If you are concerned about a child being neglected or abused, call Maine’s 24-hour hotline at 800-452-1999 or 711 to speak with a child protective specialist. Calls may be made anonymously. For more information, visit maine.gov/dhhs/ocfs/provider-resources/reporting-suspected-child-abuse-and-neglect.
This story will be updated.
A state watchdog agency has found that Maine’s child protective services had multiple interactions with the family of Jaden Harding in the years before Harding was born, but there were no interactions during the short life of Harding, whose father killed him in spring of 2021 when he was just 6-weeks-old.
For around 10 years before Harding was born, his mother and her relatives had numerous interactions with Maine’s child protective services, and there were two instances in which protection workers made poor safety decisions, according to the report from the Office of Program Evaluation & Government Accountability, or OPEGA.
Jaden’s father, Ronald Harding of Brewer, did not appear to be a threat to Jaden’s safety before his death, the 65-page report said. But Ronald Harding was ultimately convicted of manslaughter and in September was sentenced to prison for violently shaking Jaden on Memorial Day 2021, resulting in his death one day later.
The report also identified some broader shortcomings in the handling of Jaden’s three half-siblings by the Office of Child and Family Services in the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
OPEGA Director Peter Schleck presented the report to the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee Wednesday morning. There were multiple dangerous people who were connected to Jaden’s mother, Kayla Hartley, and entered the life of Jaden and his half-siblings, the report said.
Child protective services should have ensured the safety of the half-siblings in the home before Jaden was born, the report said. There were two distinct times the agency made “unsound safety decisions,” the report said.
In the report, Maine DHHS Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew and Director of the Office of Children and Family Services Todd Landry said they plan to learn from the findings.
“We are committed to utilizing these cases to learn and take every possible step to prevent future harm as well as improve the overall well-being of children and families,” they said.
A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.
This is the third in a series of four reports that OPEGA is doing on the abuse deaths of Maine children. The two previous reports have cleared Maine DHHS of wrongdoing in those cases, but pointed to some issues in its response.
