Social Worker Leaves Child To Die Duct-Taped In Basement For Hours

The case that we’re about to share with you is not only one of the largest failures by Social Services in the history of our home state of Maine, but it is arguably one of the largest in the entire country. The sheer negligence, malice, and corruption that takes place in this case is unthinkable. Some have described it as a conspiracy to take children from fit parents and give them to abusive DHS workers. Please let me know if you agree with that take at the conclusion of our story. Regardless, what happened to this little girl changed the way that our state views the Department of Health and Human Services.

Logan Lynn Marr was born on October 14, 1995, in Brunswick, Maine, a coastal town about 30 minutes north of Portland. She was the daughter of Christy Baker and John Wagg, who split up before she was born. Shortly after her birth, Christy, who was only 18 years old at the time, moved in with her mother, Caitlin Badger, of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. For those who are outside of our home state, Dover-Foxcroft is nearly two hours north of Brunswick and is a much smaller town.

Now, Logan enjoyed fishing, making snow angels, butterflies, pizza-flavored noodles with cheese, and pitted black olives. She disliked peas, fish sticks, going to bed early, and not being able to pick out her own clothes. Logan was a happy, vibrant, and spirited little girl. According to Christy, Logan’s signature phrase was “talk to the hand,” delivered with an amusing level of sass. When Logan spent time with her father, she loved to read books with him, take walks, and swim in the family pool.

Christy lived with her mother for the first several months of Logan’s life. They did not always agree on how Logan should be raised, and Caitlin felt that Christy wasn’t mature enough to be the mother that Logan needed. After many disputes about how Logan should be raised, Christy moved out in 1996, around the time that Logan was six months old. At the time, she had become involved with a man who ultimately had some substance abuse problems.

In May of 1996, Caitlin Badger reported Christy to DHS. She told the intake worker that Christy was immature and troubled and said that Christy couldn’t handle the challenges of parenting. She reported that Christy sometimes handled Logan very roughly. She also stated that Logan’s baby bottles were often dirty and that Logan rarely got a bath. Caitlin later said that her goal was not to get Christy in trouble, but rather to have DHS help connect her with the resources she needed. She said that she just wanted her daughter to get help that she was unable to provide.

During the first inspection by DHS, Christy’s cupboards were searched and she was questioned, but no issues were found with her living situation. Samples were taken to see if Christy was using drugs, but these all came back negative. However, DHS still put a list of rules and expectations in place for the young mother. These were made based on, in their opinion, her need to work on the unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend, who struggled with a substance abuse problem.

Due to this relationship, the first and strangest rule for Christy was about who she dated. The report stated, and I quote: “Christy will not allow anyone to live, reside, or stay over until this person has been screened and approved by the Department of Human Services. Christy will submit names of people or persons with whom she is or plans to be intimately involved and shall not allow any contact between that person and Logan until assessed and approved by DHS.” End quote.

They also told Christy to end her relationship with her mother. This appeared to be due to the fact that Caitlin’s husband, Mitch, had a previous criminal record. DHS documented that he had been previously convicted of sexual assault against a teenager years before, which turned out to be false. However, Christy still complied with DHS and ceased contact with her mother. The problem was Caitlin was Christy’s only form of support at the time.

Christy was also ordered to attend counseling and parenting classes. Christy was initially unbothered by these demands. Her first DHS caseworker, Diane Sanborn, seemed to be on her side. She had a good rapport with Christy and seemed to be trying to help her. Christy allegedly had no issue with reporting who she was seeing romantically, as she felt she had nothing to hide. She also appreciated the parenting classes and said they helped her grow up and become a better parent.

Christy did her best to meet the expectations of DHS. She went to classes and continued to work as much as she could. Without a GED or driver’s license, her work opportunities were limited, especially living in rural Maine. She had to walk to all of her jobs and only ever made minimum wage. She did not have any contact with her mother, Caitlin, while she was still in a relationship with Mitch. However, sometime later, after Caitlin and Mitch were separated, Christy turned back to her mother for support.

At this point, she had been following the DHS rules for 18 months and still had no accusations of harming or neglecting Logan. Christy was pregnant again and later noted that the way she was treated by DHS workers completely changed when they found out she was expecting another baby, especially since she did not know who the father was. Sadly, this pregnancy was the result of her being sexually assaulted. According to a close friend, Christy struggled with whether or not to keep her baby. After the friend asked her if she would love Logan any less if she was the result of a sexual assault, Christy decided to continue with her pregnancy.

However, DHS did not believe her. They often referred in their notes to her “claim” of being assaulted. Yes, they put quotes around “claim.” They even conducted paternity tests with partners they knew Christy had been involved with, and all of them were negative.

One day, when Logan was two years old, Christy left Logan at her mother’s house with a babysitter. While Christy was gone, Mitch showed up outside Caitlin’s home. His presence was enough to cause a neighbor to call DHS and make a report. DHS took this opportunity to seek custody of Logan. They got a court order citing Christy’s willingness to leave Logan with “unsafe people.”

Christy caught wind that DHS was planning to take Logan, and she understandably panicked. She got on a bus with Logan and headed to Boston. Later, at a bus stop, she called home. She was told if she didn’t return home, she would be charged with kidnapping. Scared and without money, Christy got back on the bus and headed towards Lewiston, where she had been living at this point in our story.

By the time she got to Lewiston, Christy, who was by now six months pregnant, was not well. She left Logan with a trusted friend and admitted herself to the hospital. Treated for exhaustion, Christy was released more than 24 hours later. Her plan was to go home and gather some things for Logan before she turned her over to DHS. However, when she called her friend to check on Logan, her friend told Christy she better sit down: DHS had already come over. They had taken Logan.

Logan was immediately taken to a nearby hospital to be assessed before her foster placement, where she was found to be in good health, and the medical professionals noted that she seemed well cared for. Meanwhile, a frantic Christy called the hospital to figure out where her daughter was. Her call was intercepted by a caseworker who told Christy that she would not be allowed to see Logan. Christy was told if she came to the hospital grounds, she would be arrested and charged with trespassing.

Now at this point, Christy was desperate and willing to do anything to get Logan back. DHS demanded that she be checked into a residential facility for unwed mothers. Christy would live at St. Andre’s in Biddeford (although some sources say it was in Portland) for the next three months, doing parenting classes, counseling, job training, and working toward her GED. During this time, Logan was placed in foster care.

