U.S. Diplomatic Security Service

Martina Ford holds a photograph showing her son, a chubby child with a misshapen head, lying in a hospital bed in Spider-Man pajamas. In another photo, she awkwardly cradles the boy, whose body is attached to tentacles of tubing. "That's my pumpkin,"...

The Baltimore City Department of Social Services office at 301 N. Gay St. was never intended to house children - but lots of them have spent nights there. More than 100 foster children have slept in the office since January, when social workers began...

A woman who lost custody of her children while in a city witness protection program filed a $34 million lawsuit against the Baltimore Department of Social Services yesterday, alleging that her toddler son suffered a fractured skull when he was slammed...

City Department of Social Services officials are continuing to illegally house foster children at a downtown office building, the director of the state-run agency confirmed yesterday. Samuel Chambers Jr. said that two teenage girls, one of whom ran...

Noting last year's torture death of Ciara Jobes, a report filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore asserts that the city's Department of Social Services is "sitting on a time bomb" and is putting hundreds of supervised children at risk because of a lax...

A Baltimore City grand jury indicted yesterday on first-degree murder charges the legal guardian of a teen-age girl who prosecutors said died from abuse. Satrina Roberts, 31, was charged with murder and child abuse in the death of Ciara Jobes, 15. Ciara'...

Keisha Carr pleaded guilty yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing her 2-month- old son, David -- one of several recent cases that has shined a spotlight on the failure by the city's...

When Christopher J. McCabe stood at the microphone of a recent nationally televised news conference, Maryland's highest child welfare official mentioned his boss' name, introduced his colleagues and spoke vaguely about his agency's work. The secretary of...

Baltimore's top health official proposed yesterday that the state reform its troubled child protective system by stationing abuse caseworkers in hospitals 24 hours a day and acting more quickly to remove minors from dangerous homes. Dr. Peter L....

Baltimore County social workers visited the home of Roy Lechner Jr. more than 150 times in the two years before he died of suspected abuse - but didn't feel they had conclusive evidence that the Dundalk boy was in danger. "This is not a case of a child...