Danieal Kelly Case: Ex-Case Workers Admit to Forgery and Faking Documents

The trial of four former employees of the now-defunct MultiEthnic Behavioral Health, Inc. continued this week, with one witness corroborating last week's testimony of other witnesses who testified that supervisors pushed them to forge their names on reports stating caseworkers had made home visits that never occurred. MutliEthnic was contracted by the City of Philadelphia to supervise at-risk children through the city's Department of Human Services, and managers worried that the department would pull their contract for incomplete paperwork.

Co-founders Mickal Kamuvaka and Solomon Manamela and caseworkers Julius Juma Murray and Mariam Coulibaly, are on trial for falsifying records, health-care fraud and destroying documents.

Patricia Burch worked part-time for MultiEthnic before it was forced to close in August, 2006, after the starvation death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. Burch was also a special education assistant for the Philadelphia School District. Burch claims she refused to forge the signatures, insisting on adding her own initials after she signed the supervisor/ manager's names. Patricia Burch last year told the grand jury that agency managers wanted to cover up the fact that caseworkers failed to make required home visits to the children MultiEthnic was assigned to follow, and pressed her to falsify reports.

Burch pled guilty in September of 2009 to federal charges of initially lying under oath to a grand jury investigating MultiEthnic, and faces up to five years in jail. By agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, charges of health-care and wire fraud and conspiracy were avoided. The defense tried to use her history of lying to the grand jury to discredit her, but on the stand this week she insisted she was telling the truth when she testified that Kamuvaka and Manamela pressed her to forge signatures. Along with Burch, Joseph Massaquoi also testified that home-visit reports were routinely fabricated, the same language being used in several reports.

Former MultiEthnic caseworker Christiana Nimpson pled guilty last year to fraud and obstructing justice. She worked part-time for MultiEthnic, earning about $28,000 a year, On Tuesday, Nimpson testified that within hours of Danieal Kelly's death, Kamuvaka requested that she fill out and backdate an encounter form as officials hastened to create a false record of visits to the Kelly home in response to demands from DHS. The document recorded a re-dated home visit from months before. She left the "recipient signature" line blank, and said she was then asked by either Kamuvaka or Manamela to sign the name of Andrea Kelly, Danieal's mother, to the form. Nimpson testified that she refused to do so. "I thought it wasn't right," she said. The form was entered into evidence, bearing the signature Andrea Kelly.

Nimpson recalled a visit to the Kelly home in the spring of 2006, accompanied by the family's caseworker, Julius Juma Murray, to teach Andrea Kelly parenting skills. Nimpson testified that she spoke to the mother on the porch, and then waited outside while Murray entered the home. Nimpson testified that in her four years with MultiEthnic, Kamuvaka and Manamela asked her to go through other caseworkers' files and fabricate missing reports at least 15 times. Nimpson said when visits were not made, she often fabricated progress notes for her own cases, and collected information for other caseworkers' reports by calling the families.

In all, nine MultiEthnic employees have been charged with billing the city for services never provided, and with fabricating and destroying documents. Five have already pled guilty. Andrea Kelly, Danieal's mother, is serving a 30-year prison sentence for her role in her daughter's death.

^{Sources: Philly.com: Witness Adamant she was told to forge reports; Philly.com:Ex-Caseworker says she faked documents after girl's death; More articles on this case by Patricia Sicilia: The Death of Danieal Kelly: Philadelphia's Shame; Danieal Kelly's Parents file suit against City; Andrea Kelly Sentenced in Death of Daughter; Trial Begins for Social Workers; Trial of Social Workers Continues;}