It should be noted that immediately after Logan’s removal from Christy’s custody, Logan’s father, John Wagg, sought custody himself. John had not always been actively involved in Logan’s life. For the first 12 months after Logan was born, he insisted that he was not her father. But a paternity test determined that he was indeed her father, and so he stepped up. He began paying what child support he could and started seeing her a few weekends a month. John worked with a textile mill, and his work was sporadic, so he was not always able to pay as much as he was supposed to.

When John asked for custody, he was denied. DHS said since he was a single man in his 20s, he was not a suitable placement for Logan. But this doesn’t make any sense because a single female in her 20s was considered suitable, but not a single male who was her biological father. John, trying his best to work with DHS, then asked if they would place Logan with his mother, Elaine Wagg, instead. Elaine lived just two miles up the road from John. She had a steady job as a CNA and many years’ experience raising children. She also had a close relationship with Logan. This request was denied without any explanation whatsoever. At this point, John was told that Maine did not have a kinship law, so therefore they were not obligated to place children with family.

John then went to the hearing to discuss Logan’s custody. Up until this point, John did not understand just how deeply involved Christy was with DHS. Keep in mind, when Christy was first reported, he did not yet know that he was Logan’s father. When John came to the hearing to advocate for custody, he was verbally attacked by the judge. The judge wanted to know where he had been for the other custody hearings over the last two years. John insisted that he had no knowledge of any other hearings. The judge refused to listen and declared him guilty of child abandonment. This became a black mark on John’s record and unfortunately prevented him from ever getting custody of Logan.

It should be noted that the federal kinship care law mandates that state agencies give preference to a relative over a non-related caregiver. During Logan’s case, this law was actively being worked on in Maine. Maine had essentially been ignoring this federal mandate up until 1999 when they passed their own version of the law. It seems this may be due to the personal opinions of Kevin Concannon, who was the DHS commissioner at the time. He had stated publicly that he did not believe kinship placements were the best move. He felt this could give biological parents a sense of ease, making them slow to rectify the issues that DHS wants them to solve.

In 1998, DHS only placed 5% of the nearly 3,000 children in foster care with relatives. 5%! This put them in the position of third worst in the country on this issue. It should also be noted that DHS only gets federal reimbursement for children who are in licensed foster care homes. Cases of children placed in unlicensed kinship care do not meet this requirement. Many people speculate that this may be why Maine placed so few children in kinship care at this time; it just simply wasn’t good for the state’s bottom dollar.

For the next few months, Logan lived in foster care, and Christy worked hard to follow all of the rules that DHS had laid out for her, though they continued to claim that she was not doing what was asked. During this time, she had three full days a week of unsupervised visits with Logan. Her second daughter, Bailey Shane Baker Marr, was born on December 8, 1998. Three days later, Christy moved out of St. Andre’s into her own apartment.

Now, around this time, DHS also made a second order that Christy sever all contact with her mother, citing Caitlin’s alleged negative influence. In the order, they threatened custody of her new baby if Christy did not abide by these rules. With the move to her new apartment, Logan was able to begin having more visits with Christy. Logan began spending weekends in her mother’s apartment. Logan was very confused during this time as to why Bailey could live there all the time but she could not.

Through all of this, Christy appeared to maintain her grace and a positive attitude, and would tell Logan that there were just some things she needed to do to get better at being the best mom for her. Christy also maintained her separation from her mother. She only communicated with Caitlin through videotapes. By March, Logan moved back in full time with Christy. This was seven months after being removed from her mother’s care. At this point, after nearly three years of following all of DHS’s rules, Christy thought she was in the clear and the case against her was closed. Christy was told she had accomplished everything they wanted her to do.

However, as the mother of two young children at age 21, Christy had no other adults to lean on. She entered a relationship with a new DHS-approved boyfriend, and in June she moved to Sabattus to live with him. It should be noted that Sabattus is just outside of Lewiston, where Christy had lived in the past. However, it is a much more rural town where Christy wouldn’t be able to walk to work and to her appointments as she had in the past. Unfortunately, this relationship did not last, and two months later Christy and the girls moved nearly two hours north to Guilford, Maine. Guilford is just outside of Dover-Foxcroft, where Caitlin lived.

Though this seems like she made this move to start up her relationship with her mother again, there is little evidence of this. Instead, in November, Christy decided to move to Florida to be closer to her estranged father. Christy’s parents had gotten divorced when she was a young teenager. During that process, Christy made an accusation of sexual assault against her father, but this was never proven and she later recanted her statement. This move to Florida was partially an effort to heal that relationship. Christy was also hoping moving to Florida would get her out from under Maine DHS scrutiny. In addition, Christy’s father had promised to help her get her driver’s license. This would have been life-changing for Christy and was not an offer she could pass up.

At first, things seemed to go well. Logan seemed to happily settle in. Lydia Baker, Christy’s stepmother, said that Logan was the typical happy five-year-old. It should be noted that Lydia was only a few years older than Christy. Unfortunately, this move did not yield the results the young mother hoped for. After a while, Christy struggled with her father’s rules. At some point (it was unclear when or how), Lydia struck up a relationship with Logan’s former foster mom and they would talk frequently on the phone.

After two months of struggling with the same obstacles she had in Maine, Christy just couldn’t take it anymore. She was still working at minimum wage jobs, and Logan had become unhappy. Logan insisted that she wanted to go home to Maine and be with her Nanny. She wanted to make snow angels again. So, in February of 2000, with her last paycheck from her job in Florida, Christy bought them bus tickets home. With nowhere else to go, Christy moved back in with her mother, Caitlin.

Logan had a joyful reunion with her grandmother. On her first night back in Maine, Logan was taking a bath. After being in the bathroom longer than expected, the adults decided it was time to check on her. Before they reached the bathroom, Logan came running out in her bathrobe, laughing and sprinting throughout the house. When she got to the front door, she took off her bathrobe to reveal a bathing suit underneath. In a moment, she popped her bike helmet on, opened the door giggling, and she dove into a snowbank. She then came back inside, teeth chattering, and asked for hot chocolate. Caitlin and Christy were amused to see how happy Logan was to be home back in Maine. They put her back in a warm bath and they gave her the hot chocolate she wanted.

