The Death of Joy King-Castro, Part 2: What Leadership Was Doing

Stories from the Inside

May 31, 2022

∙ Paid

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” ~Anne Lamott

Part 1:

Dead Babies Everywhere

The Death of Joy King-Castro, Part 1

“This all has to be for something.” ~Sheneika Brothers, Youth Affairs Specialist Joy King-Castro was a beautiful, highly intelligent 4-year-old child in foster care in Brevard County, Florida. Brevard Family Partnership, the private entity that handled every aspect of her case, is the last mandated Child Welfare organization I worked for. Her death was the last death I will ever experience as an employee of these systems. Now I am an advocate for the people chewed up and spat out by these systems. I speak for those who’ve lost so much because of the problematic people running these organizations. Their behaviors deserve the glaring eye of analysis, just as the families they serve experience…

2 years ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Belle Pfau

The last time I saw Phil Scarpelli he was jumping up and down on my Zoom screen like a monkey in a Simpsons episode. The man is tiny, so you could see his whole body moving around in the square like an episode of Hollywood Squares. He was yelling that what I was saying was a lie. I was feeling very like Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, slitting my eyes and thinking, “The lady doeth protest too much.”

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