DCFS worker guilty for failures before AJ Freund's death, supervisor cleared

One of the former DCFS workers charged after the murder of Crystal Lake boy AJ Freund was found guilty Friday of child endangerment in the case, while the other was cleared.

The guilty verdict came after Judge George Strickland outlined a long list of failures of the child welfare agency in the boy's case, who was allowed to remain with his family before his murder despite his mother's heroin use, unexplained injuries on the boy, a history of domestic violence and chaos and filth in the home.

The rare criminal prosecution of employees of Illinois' child welfare agency, the Department of Children and Family Services, went to trial last month and resumed with closing arguments Friday morning – a day before what would have been AJ's 10th birthday.

McHenry County State's Attorney Patrick Kenneally charged former child protection specialist Carlos Acosta, 57, of Woodstock, and his former supervisor Andrew Polovin, 51, of Island Lake, with endangering the life of a child and health of a minor, Class 3 felonies, and reckless conduct, a Class 4 felony. Acosta was also serving on the McHenry County Board at the time AJ died in 2019.

Acosta was convicted Friday; Polovin was cleared.

Strickland excoriated Acosta in the judge's long explanation of his verdict, which lasted more than an hour.

“This was a refusal to investigate,” the judge said of Acosta's failures, such as not taking AJ to a safe place to conduct a thorough interview with him, allowing him to be taken home by his father after a suspicious bruise was found on him, despite the family's history of drug abuse and violence, and never interviewing the heroin-addicted and suicidal boyfriend of AJ's mother who was for a time living with the family.

Strickland was particularly critical of a safety assessment Acosta filled out in which he said he observed no clear safety hazards involving the family.

He said he “couldn't imagine” a judge who would have allowed AJ to remain with his parents if the case had come before a judge and all the critical information was included.

As for Polovin, Strickland called him something of “a phantom” in the case.

“As far as I'm concerned, you completely abdicated your responsibilities,” the judge told Polovin. But Strickland said he couldn't convict Polovin because it was unclear whether Polovin possessed all the facts about AJ's dire situation before the boy was killed.

AJ's parents, JoAnn Cunningham and Andrew Freund Sr., eventually pleaded guilty to the boy's beating death and the concealment and burial of his body in a Woodstock field. They're both now serving long prison terms.

But prosecutors argued that AJ's life could have been spared had DCFS officials taken proper protective measures when, months before his death, an emergency 911 call was made on his behalf when he was found to have large bruises and other injuries. A police officer also testified to the “filthy” conditions in the family's home, where the kitchen flooring was torn up, the ceiling was falling in and there was a strong smell of feces and urine, as well as dog feces and urine visible on the floor.

Defense attorneys for Acosta and Polovin have argued that the DCFS office was understaffed, causing high caseloads for overworked employees, and that they shouldn't be criminally penalized for events they could not predict or control.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Acosta's attorney Jamie Wombacher said during her opening statements.

That comment was the first thing prosecutor Randi Freese addressed during her closing arguments Friday.

“This is not just a case of hindsight is 20/20 or two people who were bad at their job. This has to be one of the most predictable, one of the most foreseeable, but one of the most preventable cases in DCFS history,” Freese said.

But for the actions of Polovin and Acosta “AJ Freund would be celebrating his 10th birthday tomorrow,” she said, adding that the defendants were entrusted with the most important job and they let AJ go “back into the arms of a violent, drug addicted, dysfunctional mother without doing a single thing to protect him.”

The judge said Friday he agreed that DCFS caseloads are heavy, and he noted the utmost importance of the work the agency does. But Strickland said heavy caseloads can't explain or justify Acosta's failures to follow up on numerous red flags or to seek assistance available to him.

“A child living in a home where mom is a heroin addict and is relapsing, and is allowing her paramour who is a heroin addict to come into the house ... that is not healthy ... it is not just about the injuries to AD. It's about the entire life of this family,” the judge said.

After AJ told a doctor that “maybe Mommy didn't mean to hurt me,” the judge said it would have been “common sense to anyone” to follow up on that statement and interview Cunningham's boyfriend, but that didn't happen.

Strickland walked through the boy's sad life, including being born with opiates in his system and being removed for a long stretch from his parents.

After the initial intervention at AJ's birth, the judge said, “Nothing, for the most part, was done.”

Defense attorneys chose to call no witnesses after the prosecution rested their case last month. Strickland was brought in from Lake County to oversee the trial. Polovin and Acosta declined their right to a jury trial, so Strickland decided the verdict.

Just four months after AJ was found with the bruises, Cunningham beat AJ and made him stand in a freezing shower. The child died and his father Andrew Freund Sr. concealed his body in the basement of their home for about three days before burying him in a shallow grave in a field near power lines in Woodstock, according to courtroom testimony.

Cunnigham recorded herself abusing and taunting her son, and the judge said Friday it was “haunting” to “watch that child suffer at the hands of that sadistic woman. It's not something I will ever forget.” That she taped it, he said, showed how much she was “enjoying” it.

Cunningham is serving 35 years for first-degree murder in AJ's killing, while Freund Sr. received a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, concealment of a homicide and aggravated battery of a child.