But at this point, Caitlin no longer had any contact with Mitch, the previous husband that DHS had been concerned about. She was now in a relationship with a man named Ronald Badger. Christy had met Ron’s son, Paul, before she went to Florida, and when she returned to Maine, Christy and Paul entered a romantic relationship. The following month, they were married, on March 4th, 2000.

Unfortunately, Paul had an old criminal record from another state. Ten years earlier, he had been convicted of burglary. He had also had a police report made against him during an altercation with a previous girlfriend when he grabbed her shirt during an argument. Paul had pled guilty in his burglary case, and he served his time. He had hoped that he had paid for these transgressions and could just move on.

After Christy and Paul were married, DHS reopened its case against Christy. They had been informed of the move to Florida and Christy’s new relationship. Her case was assigned to inexperienced caseworker Allison Peters. Allison, another caseworker, and two police officers showed up on Christy’s doorstep on March 7th—just three days after she and Paul were married. Evidently, a report was made that Paul had hit Christy in front of the girls. To this day, there is no evidence of this claim. Christy and Paul both deny that this happened, and there are no police reports to support the claim. Allison also cited substance abuse issues, but again, there is no proof of this.

Allison had a custody hearing prior to showing up to Christy’s house; however, Christy was not informed of this hearing. Allison told the court they could not notify Christy without the risk that she might harm the children. This is completely unwarranted, as there was still no history of physical violence against the children. Allison cited to the court that Christy was once again exposing her children to unsafe people based on the accusation of Paul hitting Christy. She also cited that Christy had moved 17 times in the last year. This claim was grossly exaggerated and varied in different reports made by Allison. She counted times when Christy had stayed with friends for a few days or taken a vacation with the girls. She even counted moving out of one home and into another on the same day as two moves.

When Christy heard Allison arrive on March 7th, she wasn’t even given a chance to open her door. Allison and her team walked right in. Logan was asleep on the couch at the time, sick with the flu. Allison informed Christy that she would be taking her children. Christy said, “You can’t do this.” And Allison responded coldly, “Oh yes we can.”

Christy woke Logan and helped her dress, while Paul held Bailey. When one of the adults tried to take Bailey from him, he turned away and shook his head; he would only hand her over to her mother. Christy cried while she gathered things for her girls and loaded them into the DHS vehicle. Caitlin had arrived during this time but was not allowed out of her vehicle to say goodbye. When Christy made an attempt to secure the girls in the car, Allison slammed the door shut and drove away without even buckling them into their car seats. Christy crumbled to the ground while Paul tried to console her.

Logan and Bailey were placed with foster mother Mary Beth Anderson. Bailey was so distraught on the first night that she had to be held all night while she cried. Logan fell asleep on the couch, surrounded by a wall of pillows. Allison warned Mary Beth to be on the lookout for signs of abuse, especially sexual assault. Mary Beth was a meticulous note-taker and constantly documented her interactions with the girls.

After the girls were placed with Mary Beth, Caitlin asked Allison if she could have visitation. After all, she had a long-standing relationship with her granddaughters and had no documented abuse or neglect toward them. Allison denied her request. She claimed that Caitlin had an untreated mental illness. It is assumed that she was referring to Caitlin’s agoraphobia. However, Caitlin had received treatment for this years earlier and was doing well. And also, what does agoraphobia have to do with being a bad influence on her granddaughters? After denying Caitlin’s request, Allison later offered to allow Caitlin to visit the girls, but only on one condition: Caitlin had to testify against Christy in the custody case that DHS was building to terminate her parental rights. And Caitlin wouldn’t do it. So unfortunately, after that, she never saw Logan again after Logan was taken from her on March 7th.

After being placed with Mary Beth, the girls were evaluated and began therapy. In Mary Beth’s notes, she said the girls became instantly comfortable in her care. Yet there are other notes contradicting this. She wrote that Logan often asked about when she would go home with her mother. Mary Beth also wrote that Logan was afraid of her husband, but notes this as proof that she may have previously been abused by a man in her life. When she was evaluated by Dr. Ricci at the Spurwink Child Abuse Program in Portland, Logan shied away from Dr. Ricci when he tried to give her a high-five. This was, in Mary Beth’s eyes, further proof of her abuse. Or, I don’t know, maybe she was just traumatized by being taken away from her mother just days earlier, perhaps Mary Beth? She was surrounded by strangers and scared.

During the Spurwink evaluation, several troubling things were documented in the report. Not troubling things about Christy’s care, mind you; instead, the report was riddled with false information gathered from Allison and Mary Beth. Dr. Ricci, who said he evaluated over 600 abused children per year, started this evaluation with entirely false information. The first claim is that Logan had been exposed to several child predators. Allison claimed that three of Christy’s husbands had been on the registry. But how is that possible? Christy had only been married once to Paul, who had no offenses of that kind, nor was he on the registry. Next, she told Dr. Ricci that Logan may have been exposed to adult materials and behavior because her mother and family “have poor boundaries.” Once again, this seems to have been entirely fabricated by Allison.

In all, Logan was interviewed three times during her evaluation at Spurwink. All information was gathered either from Logan, Allison, Mary Beth, or Logan’s state-appointed Guardian Ad Litem, Lawrence Irwin. All the information brought forth by Mary Beth and Lawrence seemed to be regurgitated information from Allison. The evaluation filled out by Mary Beth to determine if Logan was abused lacked so much information it could not even be scored. Meanwhile, evaluators did not reach out to Christy. This seems to be a gross oversight since Christy had a long history of complying with DHS demands.

Through all of the interviews, Logan remained steadfast in her answers. She said she had never been physically harmed or sexually assaulted. In the report, however, the evaluator included in her concerning behaviors list that Logan had kissed a boy at her preschool, that she sometimes forgot to use toilet paper, and that she someday talked about marrying an adult family friend named Joe. Ultimately, they concluded that there was no evidence to support that Logan had ever been abused. However, they did suggest that she receive mental health treatment to deal with the trauma of being taken from her mother. That’s right: she was prescribed counseling to deal with the trauma caused by DHS, and said treatment was to be administered by DHS.

