Rica Rountree

Child welfare experts acknowledge that meaningful reform often follows the chaos of dysfunction and years of litigation. Here's how other states and cities have done it.

Speaking publicly for the first time about what went wrong in Rica Rountree's case, prosecutors Erika Reynolds and Mary Koll spoke with WGLT about the failures that led to the ongoing abuse that caused Rica’s fatal internal injuries.

The sister of convicted murderer Cynthia Baker was convicted herself Tuesday of harassing a witness during Baker’s 2019 trial in the death of 8-year-old Rica Rountree.

“Sham investigations” by state child welfare workers emboldened Rica Rountree’s abusers to continue the abuse that led to her death in January 2019,…

The beating death of an 8-year-old Normal girl is the focus of a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against six state child welfare workers, the child’s…

Cynthia Baker’s life sentence in the beating death of an 8-year-old girl will stand, a judge ruled on Tuesday.Judge Casey Costigan denied a defense motion…

When Ann Simmons last saw her daughter Rica Rountree alive on April 20, 2018, with obvious signs of abuse, she knew she had to change her life for the…

The hastily concluded investigation by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services into black eyes and bruises on a child who died weeks later…

Cynthia Baker denied Friday that she killed 8-year-old Rica Rountree, suggesting instead that the child’s father was a more likely source of the fatal…

The father of an 8-year-old girl killed in 2019 by his girlfriend pleaded guilty Thursday to child endangerment.Richard Rountree was sentenced to eight…