WARWICK, MASS. (WHDH) - A member of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families is on administrative leave after a 9-year-old girl with cerebral palsy was found dead in a deplorable home owned by a woman with eight adopted special needs children, officials said.
Officers responding to a Warwick home on Jan. 3 found Zah-Nee, who used a wheelchair, dead in the bathtub that she may have spent as long as eight hours in, police said.
Michele Rothgeb, the adoptive mother of Zah-Nee and seven other children with special needs, allegedly told police that she had the flu so she left the girl in the care of her 15-year-old son, who has Asperger’s syndrome.
DCYF director Trista Piccola told reporters during a Tuesday morning press conference that Zah-Nee’s adoptive siblings were taken from the home and placed with other families as authorities investigate what happened.
“The conditions that these children were found living in are completely unacceptable and we’re reviewing every aspect of this case in its entirety,” she said.
Piccola added that her department is working with the Office of the Child Advocate, who is conducting an external review, and with law enforcement officials.
“We want answers. We want to understand what happened,” she said. “We want to understand how she and her seven brothers and sisters came to be in this situation when they were receiving services from this department, and what happened in the last six months that we were not involved that led to these children living in these conditions that the police found them in when they responded to the home.”
Rothgeb appeared in court Monday and is being held on $25,000 bail on charges of cruelty or neglect of a child.
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