After the evaluation showed that neither Christy nor any other adults in her life were harming Logan, Christy began visitation with Logan and Bailey. The court order stated that she should get four visits per week; however, these visits were often canceled. The reasons for cancellation varied from inclement weather to holidays to illnesses to conflicts with the foster family’s schedule. At this time, her visits were all supervised. She often recorded the visits on video, and there was always a visitation supervisor in the room taking notes. Christy was doing her best with the time she had. Logan was approaching kindergarten, so Christy often practiced saying the ABCs with her or reciting her full name.

Throughout all of this, Christy was told that she was in serious risk of losing her girls. One reason was she missed a few visits due to lack of transportation. Please note the double standard here: foster parents can miss visitation with no question or consequences, but when the birth mother misses them due to life circumstances, her parental rights are threatened.

Meanwhile, Mary Beth was beginning to struggle with Logan. In one journal entry, she wrote: “Usually we have a good morning together and the manipulations start later in the day. On that morning, Logan started right off with, ‘Do you think my mommy will get me back?’ My answer was, ‘I don’t know.'” End quote. Mary Beth went on to explain an escalation of Logan’s behavior after this. She tried to be firm and distract Logan, but it did not work. Finally, Mary Beth noted that she needed more support and respite.

On August 28, 2000, the day before Logan was set to start kindergarten, these struggles came to a head. Mary Beth had a physical incident with Logan. This incident followed Logan defying Mary Beth in front of a neighbor. First, she refused to put on a swimsuit and go out and swim. Later, after swimming, she refused to take off the wet swimsuit. Mary Beth said she walked away and tried to ignore Logan. Then, she sent her to her room, but the little girl allegedly followed her yelling “No.” Mary Beth turned and said through gritted teeth, “Do you want me to hit you?” According to Mary Beth, this is a direct quote: “Logan and I had a shouting match and I threw her on the bed and held her down by her neck. As soon as I saw my hand, I stopped and I started throwing toys off the bed instead.” End quote.

After the incident, Mary Beth called a friend for support, and her husband arrived home shortly after. Then, she called Allison Peters to report what had happened. While they waited for Allison to arrive, Logan sat in Mary Beth’s lap crying. Logan just wanted to go home to her mommy; her mommy, as she put it, never put her hands on her.

After this physical incident, Logan was left in Mary Beth’s care. Meanwhile, Allison made an emergency visit to inform Christy of what had happened. She did this not out of the goodness of her heart, because she knew that Christy would hear about it at her visit the next day. Christy was enraged, understandably. She pointed out again that she had never been accused of putting her hands on her children. She also demanded to know why Logan was still with Mary Beth. However, she was not given any answers. The next day, when Christy ran into Mary Beth, she is rightfully angry. She threatened Mary Beth, swearing on her daughters’ lives if anything like that ever happened again (although I’d probably do the same thing). This proved to be a bad move. In turn, the visitation supervisor documented the threat, and it ended up just being another black mark on Christy’s record.

A few weeks after the physical incident with Mary Beth, Logan was finally moved into a new home. Logan was placed with Sally Scofield, and Mary Beth was given a new foster child. Yep, that is right. She put her hands on one child, so they rewarded her by giving her another.

Now, Sally was a DHS adoption caseworker. If this seems like a conflict of interest to you, that’s because it is. In fact, it’s against DHS regulations to place foster children in the home of any DHS caseworkers. Sally and her husband, Dean, had been going through the process to become an adoptive home. It’s important to note that shortly after the girls were placed, a complaint was made to DHS about the violation of this protocol. Sally claimed she didn’t know children could not be placed in the home of caseworkers. In addition, the Guardian Ad Litem declined a new placement for the girls, claiming that moving them again would be more harmful than leaving them there.

Sally already had two boys, a 14-year-old from a previous marriage and a one-year-old with Dean, but what Sally really wanted was a girl. Later, Sally’s babysitter recounted that before Logan and Bailey’s placement, Sally had expected to adopt a set of girls who were four and five years old, but this adoption fell through. The couple had been taking adoption classes. Sally claimed that due to her background with DHS, she was seen as a know-it-all during these classes. She described herself as a resource for the teachers running these classes, to clarify laws and rules with her.

As Christy was struggling with the loss of her girls, DHS caseworker Sally Scofield had begun to think about adopting a little girl of her own. She had two boys, Derek (14) from a previous marriage and one-year-old Shannon, but she had always longed for a girl. “I sort of felt like if I had 12 children they’d probably all be boys, so I’d never get a girl, so we decided to pursue adoption.” DHS discourages its caseworkers from adopting children from within the system, but Sally was determined to be an exception. She enrolled with her husband in a mandatory training program for adoptive parents, where her experience as a DHS caseworker immediately set her apart. “I think probably is that because I would say, ‘Well, you know, I think that maybe we ought to look at this piece,’ if something came up or whatever, and the instructors clearly were looking to me for, for clarification or for answers. And although I didn’t notice that, my husband was noticing that there were certain people in the class who were just like, ‘Oh great, here she goes again.'”

During their adoption survey, Sally was asked how she would handle a child who didn’t behave for her. Sally stated that she simply could not imagine one of her children acting that way; they would never be that out of control. She must have realized later that this was not a good answer and got back in contact with the interviewer and demanded that they remove that part from the record. Sally literally complained to them until they agreed to remove it.

Reports claim that Logan and Bailey were placed with Sally as an emergency placement. Sally claimed she was only supposed to have them for the weekend. This seems unlikely since Allison had already waited several weeks to move them. On top of that, she moved them into an adoptive home instead of another foster home, presumably to make sure it was a long-term placement. Sally claimed that she and Dean instantly bonded with the girls after that weekend; they were her children in her eyes. She said that Logan started calling her “mommy” within the first few hours all on her own. It was later noted by Logan’s therapist that Sally repeatedly reprimanded Logan if she did not address her as Mommy and would not respond to Logan unless she was addressed as such.

At this point, we’d like to rewind a little bit to discuss what Logan was getting for mental health services. After her assessment by Dr. Ricci, Logan began seeing a counselor named Kathleen Midori (who was also listed in some places as Katie Midori). When Kathleen initially started seeing Logan, she was in Mary Beth’s care. After the first few visits, Kathleen recommended a long-term placement so she could “begin to trust people enough to express her feelings.” Those are her words, not ours. Unfortunately, due to the move from Mary Beth to Sally’s home, the only two adults Logan had ever bonded with were Christy and Kathleen. We can see several times through the videotaped visitations with her mother that Logan still trusted Christy enough to tell her about what was going on in her foster homes.

