A child dies of abuse, and with no explanation

Once again we see an agency responsible for protecting children against abuse covering up its own failures when a child dies by refusing to discuss the case -- saying it can't do so because of confidentiality restrictions.
Would that the agency were as interested in protecting the child when she was alive as it is in protecting the child's privacy after her death.
The latest case involves the unnecessary death of 4-year-old Kristen Tatar in suburban Pittsburgh. Kristen was the responsibility of the Westmoreland County Children's Bureau, until her body turned up in a trash container behind the home of her parents, Janet Crawford and James Tatar.
Some people should not be parents, and sometimes the children of those parents die. But there was no need for Kristen to die.
Two years ago, she was thriving in the care of a foster mother -- thriving against all odds.
When Kristen was born, her esophagus did not connect to her stomach. That was corrected by surgery, but it was still difficult for her to eat and it took an extraordinary effort by her caregiver to see that she received proper nutrition.
The Westmoreland County Children's Bureau took custody of the child and placed her in three foster homes, the last one being that of Lori Weimer, who hoped to adopt Kristen. She had already adopted another little girl with special needs.
Weimer had Kristen for about six months, and managed to increase her weight from less than 20 pounds to more than 24 pounds, when a new caseworker announced that the girl was being sent back to live with her parents. Weimer told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that she begged the caseworker to reconsider and explained that Kristen required a great deal of attention, which Weimer had reason to believe Kristen would not get with her biological parents.
Weimer was proven correct, but that is small consolation.
A child disappears
During the last two years of her short life, Kristen was shut away, so that even neighbors did not know the family had a daughter. They only saw an older son. Relatives report that they had not seen the girl for months.
Finally, when a caseworker caught Kristen's parents in a series of fabrications over the girl's whereabouts, police were called in. Her body was found in a picnic cooler, wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a trash can. The child who had weighed nearly 25 pounds at the age of 21/2, weighed just 11 pounds nearly two years later when she died.
There is no reasonable explanation for how a child could be starved to death without a caseworker taking notice. And as far as child service supervisors are concerned, there will be no public explanation because they won't even talk about the case or permit the caseworker to respond to questions.
There comes a time when some things are more important than confidentiality. In this case, the very people who failed Kristen so tragically get to hide behind a claim that they are protecting the child's privacy.
Confidentiality will do Kristen no good now. But a thorough airing of what went wrong and who failed Kristen may help another child.