State, county report shows agencies missed ‘red flags’ with Grace Packer

Posted April 2, 2019

For nearly a decade, agencies responsible for protecting Grace Packer repeatedly missed “red flags” where they could have intervened, long before her adopted mother and her boyfriend carried out a plan to rape and murder the teen in 2016, according to state and county reviews released Monday.

Grace Packer 

The two, 30-plus page reports, known as Act 33 child death reviews, detail a series of missed opportunities to keep 14-year-old Grace safe that started years before she and her younger brother were adopted by Sara and David Packer in 2007.

Sara Packer, 44, pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole for plotting and participating Grace’s death. Jacob Sullivan, 46, Packer’s boyfriend, who raped and strangled Grace in a Richand home, was sentenced to death the day before.

Details in the reports fill in some blanks about Grace’s experience in the child welfare system starting at 6 months old. But the documents also are highly redacted — Grace’s is the only name not blacked out in the report — which some child advocates said undermines the reports’ usefulness to hold the system accountable.

“It’s really hard to understand how we might do better,” said Frank Cervone, executive director of child advocates for the Philadelphia-based Support Center for Child Advocates. “This report should be the first step, not the last, for how we failed these children, not just Grace, but the others whose names are blacked out.”

The reports found child welfare agencies in Berks, Montgomery and Lehigh counties, and North Carolina, where Grace lived nearly a year with family members, failed to intervene at different points. The report also cited past shortcomings at a for-profit foster care agency in Lehigh County that placed Grace and her younger brother with the Packers, and where Sara Packer worked as a case manager at the time.

The Packers, who divorced in 2016, took in 30 foster children from 11 counties between 2000 and 2010, when their foster care credentials were revoked after David Packer was charged with sexually abusing a foster child and later Grace. He was later pleaded guilty to child sex crimes and he is a registered sexually violent predator.

Among the missed “red flags” cited in the reports:

• Berks County Child Welfare accepted references confirming the Packer family’s suitability as adoptive parents from individuals with a “vested interest” in the approval. It also ignored a note that Sara Packer would not do well with a “strong willed or defiant child.” The county caseworkers also didn’t visit the Packer home.


• An evaluation in Lehigh County, where the family lived for several years, found Sara Packer did not pose a “direct” risk to children and could serve a caretaker for Grace and her brother, even after she admitted to a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old foster child in her custody.


• Impact Project Inc., of Emmaus, failed to obtain a state employee waiver for Sara Packer to act as a foster parent for children placed with the agency, information this news organization first reported in 2017. The death review stated the agency no longer allows the practice. The agency also approved the Packers to provide foster care but did not provide them special training.


• Child welfare workers in Burke County, North Carolina, in 2015 did not see any safety or child welfare issues for Grace despite a report that she felt unsafe with Sara Packer.


• Child welfare officials in Montgomery County, where Grace lived until her death, did not act on multiple referrals involving Grace that identified areas of concern related to safety and well-being that at a minimum should have triggered further review and analysis. When the county received a child welfare request from North Carolina for a home safety assessment upon Grace’s return to Pennsylvania, it was referred to police with no follow up.

As a result of the death reviews, Montgomery County is making changes within its child protection agency, according to an emailed statement released Monday.

“Montgomery County is evaluating and updating screening protocols to include review of prior referrals and review of existing information in any other county when possible,” the statement read.

Grace Packer

The report noted the team could not obtain some expunged records that would have been useful in its review and determining the appropriateness of agency investigations; among the many recommendations was legislative action to re-evaluate expungement regulations.

“With multiple allegations and investigations over several years it would seem that this case should have been thoroughly assessed for the safety of Grace and her brother and maintained as an open case for a longer period of time,” according to the review.

Cathleen Palm, founder and executive director of the Center for Children’s Justice, believes the reports show the child welfare system does not have a sense of urgency or understanding about child sexual abuse. She also believes that the reports should be reviewed by people who are outside the child welfare system.

“The report telling us how to do better is, by and large, issued by the leaders of systems that for a decade or more were responsible for the decisions about Grace’s safety and custody, and we see those decisions were not always what we had hoped,” Palm added. “This report, while it was nice it was done, it would be wrong to see that it should restore the public’s confidence in the state of child welfare in the state of Pennsylvania.”