Kathleen testified she noticed right away that Sally wanted to assert her will over Logan. Kathleen was so concerned that she reported this controlling behavior to DHS, presumably to Allison Peters. Sally would often call Kathleen to complain of Logan’s behavior. She reported Logan having “rages,” as she called them. Kathleen tried to assure her that Logan just needed more time to adjust, but Sally would not have any of it. Sally had also told Kathleen of her discipline technique: to put Logan in a high chair in the basement. Kathleen, of course, reported this to DHS. When discussing Logan’s behavior, Sally told Kathleen that Logan was “trying to get even with me,” and she thought the five-year-old was intentionally disrupting the Scofield family. Kathleen continued to tell Sally that she did not agree. She tried to remind Sally that Logan was going through a lot: she was taken from her mother, placed in a home where she was physically assaulted, started kindergarten, and was moved to another home in a very short period of time.

At this point, it’s important to note that Sally’s never wrong. Fellow students in the adoption classes testified Sally simply would not or could not accept that she was ever wrong. She even told Logan frequently enough for her to repeat it to Christy things such as “mommies are always right, mommies are right even when mommies are wrong.” Sally’s DHS supervisor noted that Sally was arrogant and saw herself as knowing more than everyone else. Kathleen’s advocacy for Logan was seen as a threat by Sally, and Logan suffered because of it. Sally had insisted on staying in the room during Logan’s private counseling sessions. Kathleen was very uncomfortable with this and told her repeatedly that it was not appropriate for her to stay. When Kathleen got firm and put her foot down, Sally retaliated.

At the end of Logan’s session on October 19, 2000, Sally decided that Logan would not be returning to see Kathleen and claimed it was Logan who made this request. Kathleen asked her to please return for one more session so that she could discuss the change with Logan, but Sally refused and demanded that Kathleen address it that day. So Kathleen took Logan back into her office to tell her that she would be seeing a new therapist. Logan broke down crying, and Kathleen held her while she cried. Meanwhile, Sally, who was once again in the room, got angry at Logan for breaking down. She yelled at her and said, “You know you asked for that.” When they left, Sally said that they would come back one more time to get Logan’s artwork, but this was just another lie. Kathleen never saw Logan again after that day.

Sally continued to complain of Logan’s “extremely difficult” behavior, as she put it. No one else supported this claim about Logan. Mary Beth, Christy, her babysitter Becca, and Christy’s stepmother in Florida all said that Logan never behaved like that for them. Regardless, due to Sally’s insistence, she began to receive hazard pay instead of the regular foster care payments. This is something that is available to foster homes with troubled children. Oftentimes, children with much higher needs have a lot more appointments where they cause parents to miss work. This is a tactic to try to keep those kids in a home instead of them constantly being kicked out to new home to new home. This resulted in Sally receiving three times the normal foster care stipend. Now, it’s not surprising that Sally pursued this, because remember: she knew the system inside and out. She knew all the right things to say to make this situation as cushy and profitable as possible for her and Dean.

Sally also complained that Logan’s rages happened after visits with Christy. She knew that if there was documentation of an extreme disruption to a child when visiting their biological parent, that sometimes DHS would reduce or terminate visitation. It is very possible that this was just another tactic for her to have total control over Logan.

At this time, we’d like to discuss Sally’s claim that Logan had something called attachment disorder. To be clear, her counselor had documented some challenges that Logan was having. The most frequently mentioned term was “parentification.” This term is used when a child takes over the role of a parent to another child. Logan felt very strongly that it was her job to be looking out for Bailey. After all, so far, she had not been shown that she could trust the adults around her. However, this was not Sally’s focus. Sally used the term “attachment disorder” to describe Logan’s challenges. Reactive attachment disorder is a rare but serious condition in which an infant or young child doesn’t establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers. It may develop if the child’s basic needs for comfort, affection, and nurturing aren’t met, and loving, caring, stable attachments with others are not established.

However, this was not Logan’s issue. Despite the false reports from Allison Peters, there was no record of Logan being mistreated, neglected, or abandoned by her mother. She was clearly comfortable with her mother and showed great affection for her during these visits. With the false diagnosis of an attachment disorder also comes the unnecessary intervention of something called attachment therapy. This is a set of parenting techniques designed to target disobedience. It’s all about gaining control over the child and showing them who is in charge. This practice promotes physically overpowering a child in a hold or restraint to essentially exhaust them into submission. This practice promotes holding children while they scream and beg to stop being hurt by the parents. This is done intentionally to provoke a negative emotional response. That’s right: the more miserable you make them and the harder they fight, the better you are doing as the therapist administering this treatment. This practice directly teaches parents of compromised children to ignore requests of bodily consent. I’m sure that will help them feel safe and attached!

I should reiterate: this took place in the year 2000. Things are much different nowadays. Attachment therapy rarely, if ever, is practiced, and there are six known deaths related to attachment therapy, based on my knowledge. Sally admitted to using these practices with Logan. This was something that she picked up while at DHS working with families who had challenging children in their care. She described how she would wrap Logan in a blanket and hold her tightly, or lay across her body to prevent her from using her arms and legs. Then, after a period of time, sometimes up to an hour, she would begin negotiating the release of one limb at a time if Logan could be in control. In her interview, she said that this was not a restraint, as a restraint is something you do to prisoners. She was merely doing “supportive holding.” She was merely “containing” Logan, not restraining. I don’t know, Sally, pinning a child down for an hour sure makes it seem like she was being treated as a prisoner.

Through all of this, Christy was still trying to see her girls as much as possible. However, Christy was working three jobs. One job was at a farm, another at a convenience store, and another at a department store. Christy had to walk everywhere because she still did not have her driver’s license, and to top it off, it was almost two hours of a drive to go see her daughters at the visitation center. Unfortunately, for an unknown reason, DHS stopped providing her transportation to her visits. This made it very hard for Christy to make it to every appointment and every visit. She said that during this time, she was only sleeping about four hours every two days. Every time Christy missed therapy, or a class, or a visit due to lack of transportation, it was another black mark on her record showing why they alleged she was unfit to be a mother.

