As police began to subpoena records from the Baltimore school system and the city's Department of Social Services to help unravel the short, troubled life of Ciara Jobes, school officials and relatives of the dead girl said yesterday they alerted social workers that they suspected she was being abused by her legal guardian.
The guardian, Satrina Roberts, 31, remained in jail last night on charges of first-degree murder in the starving and beating of Ciara, 15, who was found dead Dec. 11 in an O'Donnell Heights apartment in Southeast Baltimore.
The girl's maternal grandmother, Iva Cruse, said last night that her repeated calls to DSS, an agency that is overseen by the city and state, and handles the welfare of the city's neediest children, went unheeded.
"How do you think I felt? I'm calling in reporting that my [grandchild] was being abused and nothing happened," Cruse said.
A teacher and a guidance counselor at Southeast Middle School, which Ciara attended during the 2001-2002 school year, also suspected abuse in April and notified the city's Department of Social Services, said Vanessa Pyatt, spokeswoman for city schools.
"They recall the incident quite clearly," Pyatt said yesterday. "They suspected that she had been a victim of abuse and acted responsibly in contacting DSS."
"I can't go into detail because this is likely to be part of a police investigation," Pyatt added.
Social Services Director Yvonne Gilchrist was unavailable to discuss the case, according to a spokeswoman for the agency who declined to comment on Ciara Jobes' case, noting juvenile confidentiality rules. But, said DSS spokeswoman Sue Fitzsimmons, the agency had no record of abuse reports against Satrina Roberts.
"We have no records about a call being made about ... the guardian, the person who was charged with the murder," Fitzsimmons said.
Mayor Martin O'Malley, who is jointly responsible along with the governor for appointing the agency's director, said he would encourage Gilchrist to release records in the case.
"The government and Social Services did not starve the child to death, but I would hope that they would disclose what DSS has done," he said.
"I think we might be able to learn a great deal," O'Malley said. "Whenever there's a tragedy of this sort, there's something to learn from retracing the steps."
Homicide detectives said yesterday that they had begun subpoenaing records in the case against Roberts.
Juvenile court records obtained by The Sun indicate that Roberts attempted to become a foster parent to Ciara in December 1998, six months after the girl's mother told a judge that she preferred that Roberts, a college security guard, become her daughter's guardian.
The process of becoming a foster parent in Baltimore is complex and rigorous, Fitzsimmons said, requiring criminal background checks on all adults living in the home, a thorough inspection of the home, income verification and the applicant's reason for wanting the child.
Fitzsimmons declined to confirm the information in the court records.
Cruse, the girl's grandmother, said she made her first complaint about Roberts to DSS shortly after she was given custody of Ciara five years ago.
"I was seeing things that I didn't like. I seen my [grandchild]go from a happy-go-lucky child to being moody, sad all the time and talking with her head down," Cruse said. "That's when I thought she was being abused."
Cruse said her suspicions were piqued by her interactions with Roberts.
"She was the kind of person, one minute she could be your best friend, and the next minute she could be your worst enemy, especially if she couldn't have her way or you didn't give her what she wanted," Cruse said of Roberts, whom she once thought of as a daughter. "She was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She'd say, ... 'I ain't wrapped tight. I ain't got all my marbles.' She said it jokingly, but then one day when we were having a serious talk, she told me she felt she was the black sheep in the family and that she had a mental problem."
Sun staff writer Johnathon E. Briggs and Liz Bowie contributed to this article.