Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2008-04-11 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Am I wrong, or is there something fundamentally uncivilized and downright infuriating for Norman Penn, who fathered B.J. Jacks, to sue the city for $25 million because, as he alleges, the city failed to protect his daughter?

We know the grisly details of B.J. Jacks’ demise. She was one of four children who died in the care of her mother, Banita Jacks. The troubled woman barricaded herself and her four daughters in a town house in Southeast D.C. Marshals found their decomposing bodies in January; Jacks is charged with murder.

This week, Norman Penn filed suit in Superior Court alleging the city neglected his daughter, the eldest of the four. To which I ask: Where was Norman Penn while his lovely teenage daughter was wasting away for months?

Short answer: in North Carolina not paying child support.

This bizarre admission comes from Penn’s attorney, Kim Brooks-Rodney. “He lost his job and stopped paying,” she told me blithely yesterday. “He’s not your average deadbeat dad.”

But did he ever pay the $400 a month as ordered by the court in 2002 custody proceedings?

“My understanding is that he did,” Brooks-Rodney said. “I do not have information on that.”

Courts in Charles County, Md., have information on that. Penn was convicted of criminal contempt for not paying child support and received a suspended sentence.

But Penn was legally savvy enough to approach Cohen and Cohen, a negligence and malpractice law firm, to sue the city for not taking care of his daughter. In defense of her client, Brooks-Rodney said Penn “didn’t know where to find her” because “she had dropped out of sight.”

Seeking details, I asked to speak with Penn.

“No one is speaking to him,” she said.

Peter Nickles has plenty to say. “Shameful,” D.C.’s interim attorney general says of Penn’s lawsuit and another from other family members.

“The question I have is where were these people for years when this family was under siege?” Nickles asks. “I’m the grandfather of eight kids, and if I don’t know where they are for one day I would break down doors to find them.”

Even before the shocking news of the Jacks tragedy had sunk in, Nickles led an investigation into why the family had fallen through the cracks in the city’s social services system. He and Mayor Adrian Fenty immediately revealed details of the city’s failings.

“We investigated what we did,” Nickles says. “What did the family of these kids do? It is incomprehensible that the Jacks family and this guy, who missed support payments, could let so much time pass without trying to find the children.

“It wasn’t our proudest moment,” he says, “but there’s only so much a government can do.”

Curiously, Norman Penn refers to what he didn’t do in his own lawsuit. It alleges negligence on D.C.’s part “with no contributory negligence or assumption of the risk on B.J.’s part or that of Plaintiff Penn.”

Even he knows he’s guilty.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.