On the flip side, Sally was constantly late and missing visits with the girls. Unlike Christy, Sally had a vehicle and only lived a 30-minute drive from the visitation center. She cited reasons such as mixing up the times of the visits, oversleeping, or that the girls just weren’t cooperating. And sometimes, she wouldn’t give a reason at all. In less than three months, Sally was late to six of the visits and canceled two altogether. However, this was not held against Sally the way that Christy’s infractions were held against her.

In addition to being sporadic with her ability to show up on time with the girls, Sally refused to have any contact with Christy. They went through great lengths to be sure that Christy didn’t know who she was, what she looked like, what her car looked like, or what her name was. I can only assume this is due to paranoia because ultimately she was planning to keep the girls. Christy was very respectful of these boundaries and even wrote that in a letter. In her letter, she thanked Sally for taking care of her girls and listed off all of the things her girls liked and didn’t like. She also begged Sally—begged her—not to harm her girls, which was triggered by the physical incident with Mary Beth. This letter was later used out of context to show that Christy wanted her girls to be with Sally.

“We never met. The plan for visits was that I would get there early and drop off the girls and then leave so she wouldn’t be able to identify the vehicle the girls got into, and then at the end of the visit the visit supervisor would leave the birth mom in the room, bring the girls out to me and then go back, and once I’d left the parking lot she would then allow the birth mother to come out of the building. So that was the plan.”

Following the final counseling session with Kathleen Midori on October 19th, Sally started bringing Logan to a new counselor named Jennifer Jones. It is unclear if Logan’s Guardian Ad Litem, Lawrence Irwin, knew of this change. Jennifer got all of her information about Logan from Sally, whom Logan had only been placed with for two months at this time. Sally grossly exaggerated past incidents. She told her that the physical incident with Mary Beth involved Mary Beth pinning Logan to the wall by her throat and shaking her. She also described another incident where Logan had accidentally consumed a Jell-O shot at a friend’s house when in Christy’s care. The result of that mistake was that Logan threw up and Christy felt terrible. However, in Sally’s description, Logan had to be rushed to the ER and nearly died. The other concerning thing about the Jell-O shot story was that Christy had only discussed that with her therapist, so how did Sally know about it?

Over time, Sally also told Jennifer about how she disciplined Logan. When Logan misbehaved, she’d isolate her in the basement. Logan would be buckled into a high chair in the unfinished section of the basement, generally used for storage. Jennifer made note of this, but her notes did not include any comment on the inappropriateness of this technique. It should be noted that DHS regulations prohibit foster parents from using isolation as a form of discipline. This is something that Sally should have been fully aware of, being a caseworker and all. It was clear that Sally had done this on numerous occasions.

Through the fall and winter of 2000 to 2001, Christy was continuing to visit her girls and work towards reunification. These visits were fully supervised, unlike her visits in 1998 when Logan was in DHS custody. Many of her visits were also videotaped, because remember, Christy was only communicating with her mother by sending videos. On their October 12th visit, Christy had a birthday celebration for Logan. She brought balloons, presents, and a cake. During this visit, Logan repeatedly told her mother, “You are my favorite person.”

On the same day, Christy noticed a suspicious mark on Bailey’s bottom during a diaper change. When she addressed it, the visitation supervisor dismissed it immediately and said it was just diaper rash. Christy didn’t agree and felt that Bailey may have been harmed. Christy told Logan that if anything bad ever happened to her, that Logan could tell her. And Christy was later reprimanded for saying this to Logan, and they said that Christy was sowing mistrust between Logan and her foster family.

On October 30th, Logan told Christy that she didn’t like Sally. Christy tried to keep a positive tone, but Logan burst into tears when Christy said nice things about her foster mother. “You know, she would tell me things and, but I couldn’t really discuss ’em with him or comment on them or ask her questions. Like, she would tell me that the foster parents would wrap her, her and her sister up in blankets and grab her face. You know, she said that she would get in trouble sometimes. I’m like, ‘You wanna talk about?’ She goes, ‘No, I don’t want to talk about it.'”

On December 18th, Christy and the girls celebrated Christmas together during their visit. This may seem early for a parent who is supposed to be getting visits with her kids four times a week. However, Sally had told Allison Peters that she was taking Logan to Canada during the week of Christmas. She said if Christy wanted to have Christmas with the girls, she’d have to do it early. It turns out this was a complete lie. The family was home in Chelsea during Christmas.

In the video, you can see Logan stop opening presents to report physical abuse that she had received at the hands of Sally. Logan: Um, yeah to me and I slide… Christy: What did she do to you? Logan: Oh I’m very sorry… Christy: And she did it to my sister too. Logan: It still has done me. It would make a five-year-old stop opening Christmas presents on that day to say what she did to me, about Sally grabbing her face making her hurt, and her sister too. Interviewer: What did you think when she, when she said that? Christy: I didn’t know what to think. I believed her though, and I just, I wanted to ask her so many questions: why, what happened? I went to say something and I got a look from the supervisor like, you know, head shaking, no don’t go into detail. So I kind of just kind of had to bite my tongue and it’s like, ‘Well, let’s try not to worry about that. Let’s try to have a good Christmas.’ Oh I juice it down, we’ll have a good Christmas and let’s not think about that maybe that’s okay, you couldn’t ask her ask her. Mommy I love you… you know what? I love you hey whatever you guys got here there you guys are more than welcome to play with us… um happy Christmas Deanna so that way we can spend it together and they’re at my home. Please note that in this clip, the other adult in the room hears this complaint and asks Logan to clarify it. This was recorded in a report and submitted to Allison Peters.

On Christmas Day at the Scofield house, Logan was left alone in her room for hours by Sally for misbehaving. Around 5 PM, Sally and Bailey went to visit their babysitter, Becca. Logan and Dean Scofield were not in attendance. Sally told Becca that Logan had been in her room since 11 in the morning with no toys as punishment for her behavior—once again using isolation to discipline Logan.

During a visit with Christy on January 3rd, 2001, Logan was playing on the floor with her sister and stopped suddenly. She stood up to demonstrate how Sally and her son put their hands over her mouth to silence her. She also demonstrated how Dean restrained her in his arms, wrapped in a blanket. Once again, the visitation supervisor shook her head to silence Christy, and again these complaints were documented in a report and submitted to Allison Peters. None of these claims were ever investigated.

