Abuse begets abuse in a family's brutal legacy

In the 11th grade, Tylette dropped out of school. Living on welfare payments for her children, she'd sometimes spend weekends partying, family members said.

"We allow that," her mother said. "She needed her leisure time."

In 1998 and 1999, the child welfare agency looked into whether Linda and Freddie were mistreating Tylette, then about 17, according to an internal report prepared in August after Dae'von's death. Someone had alleged that her parents abused crack cocaine and alcohol and provided an "unkempt home."

"They never proved we did drugs," said Freddie Sr., now 59. "They didn't prove nothing."

Soon Tylette's own parenting came under scrutiny, according to the report last August. Year after year, calls to the child welfare agency alleged that their house was infested with drugs and lacked running water; that the children were "filthy and hungry," begged neighbors for food, did not go to school and played outside, unsupervised, into the night.

Seven times, beginning in 1999, social workers investigated whether Johnetta had uncontrolled eczema. "It burns!" one caller said she heard the girl crying at night.

But of 12 complaints in 10 years, just two were substantiated: one in 2001 that Tylette had left her 1-year-old alone on a hospital gurney after he accidentally drank lighter fluid, and another in 2006 that Johnetta had "open sores and blisters" all over -- seven years after the first eczema complaint.

Johnetta told a social worker in 2001 that her grandparents sometimes hit her with a belt. She repeated that complaint after Dae'von's death, when her youngest sister also said her grandfather would "whoop everybody." But the August report suggests that for the most part, everyone in the family denied to social workers that anyone was mistreated.

"My mom would tell us to lie," Johnetta said, because Tylette was afraid the children would be taken away.

With immunization records current and no bruises apparent, the August report suggests, social workers were willing to give Tylette second and third chances. In 1999, one gave the mother "an opportunity" to clean the home so that, upon the worker's return, it "appeared appropriate." In 2005, another gave Tylette another "opportunity" to enroll her children in school and make medical appointments.

In Johnetta's case, one worker wrote, Tylette was "doing what she could" for her.

"However, restraints brought on by simple economics pose substantial limitations on the family's ability to control both the longevity and severity of Johnetta's medical condition."

Johnetta's fear

Quiet but well-spoken at 14, Johnetta describes an itinerant life filled with chores and suffering.

It was often her job to clean the bathroom and help bathe Linda, who has diabetes and later used a wheelchair. She gave Linda daily insulin shots, worrying constantly that she'd hurt the older woman.

She often washed, dressed and fed her youngest siblings, Johnetta said, including Dae'von.

"I thought he was a good boy," she said. "I didn't like that people were always hitting on him. I thought he should feel like he had a home and somebody to love him."

Johnetta said she also loved her mother -- but feared her. Late one night, she said, Tylette lost her temper when she refused to get up from bed to clean up after a little sister who vomited.

"I didn't want to do it, so she hit me up in my head." Johnetta later told a social worker that her mother "would be constantly drunk" and that her boyfriend, Fisher, frequently struck her brothers, according to the August report. "He would hit Dae Dae all over the body."

After her family moved briefly to Las Vegas with Fisher, Johnetta said, he "whooped" one of her brothers because he'd wet his bed.

"When I went in there to wash my hands, he was peeing blood," she said in an interview. "I went upstairs and told my momma and she went in there and seen it, and that was when she told Maniac, 'Don't ever put your hands on my kids.' But he was still doing it."

There were good times too, Johnetta said, beaming as she recalled them. Her Uncle Katari, 30, a security guard and the only one in the family with a regular job, would get the boys haircuts or take the kids to Knott's Berry Farm.

Hill, Linda's first cousin, bought church clothes for the children, lent money to Linda and Freddie and sometimes paid Freddie to work around her Watts home.

Touched particularly by Johnetta and Dae'von, she'd take the boy shoe shopping and buy the girl oatmeal baths for her skin.