Cats taken from disheveled Kentucky house but state didn’t remove children, officials say
State social workers did not remove children from a disheveled home in Bell County where animal-control officers had taken away three malnourished cats and a dog over concerns about their well-being, local authorities said.
The case has been a point of tension between some local officials and employees at the Department for Community Based Services, or DCBS.
“It definitely was no housing situation for kids, in my opinion,” said Sgt. Frank Foster, an officer with the Bell County Sheriff’s Office who was at the house.
The case started in mid-October when a man reported a concern about animals left at a house because the woman who lived there was in jail, said Patsy Bracken, an animal-control officer for Bell County.
Bracken said she believed the man was associated with a church and had taken food to the people at the house.
Bracken said she followed the man to the house, which was at the end of a steep, rutted dirt drive in a rural area of the county.
Bracken said when the man opened the unlocked door, a dog came out. There were also three young cats at the house.
The cats were sickly and so hungry they climbed up the clothing of another worker to try to reach the food he was getting for them, Bracken said.
There was no one at the house. Bracken did not go in, but could see from the front door that the house was “pretty cluttered up.”
Photos from the scene show clothes, shoes, trash and other items piled in the floor and on the porch.
“It was just unbelievable,” Bracken said.
Officers took the animals, and Bracken called the sheriff’s office because of the conditions.
Foster went to the house on Oct. 14 in response to that call.
The occupant of the house, Mary Flanary, and her six children were there, Foster said.
Foster said the floor was covered with clothes and garbage.
“It was a wreck out there,” Foster said.
Foster said the house had electricity but no water.
State was aware
There were hypodermic needles on top of the refrigerator. Flanary said she had picked them up, Foster said.
Flanary had the telephone number of a state social worker. She said the worker had been to the house and said it was OK to stay there, Foster said.
Foster said he wanted a social worker to come to the house, but when he called the number Flanary provided, he spoke with someone who said that a DCBS employee had been to the house earlier and the agency was aware of the clutter and the needles in the house.
The employee said DCBS was looking for another place for Flanary and the children, but that it was hard to find other arrangements because she had so many children, Foster said.
Jeremy Traxler, who owns the house, said Flanary is living there illegally.
Traxler lived there at one time, farming and running a sawmill, but had to move to Michigan to care for his ailing mother.
Other people have also lived in the house illegally, he said.
“We have had nothing but rogues, whatever you want to call them, come in and squat in my place,” Traxler said.
In a statement, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which includes DCBS, said the agency conducted a visit in September to where the family was living, which was a “different residence from where law enforcement officials in October observed poor living conditions.”
The statement did not address questions about how the agency handled the situation where the family was living in October.
Criminal charges
Foster swore out a criminal complaint Nov. 10 charging Flanary, 35, with six counts of endangering the welfare of a minor and six counts of unlawful transaction with a minor.
The endangerment charges were based on the children “living in deplorable home conditions, very unsafe home conditions with hypodermic needles in several parts of the house,” the citation said.
The unlawful transaction charges were based on Flanary allegedly habitually not sending her children to school, a charge she had faced on several earlier occasions.
Bell County Attorney Neil Ward said there was a lag between the time Foster observed the conditions at the house and filing the charges because officials waited to see what DCBS would do, and because Ward needed to consider the evidence.
Ward said he made the decision to have Foster file charges out of concern about the children’s living condition.
“I said, ‘We’re not gonna leave’m in there,” Ward said.
Children are removed
Foster arrested Flanary at the county judicial center while she was there for a hearing on an earlier charge of allegedly not sending the children to school.
Flanary’s father told Foster after the arrest that a social worker had spoken with him and planned to have him look after the kids at Flanary’s house, Foster said.
The kids were at school at the time. The house was in the same cluttered condition as earlier, Foster said.
There were outstanding warrants for Flanary’s father, so he arrested him, Foster said.
That meant there would be no one home when the children got there because Flanary and the children’s father were in jail as well.
Flanary has seven children ranging in age from 5 to 15, but the oldest stays with someone else.
Ward said a school social worker familiar with the six children still at the house, not a DCBS employee, signed an emergency petition to remove them and a judge approved it late in the afternoon on Nov. 10.
State switches placement
A woman agreed to care for one of the kids and the other five were taken to a children’s home in an adjoining county aboard a county school bus, Ward said.
However, a DCBS employee was at the home and said the agency had to follow protocol and that the children couldn’t stay at the group home, Ward said.
The driver took the children back to the DCBS office in Pineville. They were placed in foster care later that evening, Ward said.
Ward said DCBS was aware of the conditions at Flanary’s home before the removal order from the judge that was based on the school social worker’s emergency petition.
At a hearing Thursday, a social worker said the house where Flanary is staying had been cleaned up, but a judge continued their placement in foster care at least until a further hearing in December, Ward said.
Efforts to talk to Flanary were not successful.
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 11:51 AM.
