A former neighbor says she tried five times to have authorities intervene with two parents who have since been accused in Texas of starving their 13-year-old boy to death.
Anne Barlow said she was a neighbor to the boy, Stephen Jay Hill, when his family lived in Clearfield.Barlow said she noticed that the boy was malnourished and had been physically abused.
She called the Utah Division of Family Services five times between 1983 and 1985, pleading with the agency to take action against the parents, she said.
It never did. And in 1985 the family left Utah.
Stephen died of starvation in Fort Worth in November - two weeks after he was found chained to a cabinet in his family's trailer.
His parents, Jay Hill, 42, and Linda Hill, 37, remained in jail in lieu of $100,000 bail. They are charged with homicide, aggravated kidnapping and injury to a child. Trial is scheduled for Aug. 3, and Barlow will testify.
Prosecutors say the Hills starved the 13-year-old boy as punishment and occasionally shackled him to keep him from food.
Barlow was a teacher's aide at Holt Elementary when Stephen attended the school from 1983 to 1985. Living near the Hills, she notified family services agencies as a concerned neighbor.
Clearfield Police Detective Bill Holthaus said an officer went to the Hill residence at the request of a Utah Division of Family Service caseworker on Oct. 10, 1984. The officer and caseworker examined Stephen and, in a report, said Stephen "had some swelling in the tonsils and a slight fever, but no bruises or injuries indicating any child abuse."
A spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Family Services said that the agency was checking its records. "Obviously we're talking nine years ago and the records are in archives," said Terry Twitchell. "Normally, if a family moved, we would call the officials in the state they were moving to to tell them that this was an open case and they should move on it."
Carl Peterson, principal at Holt Elementary School when Stephen was enrolled there, said he intervened in Stephen's behalf.
"We had noticed that he was getting into other kids' lunches. We would furnish him a little food. We called the parents in and they got into mental-health counseling. We thought things looked pretty good," Peterson said.
Meanwhile, the Utah grandparents of Stephen have filed for custody of the boy's surviving 12-year-old brother. Leon and Barbara Hill of Smithfield filed a motion in a Dallas court to allow Douglas Hill to be placed with relatives.