While Christy was doing her best to be there for her girls, she had no idea that Allison Peters was conspiring via email with Sally. These emails were about terminating Christy’s parental rights and having Sally adopt the girls. On January 8, 2001, Allison emailed Sally and said, “Christy is still up to her old tricks, so she continues to make TPR easier and easier to get.” TPR stands for termination of parental rights. Keep in mind, this email was sent after receiving reports from the visitation supervisor about Logan’s claims of harm at the hands of Sally. In addition, Allison had received reports from the counselor about Sally’s admission of using the high chair as punishment. And after viewing the Christmas videotape, Christy’s mom, Caitlin, had also called Allison and filed a formal complaint. Still, there was no visit to Sally’s home, and Allison never addressed or investigated any of these accusations.

During Christy’s January 26 visit, she learned that Sally had been coaching Logan to think that Scofield was her new last name. At this time, Christy did not know that DHS was trying to terminate her rights. She still thought that the goal was for the girls to be returned back to her.

Now, through all of this, you might wonder what happened to Logan’s dad, John Wagg. He was also having visits with Logan during this time. Initially, they were meeting at a visitation center in Lewiston. At this location, visits took place in a small, dirty basement room. When John requested that he take his daughter outside for a walk, he was told no. When he complained about the poor accommodations for their visits, his visits were then moved from Lewiston to Augusta, adding another 40 minutes for his drive to see his daughter.

In addition, he was under constant criticism from the visitation supervisor. When he packed snacks and drinks for them to have a picnic during their visits, he was criticized for having a cooler that was not clean enough. He said that he had scrubbed it, but due to some old scuff marks, the visitation supervisor was still not happy. Due to this, he was referred to as an “abuser” in visitation notes.

As Logan’s birthday approached, John planned a party for her with his family and received approval to have her come to the party for five hours. He called repeatedly to be sure nothing else was needed before the dates. He invited anyone from DHS to attend if they needed assurance that everything was safe during this event. Out of nowhere, Allison recanted her approval. He argued with her and she relented and gave him permission. Then the next day, she called him back and canceled once again. Instead, she gave him permission to take her to McDonald’s in Augusta. John was understandably fed up. He was frustrated that DHS seemed to always be changing the rules and he would no longer stand for it. He ended up not seeing Logan at all for her birthday and later cited this as one of his biggest regrets.

It’s also important to note that after the incident with Mary Beth, John went to DHS to try to get Logan placed with him. He was turned down again. His last visit was the week before her birthday.

On January 31st, Christy was scheduled to see her girls. It was a snowy day, and Christy’s visit was canceled due to the weather. We find this strange because school wasn’t canceled that day, and it’s Maine—it snows here. The day started as it always did. Dean woke up early to go to work and got Logan settled before he left. When Sally got up, Logan told her that Dean said it was a snow day and school was canceled. In turn, Sally called Dean and found out this wasn’t actually true. Despite this seeming like a harmless, maybe even a funny thing for Logan to do, Sally told Logan that she will be punished after school. Sally relayed this message to Becca, the babysitter.

Now, we already know that Sally’s forms of punishment were extreme. She also enforced what she referred to as “double time timeouts.” She’d tell the girls that they have to serve their regular timeout and then that amount of time again to pay her back for the time she had to spend dealing with their behavior. When Logan returned home from school that day, Becca reminded her that she needed a timeout. Logan fussed for a minute but ultimately went to her room and eventually fell asleep.

Sally arrived home between 2:45 and 3:00 PM. Logan was asleep. When Logan woke up, she started screaming. This is where Sally’s story starts to vary greatly each time she is interviewed. Sally initially said that she tried to kindly ask Logan what was wrong; perhaps she had a nightmare or her belly hurt. Later, she recounted that she had a more stern approach. She said that she walked in and firmly told Logan that she needed to stop. Sally said that the two younger children needed naps and that she needed Logan to quiet down so that they could rest.

Sally said her teenage son took a high chair to the basement. Initially, he placed it at the bottom of the stairs in the carpeted area that was well-lit. Sally moved it behind a curtained area that was unfinished and used for storage. The high chair was positioned to face the wall. Sally put Logan in the chair and claimed that she used this location because it was an “appropriate place to scream.” She said that she put Logan in the basement because it took away all the fun. She claimed to check on Logan every few minutes and would ask if she was ready to make the choice to stop and come upstairs. This supposedly went on until Sally started making supper.

When Sally put the pork chops and potatoes in the oven at 4:47 PM, she noticed that the screaming had stopped. She said she went down to the basement and, I quote, “finds her in a heap, the chair tipped over, not breathing, no pulse.” Sally admitted that Logan was in the chair for over an hour by the time that she was found.

Later, Sally’s teenage son said that he saw his mother come up the stairs twice after the screaming had stopped. The second time was to call 9-1-1. Sally contacted emergency services and reported that her five-year-old had hit her head and was not breathing. She said she tried CPR and it didn’t work. When first responders got there, Logan was now at the bottom of the stairs in the carpeted area. Fire Chief Joe Mills was first to respond with his daughter, who is a registered nurse. She just happened to be at Joe’s home when he received the call. It took him only three minutes to reach the Scofield home. He found Logan barefoot, wearing a pink jersey and light-colored overalls. Her face was pale, and one of her toes was bleeding. He noted that she was cold to the touch. Joe said that when he carried her up the stairs, he noted that she had wet herself, which is common when a person dies. As she was carried up the stairs, she vomited over Joe’s shoulder, which was later attributed to postmortem regurgitation.

Joe Mills describes Sally as very calm, with very little emotion. He said, “I never saw a colder person in my life.” Joe’s daughter also described her as very composed considering the circumstances. She noted that before leaving for the hospital, Sally walked back upstairs to get her purse. This stuck out as strange in what should have been a hectic emergency situation. In addition, Joe Mills’ son, Maine State Trooper Jeffrey Mills, also responded to the scene. He said Sally was so unemotional he initially thought she did not have any relationship with the child or that she must not have had any direct involvement with the situation—you know, maybe just a random bystander.

