI diagnoses to egregious injuries
like lacerations of the liver, multiple rib frac-
tures, or subdural hematomas. Concussions
are trickier; doctors often overlook the symp-
toms—they miss up to 30 percent of abusive
head injuries—because in young children,
head trauma often looks like the flu. Other
doctors might consider a scar on the face to be
SBI because it’s permanently disfiguring, but
not scars on the back, which can be hidden.
Malnourishment and delayed development
might qualify as SBI, but probably only if
another injury is present.
Identifying child abuse is more of a nuanced
evaluation than a definitive diagnosis, which
can flummox doctors who are intent on iden-
tifying symptoms and prescribing treatments;
they can sometimes be less concerned with
what caused the injury than with how to fix it.
And if an injury isn’t going to kill the child that
day, doctors might be less inclined to indicate
SBI, especially if they don’t have training in
child abuse,which many do not.
Child abuse pediatricians, though, are
trained to sort through confusing injuries to
see what’s troubling,what’s typical,and what’s
not. Identifying bogus abuse claims is also
part of their job. “I technically don’t have to
make that definitive diagnosis that it’s abso-
lutely this,” Wells says. “I don’t have to prove
it was abuse or neglect to make my referral; I
just have to have reasonable concern.”
If a kid ends up in her clinic, it means
another health-care provider,a cop,a DA,or a
caseworker has requested the evaluation, and
Wells is constantly educating people about
building better communication and coopera-
tion between the medical community and the
legal system. She sits on numerous child wel-
fare committees, including Denver’s Child Safety Net Impact Team.
But she’s acutely aware of where her job ends and an investigation
begins. “We’re very careful about saying things like, ‘A plus B plus C
equals abuse,’ ” she says. “My role is to help people understand the
medical aspects of those things.”
There might be no better place
than Denver to s t o p child abuse.
LOOKING FORWARD
Latisha “Tish” Mead was emanci-
pated from her parents in her teens
and now is trying to forge a better
life for herself, her siblings, and all
survivors of child abuse.
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