By Gregory Orear
General Manager/Editor

LINCOLN COUNTY – The Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney has started an investigation into the Missouri Division of Family Services for potential criminal wrongdoing involving the Brenda Deutsch child abuse case.

After her arrest Sunday night, Wood charged Deutsch with three felonies for child abuse, neglect and endangerment.

And while his office actively investigates Deutsch and allegations of decades of abuse involving hundreds of children she adopted and fostered, he’s also trying to determine how that could have gone on for so long.

“I don’t know how you can have that many hotlines and not rise to the level of a criminal referral,” Wood said in an exclusive interview with The Lincoln County Journal. “We literally had nothing in our system.”

Wood has unconfirmed reports of up to 250 hotline calls over a period of “10-15 years.”

“I have the ability to look into any criminal behavior in Lincoln County to the extent that it’s a criminal case,” Wood said. “This seems like someone really failed and really failed badly. But I’m starting to believe these are complaints statewide and this is a systemic failure from top-down.”

Wood isn’t the only Lincoln County official concerned with this apparent “systemic failure.”

Sheriff Rick Harrell said Deutsch frequently requested law enforcement or medical assistance at the residence, but they are checking their records to determine how many abuse reports they received.  

 “We are actively looking into see if there are areas we missed something and could have done a better job,” he said. “We want to make sure there is an answer to this. If there is something we should have done, we need to address that.”

Harrell said he’s anxious to cross reference those reported 250 hotline calls to determine how many resulted in law enforcement referrals.

“It speaks to an organizational failure and we are looking into that and see what the facts actually are,” he said. “A lot of people are jumping to conclusions … but it’s a deep dive into the weeds as to what did we know and what did we do.”

Wood said it’s important to find out if, and where, protocols failed, not only in the case of Deutsch, but others who make a hotline call in the future. 

“I’ve always been concerned there is this pervasive thought that people have which is if I make a hotline call, then nothing happens,” Wood said. “I’ve worked very diligently to assure people there is a process and this is what it looks like. But then this case happens and it feeds into the narrative of see, we told you, children’s division isn’t going to do anything.”

Wood said it’s imperative for the public to have faith in the government institutions designed to serve and protect them. 

“When people begin to not trust the system and there is failures with the institutions we have to rely on, that becomes really problematic moving forward,” he said.