Logan was pronounced dead at the hospital. During conversations with Sally, she kept throwing out things that might have happened: a head injury maybe, a cardiac episode, or a seizure. But it was none of those things. It is determined that Logan died of asphyxiation; she was suffocated to death. This is protocol for an abnormal death of a child.

Detectives went back to search the house, and what they found was shocking. Behind the curtain in the storage area where Logan had been isolated, they found a total of 42 feet of duct tape. The duct tape was in many sections and layers strewn about the floor between the boxes. It had hair stuck in the adhesive. At autopsy, duct tape residue was found on Logan’s skin, and it was later determined that her mouth was covered in three layers of duct tape. This is what asphyxiated her. In addition, her wrists were wrapped together. They also determined that the duct tape must have been going around her head in a way that it passed under her chin, making it even more difficult to breathe. The medical examiner also commented that in the 10 passes around her body, the tape must have been applied very snugly to her stomach. The tape contained hair, bloody saliva, mucus, and pieces of the sticker from the back of the high chair.

When Sally was questioned about the tape, she claimed Logan was playing with it. She said she had come down to find it stuck to Logan’s shirt and hair. Upon being pressed by investigators, she later stated that she demonstrated to Logan how to put it around herself. She claimed to be irritated and just demonstrated to Logan that being wrapped in duct tape was not what she wanted. She claimed that she wrapped the tape around Logan’s body maybe once or twice. She also said that she took the tape off before returning back upstairs to cook dinner.

When investigators learned from Sally’s son that she made two trips up the stairs after finding Logan unresponsive, it left them with a mystery: what was that first trip for? It is clear that calling 9-1-1 was not her first priority. Prosecutors speculated that the first trip was to get a knife to cut the tape from Logan’s body and to try to hide the evidence before she called 9-1-1.

On March 8, 2001, Sally was charged with depraved indifference homicide and manslaughter. She was arrested five days later on March 13, 2001, and her bail was originally set at just $500. It was later increased to $12,500 cash or $25,000 surety bonds after the paltry $500 bail sparked community outrage. Dean’s parents put up their house as collateral to meet the bond, and Sally was free to go home.

Now, Sally’s kids remained in the Scofield home until after her arrest when they were finally removed by DHS. They were placed with family members. When DHS was criticized for not taking her boys sooner, the commissioner said it was no easy matter to take her boys because Sally worked for DHS, so she knew the rules. This implied that when they were aware that someone was well-versed in the laws and regulations, DHS actually followed them. There is a clear contrast here to how Christy was treated. Christy did not know enough to be able to adequately advocate for herself and her children’s rights, and DHS knowingly took full advantage of that.

Sally’s trial began on June 18, 2002. She opted for a bench trial, which meant that there was no jury, just a judge. The trial lasted six days, during which the prosecution placed a large doll in a high chair dressed to resemble Logan in the center of the courtroom. They used this to demonstrate what it looked like to wrap 42 feet of duct tape around a child. Sally did not testify on her own behalf during this trial. When her attorney was questioned about this, he stated, “Sally Scofield has suffered enough.”

Unfortunately, the judge felt that Sally did not intend to kill Logan, so he actually threw the homicide charge out. After this happened, Sally celebrated in the street. After the verdict was given, she was seen smiling and laughing with her family. According to her attorney, Jed Davis, being called a murderer had been very difficult to live with for Sally; no one would hire her and that she was harassed on the street (these were his words). However, on June 25th, 2002, Justice Thomas Delahanty found her guilty of Class A manslaughter. He stated that he found Sally’s conduct towards Logan to be unquestionably reckless.

At her sentencing hearing on September 26, 2002, Sally was sentenced to 28 years in prison with eight years suspended and six years probation. He also stipulated that she have no contact with children under the age of 14. Unfortunately, it was determined that without a jury trial, the judge did not have the authority to enforce such a hefty sentence on his own. The appeals court later changed the sentence to 20 years in jail with three years suspended. This equates to only 17 years behind bars.

In the aftermath, there were no formal charges filed against DHS or any of their employees, including Allison Peters. The commissioner stated that there was no failure on the part of DHS. He claimed there were “no warning signs.” No warning signs? Logan’s old therapist Kathleen Midori reported Sally to DHS. Becca the babysitter and the new therapist Jennifer Jones both knew about the high chair treatment. The visitation supervisors heard Logan complain of physical abuse. Allison Peters and the Guardian Ad Litem had access to all of these reports as well. The only recourse for Allison after Logan’s death was a 30-day paid administrative leave.

Christy later sued the state of Maine and, thankfully, she won. The money was split between the costs of her lawyer and a trust fund for Bailey. She was awarded $400,000.

This leaves us with so many questions about the government systems that are supposedly in place to protect our children, especially in the state of Maine. Where was everyone who should have been overseeing DHS? Due to the previous cases of DHS overreach, the governor at the time, Angus King, was well aware that there were already issues in the system. It’s not like the Logan Marr case was the first publicized misuse of power in Maine’s DHS office; it’s arguably the most notable one. In the United States, an average of 1,000 children die in the foster care system each year. We have to do better.

In summer of 2001, Christy and some of her family met at a small cemetery in Dover-Foxcroft, where Logan was to be buried. This spot was near a stream where Logan loved to play with her mother. Christy and her mother laughed over the engraving on the headstone: Logan’s trademark phrase, “talk to the hand.” On one side there was a water scene; on the other was a color photo of Logan. The picture was taken on her one and only school picture day.

Bailey, who was still in DHS custody, had not been permitted to come to her sister’s funeral. Christy had been promised that Bailey could join them on this day for Logan’s committal ceremony. After several calls and several excuses, it was clear that no one was bringing Bailey. Christy, through clenched teeth, had to ask the minister to begin this ceremony without her. Bailey was not returned to her mother’s care until February of 2002, over a year after her sister’s death at the hands of DHS. In May of 2002, Christy regained full custody of Bailey.

Sally Scofield was released from the Maine State Prison in Windham on April 25th of 2017. At the time, Christy was battling cancer. Sadly, she passed away at age 40. Meanwhile, Sally Scofield is alive and walking free.

As some of you might be aware, Maine is our home state. We’ve seen a lot of tough cases come through our area, but nothing even begins to touch the level of failure on behalf of the DHS system like the case of Logan Marr does. Do you think justice was served for Logan? I think we already know what the correct answer is here. Tell us what you think in the comment section down below.