Since coming into the system six months ago,  the daughter has been raped twice.

The city has moved her daughter 14 times. Three different agencies have handled her  case. After watching the hearing, the daughter's case, where great need collides with greater dysfunction, didn't seem like such an outlier. It seemed just another nightmare case Graham now must deal with.

It became all too clear that Graham has taken over the toughest task of any councilmember: Overseeing the District's Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and the Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services (DYRS). Speaker after speaker proved it Thursday.

The session ran so long—well past 5 p.m.—that Graham announced from the dais that he had canceled his dinner plans. And why wouldn't he? The hearing had been crammed with shocking statistics and eye-opening testimonials—all enough to make Thursday's other hearing about those Navigators look silly.

Here are some astounding stats City Desk picked up from the hearing:

*10,000 D.C. children do not live with their biological parents.

*CFSA made a more than 30 percent cut to their private service providers. These providers manage group homes and independent-living facilities, as well as provide fostercare services.

*Family court judges have seen an uptick in more serious abuse cases. CFSA has seen an uptick in underage prostitution cases.

*In 2010, there were 6,320 abuse and neglect investigations done by CFSA.

*CFSA oversees 4,054 children—49 percent live in places like group homes and residential treatment facilities.

It may be hell once your in child-welfare, but it may be just as bad aging out. The majority of the teens who testified brought up the shortcomings of the agency's Office of Youth Empowerment (OYE), the entity that is supposed to assist the older wards with securing financial aid for college, finding affordable housing, setting up a plan for when they leave the system at 21.

Every city ward is entitled to financial aid supports for college. One woman testified that she had begun attending a college in Georgia. She didn't last long before being kicked out; the city, she says, had failed to follow through with their financial-aid money.  She dropped out.

A 19-year-old testified that she had expressed a desire to attend a culinary school. Her social worker with OYE insisted that such a choice was too expensive. When she asked for a list of public culinary schools, the social workers admitted that they did not have a list. Instead, the social workers have pressured her to either work as a home-health aid or apply to Bank of America.

The 19-year-old also has a daughter. She testified that she only receives a stipend of $400 per month. All of that money goes to her baby's food and supplies. When she asked for more money, her social worker refused, saying: "Just find a way to make it work."

A teen, who has been in the system since 16, testified to similar financial difficulties. He receives $580 per month from the District. Of those funds, $350 go toward transportation expenses. He testified that the stipend they receive has stayed the same since 2001.

His independent-living apartment unit is equally threadbare. The teen testified that the lock on his apartment's front door is broken. Inside, there are carpet stains and missing door knobs. He also stated that he doesn't have a mailbox. In September, he made a service request. The following month he followed up with a court order to force the service provider to repair his apartment. And still no repairs have been made. "CFSA does not have a system in place to provide support," he testified.

When the teen was finished, Graham stated: "This doesn't sound very good to me."

Other teens suggested that the number of planning sessions with their social worker was not adequate, that the meetings were overwhelming, and at times, LGBTQ youths don't feel supported. Nashwa Elgadi, the Young Women's Project's Program Coordinator for its Foster Care Campaign, testified to a list of issues the kids she works with have faced. One lived in a foster home with 18 housing code violations. It took three months of lobbying to get the teen moved out of the home.

Finally, after 5 p.m., CFSA's Interim Director Roque Gerald began his testimony. While his written testimony went on for at least 15 minutes, when it came time to drill down on specifics, he had few answers—especially concerning the OYE.

There are currently 42 full-time employees at the OYE. But when asked, Gerald, could not tell Graham what percentage their salaries took up in the office's overall budget. Nor could he provide a percentage of CFSA's kids that have gone on to graduate from college.

Gerald insisted that the woman's testimony concerning her experience at the Georgia college was not accurate. But he was not willing to state publicly what about her story was false. "I am willing to provide you information privately," Gerald said. "There is more to it than meets the eye."

Of the roughly 500 kids under OYE, 190 are either in college or "training." The other 300? Gerald couldn't say what they were actually doing. Nor could he give data on the number of former city wards who are homeless, in legal trouble or who are on public assistance. "We are still not in a place to report out on that data," Gerald admitted.

Last week, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless reported that a D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) social worker had attempted to force a homeless mother to make a brutal choice: Either get on a bus out of town or risk having your three children put in fostercare. City Desk followed up on the story and interviewed the mother's Legal Clinic attorney who said she directly heard the ultimatum from the social worker:

Julie Broas [the Legal Clinic attorney]  recalls the social worker explaining: "Because she is not being placed in a shelter, therefore she is unable to provide a safe place for her children to stay. If she does not agree to accept the arrangement that has been made for her [the bus out of town], we will be forced to take her children away from her."

