By DOUGLAS MONTERO
June 13, 2008
A national database must be created so the Administration for Children's Services can weed out child abusers from other states as they seek legal custody of kids in the city, a lawmaker said yesterday.
"We have all failed here. The system of protecting our children is broken across the board," said City Councilman Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn). "Our child-welfare agencies across the country do not share information with each other."
The call for sharing information comes on the heels of the June 6 death of little Kyle Smith.
The 3-year-old's godmother, Nymeen Cheatham, 30, and her live-in boyfriend, Lemar Martin, 25, are charged with beating him in their Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment before he died.
The ACS had no way of knowing Cheatham - who was seeking to become Kyle's legal guardian - had her four biological kids removed in 2003 in Texas after authorities there accused her of leaving them home alone with no food or electricity.
