Appeals court clears city, social worker in child-abuse death

PHILADELPHIA -- A city agency and social worker cannot be held liable in a 3-year-old's harrowing abuse death and the severe beatings of her sisters, a federal appeals court said.

While the city's Department of Human Services may have failed to save Porchia Bennett's life, the department did not actively cause her 2003 death, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.

The girls' mother left them in the long-term care of her sister's boyfriend, a mentally ill drug addict now on death row for Porchia's murder.

Under the law, government agencies are immune from liability unless they actively create a danger, acting in a way that "shocks the conscience."

The 3rd Circuit panel suggested that citizens demand better government services even if the courts cannot.

"If the public raises its voice and demands accountability, and is willing to use the ballot to support those demands, then change and improvement can and will occur. Unfortunately, it will be too late for Porchia Bennett," Judge Dolores K. Sloviter wrote.

Porchia's estate charged in the suit that a city social worker failed to contact the child within 24 hours of receiving a hot line report that the girls were being beaten.

"We always knew it was going to be a difficult claim, because of the law. We thought we had a tenable argument," said lawyer Christopher Culleton, who represents the surviving sisters.

He sought money for the girls' continued medical and psychological care, lost future income and pain and suffering. They were put in foster care after Porchia's death.

"(They) have required a variety of mental health services, and they remain severely traumatized," Sloviter wrote.

Lawyers for the city and for Porchia did not immediately return messages late Wednesday.

The lower court had said the estate failed to prove the social worker or the Department of Human Services created a danger that otherwise would not have existed.

Jerry Chambers, who was convicted of murdering Porchia, sexually abused the girls and beat them with brass knuckles and extension cords. They were also malnourished.

Porchia's mother, Tiffany Bennett, and the aunt, Candace Geiger, are serving long prison term for their treatment of the girls.

Bennett lost another daughter in 1994 from brain injuries the infant suffered when she was shaken by a baby sitter, according to Wednesday's ruling.