City workers put "tremendous pressure" on her to get on the bus, the lawyer explains. "The social worker was pacing saying 'we've got to go right now. She has to make this choice.'" This was at 4:30 p.m. The bus wasn't leaving until roughly 11 that night.

Broas requested an emergency hearing on the city's refusal to provide this District family shelter during hypothermic conditions. Based on the mother's original documents that she had been trying to show the intake workers for days, the Department of Human Services finally agreed that the family had a right to shelter.

The mother's plight suggested the District workers had sunk to a new low in how they treat homeless families. Last year, families suffered through massive overcrowding and horrible conditions at D.C. General. I wanted to hear from CFSA. Did they in fact offer this mother a bus ride out of town or the loss of her children?

Mindy Good, CFSA's spokesperson, sent back a lengthy reply essentially denying the Legal Clinic's overall representation of events. But Good doesn't explicitly state that the social worker never threatened to place the mother's children in fostercare.

Good writes:

"CFSA is well aware of the child abuse/neglect laws since they guide our daily work. Neither poverty nor homelessness alone is grounds for removal of children. Parents have rights. At the same time, neither poverty nor homelessness eliminates parental responsibility to protect, shelter, feed, and clothe children and to fulfill their educational and health needs. This may mean parents need to draw on whatever personal means they have while also seeking public, charitable, or other services. That’s O.K. as long as parents continue to act in the best interests of their children—for example, taking advantage of services available and doing everything necessary to receive the services.

The perspective in the blog came from someone who came into the situation after other services providers had been working with the family for many weeks and CFSA had been involved for several hours. It is our understanding that the family had gotten help from the District. Remarks attributed to CFSA are an overly strong and misleading interpretation taken out of context. In fact, our social worker discussed with the parent several options other service providers had offered. The parent needed to choose one in order to take care of her children.

Most child welfare cases involve multiple service providers, so CFSA social workers are used to collaborating with others. Finger pointing and animosity waste time better spent on working together to help children and families in need."

Do you see in this any denial that the social worker offered the bus ride out of town or the removal of the mother's children? The agency seems more rankled by the tone of the Legal Clinic—and our—blog posts.

Patricia Mullahy Fugere, Executive Director of the Legal Clinic, stands by her staff's representations, and issues her own harsh assessment of CFSA's explanation. Fugere writes via e-mail:

"While we can not speak to what other services may have been offered to our client before the Legal Clinic got involved, by the time that Julie connected with the client at VWFRC, the only option presented was to accept the bus tickets to another state, or lose her children to the CFSA worker.  Given that there was a hypothermic alert that night and the right to shelter was in effect, Julie was incredulous that this ultimatum was on the table.  She specifically repeated these options to the CFSA worker, who confirmed her understanding.

If 'taking advantage of services available and doing everything necessary to receive the services' requires getting on a bus and traveling 1,000 miles away to get into shelter, then we have a very broken child welfare system."

Photo of a Greyhound bus used with an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license

Councilmember Jim Graham, who is chairman of the Metro Board, just called in to report a few things to City Desk regarding yesterday's Metro crash. Graham mentioned that the board's $250,000 relief fund for the Metro crash victims' families. He emphasized that this is not hush money.

"We wanted to have this immediately," Graham explains. "We know there are probably going to be significant legal actions."

Graham says that one of the inspirations for the relief fund came from the circumstances involving one of the victims—Ana Fernandez, who left behind six children. The Examiner notes that she lived in Hyattsville and had resided in the area for the past 10 years. She worked evenings as a part-time housekeeper. Graham says: "We don't know how many more are like that. Those needs came to my attention today....And now there's emergency relief."

Graham says that reps from El Salvador's embassy have reached out to the Fernandez family as has Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

Graham says the issues with the aging train cars has been a longstanding issue. "We have talked about it repeatedly," he explains. "This is a significant number of cars. Within the next two days, we're going to be talking about more of our options. We also have a regular board meeting [on] Thursday."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

So how did the Red Line metro crash death toll jump to nine last night then fall back to seven this morning and then back up to nine? Last night, City Desk reported that three news outlets—WUSA9, WTOP, and WJLA—had confirmed that nine had died in the crash. WTOP cited the D.C. Fire Department as its source. WJLA had cited Metro.

This morning, Fenty stated that the number of confirmed dead was actually seven. That number soon increased back up to nine.

