The money, in addition to $1.85 million T.J. had received from two city-funded private agencies involved in her care, would ensure that the 15-year-old would be secure for life.
But T.J. had been hurt in ways that money couldn't fix.
At the age of 8, she had been indecently assaulted by a convicted bank robber who DHS had decided would make a good caregiver.
In hours of deposition testimony, no one from DHS expressed contrition, or took responsibility or promised to fix any of the astonishing lapses that led to this child's suffering.
When do we hold these people accountable? Vanessa wondered. When do they see the kid face to face and say, "I damaged your life"?
Before the agreement was signed in March, the federal mediator asked Vanessa if there was anything else she wanted from the city.
"An official face-to-face apology," she replied.
The city doesn't do apologies, the lawyers responded. But it did agree to a sit-down with Vanessa, T.J., the head of DHS, and the two workers who had made key decisions in her case.
Vanessa imagined how she might begin:
"Meet T.J., 14 years old, HIV-positive, life expectancy, 42."
At library, striking up friendship with sisters
Vanessa was an inner-city librarian - and a good one. It wasn't just about books, though she had her master's degree. Having grown up in a tough neighborhood herself, she could relate to the boisterous kids who'd stream in after school, flirting and laughing. A mother of three daughters, she was part social worker, part teacher, part disciplinarian.
In the summer of 2000, in a Free Library branch in one of Philadelphia's most impoverished sections, she met T.J., then 9, and her half-sister K.J., then 12.
K.J. was as talkative as T.J. was reserved. From K.J., Vanessa learned that the girls were in foster care, and had been for much of their lives.