At least one fire department official is trying to figure out how and why there was so much confusion. One reporter City Desk contacted speculates that it may have to do with just the gruesomeness of the scene.

Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite says the death toll should not have gone up to nine last night. "I don't know how that number got out there," he says. "I'm very disappointed. We had no idea that there was nine. I called the command post and said, 'Are we at nine?' They said, 'No, we're at six.'... [They said] we have not recovered any more bodies."

Crosswhite is trying figure out who leaked the increased death toll last night. "Maybe you could help me out," he says. "Where should I look? I talked to Metro's PIO and I talked to NTSB, their PIO. I don't know where that number came from. If you find out please let me know so it doesn't happen again."

The Fire Department's own spokesperson, Alan Etter, says he isn't the source for last night's number. "I didn't talk to anyone at all last night," he says. "Nor did I get any new information—they might have talked to someone at the scene."

Dave Statter, the runs the STATter 911 blog and is a reporter with WUSA, says it may have come down to body parts. "My impression is that last night's information which came from sources around 11:20 PM was based on what the camera saw or parts of bodies being seen," Statter says via e-mail. "They had not gotten to those bodies in time for the 8:00AM press conference so the official count was left at 7. After the press conference access was made and five bodies came out bring the official toll to 9."

Councilmember Jim Graham appears to side with Statter for an explanation on the confusing death toll numbers. "I think it has to do with the way the car was crushed," he says. "There was a lot of uncertainty about what was in that crash. That's just pure guess work on my part having been on the scene."

Graham says he plans on asking about the death toll issue at this afternoon's Metro Board hearing on yesterday's crash.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery

At some point on Friday, Graham had heard from media sources that Black had been mentioned as a suspect. Graham tells City Desk that he tried to verify this with D.C. Police officials.

"I said 'hey is there any truth to this?' I was assured that there wasn't," Graham says. "He may have been somebody who's name was mentioned, but that was just all talk. Just all talk."

But Graham did confront Black. He called him into his office and questioned him about the shooting incident in which two adults were shot in the leg outside the Columbia Heights metro stop Thursday afternoon. In the shootings immediate aftermath, Graham had been on the scene talking to residents and police. That day Black attended the summer jobs program orientation at the convention center. Graham had told reporters about the incident at the convention center that involved police seizing the revolver and brass knuckles.

Graham says he asked Black about the shooting and whether he was involved. "I had previously asked him if he had done it," he says. "He had an alibi....I didn't know whether to believe him or not believe him. I felt that he knew more about it than what he was saying. He might have been on the scene."

Graham says that a staffer in his office had known Black since he was a child. Black, who has a young boy of his own, started intern work this past Monday—a week early. He worked Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, he was out. On Thursday, Black attended the orientation. He worked a full shift on Friday.

"I had various conversations with him," Graham says. "I thought he was very intelligent, thoughtful."

After yesterday's press conference on gang violence held in front of the Columbia Heights metro, Graham found out that Black had emerged as the main police suspect. Assistant Chief Alfred Durham called him to break the news.

"Was I upset yesterday that somebody left my office and shot two people? Yeah...That's pretty upsetting," Graham says.

Black had already left Graham's office for the day. Graham says he called the young intern's cellphone. He encouraged him to turn himself in. Black accepted Graham's offer to drive him to the Third District.

Black did not apologize. "He was obviously very upset," Graham says.

"The car ride was largely in silence," Graham says. "[Black] said he knew exactly what to do. The conversation was all about you are definitely doing the right thing. I tried to be sensitive. I don't remember any specific conversation."

Graham walked Black inside the Third District. Detectives were waiting. They padded down Black and then took him away. Graham was then interviewed by officers for a half hour.

"He's entitled to his day in court," Graham says of his former employee. "You can't talk as if he's been convicted. He hasn't been convicted. He's been charged with a crime. I'm not defending him. I'm just saying that when I spoke to him—I wasn't convinced that he was guilty."

Graham isn't sure if he wouldn't rehire Black. "I haven't thought of it yet," he says. "I'm still dealing with the other issues. I have to be ready to give people an opportunity. I've created 70 permanent jobs in DPW for returning ex-offendes and I have done so because people need second and third and sometimes many chances."

Graham continues: "What are we going to do? These people are going to be abandoned? I'm very very sorry that violence came out of my office...I think I did the right thing by going to get him. I think I did all the right things. We don't do background checks on summer interns even if we did the whole point of the program is to give people opportunities. I've hired gang members before....And we've had good experiences to tell you the truth."