Cortland, N.Y. — Sam and Theo Adams stood on the playground turf, watching as kids chased each other and squealed.
Rykelan used to go down the twisty orange slide over and over again. Sam Adams laughs at the memory, holding a miniature blue ceramic urn in the palm of her hand.
The 4-year-old’s ashes are inside.
Rykelan Brown died May 29, 2024, two months after his biological father, Joshua Emmons, was given custody of him by the Cortland County Department of Social Services.
Emmons beat Rykelan to death. Last month he pleaded guilty to killing Rykelan and will be sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Sam and Theo were “Mom” and “Dad” to Rykelan for nearly all of his life. The foster parents had planned to adopt him.
They think he still would be alive today if it had not been for the mistakes of the Cortland County caseworkers charged with keeping the child safe. Sam and Theo are taking steps to sue Cortland County for failing to protect Rykelan.
“Where’s the accountability?” Sam said.
The couple raised concern after concern to Cortland caseworkers about Rykelan’s biological father, but they say, and records show, they were not taken seriously.
Emails, text messages, videos, social service records and court reports reviewed for this story show Cortland County caseworkers who seemed driven to close Rykelan’s case. Caseworkers quickly dismissed two reports of physical abuse after little investigation. They did not appear to document or investigate an incident where Emmons left Rykelan unattended for hours after the child had a bathroom accident and sat in his own feces. And they green-lit Emmons’s home, despite the fact that it was a dangerous mess.
When Sam and Theo twice reported that Rykelan said Emmons hit him after he peed his pants, they were told kids sometimes make things up, according to records.
Then the Cortland County case supervisor ignored trouble he saw with his own eyes: The house had used diapers and garbage strewn everywhere. These details were in a visit report written by the caseworker in Rykelan’s case, who walked through the house and documented what he saw. The two-bedroom house was shared by Emmons, his girlfriend and eight children, including Rykelan, according to the report obtained by syracuse.com.
Room was so scarce that several of the children had to use a fold-out ladder to get to the attic, where some of them slept, according to the document and sources familiar with the situation. The description of this one visit, alone, was enough to file a neglect case, one child welfare expert told syracuse.com.
Instead of tapping the brakes on Rykelan’s visits with his father, caseworkers sped up the process: Emmons was awarded custody of the boy shortly after this home visit, and less than three weeks after caseworkers were told he’d been hitting the child.
But the worst problem was the one Sam and Theo knew nothing about until Rykelan was dead: Emmons recently served jail time for beating his girlfriend’s son so badly that the child’s liver was permanently damaged.
It’s unclear whether caseworkers knew that or not. It would have shown up in the background check they were obligated to do, according to a child welfare expert.
Both options reveal trouble in Cortland County. If they did know, they ignored dangerous behavior. If they didn’t know, they failed to do a basic background check. Either way, their choices put Rykelan in a deadly situation.
Cortland County DSS Commissioner Kristen Monroe refused to answer questions from syracuse.com. The caseworker and supervisor did not respond to repeated requests for interviews.
Monroe and the state Office of Children and Families, which oversees county social service departments, withheld from the public the one report that could provide some accountability.
‘Daddy Josh hit me’
Sam and Theo Adams had been Rykelan’s foster parents since he was 13 months old. His birth mother, McKenzie Brown, struggled with drugs, mental illness and homelessness, according to documents from the Cortland County Department of Social Services. She cycled in and out of his life and only briefly regained custody.
No one knew anything about Emmons until he showed up in Cortland County, saying he was Rykelan’s dad. He took a DNA test proving he was the father in the summer of 2023, according to documents. In the fall, he began visiting Rykelan. He asked for permanent legal custody.
Emmons, 27, often missed scheduled supervised visits, according to records. That was the first red flag for Sam and Theo. They decided to challenge his request for custody of Rykelan in December 2023, they said.
“Who the heck is this guy? He’s not showing up,” Sam said.
But Emmons convinced caseworkers to allow him to have visits at his home, a two-bedroom ranch in DeWitt that he shared with his fiancé and seven children.
Within a month, Emmons went from having supervised visits at a child resource center to unsupervised, overnight visits, according to records. As the Adamses raised concerns about Rykelan’s father, the county increased the time the child spent with him.
Emails between Sam and Cortland County case workers show that every time Sam and Theo raised a concern about potential abuse, it was ignored or explained away.
Rykelan kept coming back to the Adamses with more bruises. Caseworkers and Emmons blamed the dog and the seven other children.
More warning signs
On Feb. 25, Rykelan told Sam and Theo, for the second time, that “Daddy Josh hit me.” The child also reported that Emmons had hit him during a visit the previous weekend after he had a bathroom accident. The couple contacted the caseworker both times, according to emails between Sam and the caseworker and notes Sam kept at the time because she was concerned Rykelan was being abused.
After the second time, Rykelan begged not to be sent to “Daddy Josh’s house,” according to notes Sam Adams made at the time and a video Theo took of Rykelan talking about Emmons.
In the video, Theo asks Rykelan directly if “Daddy Josh” hit him or if he made it up.
“He do that,” Rykelan responds. The little boy continues, sounding on the verge of tears, “I don’t wanna go to Daddy Josh’s house anymore.”
The couple told Rykelan’s caseworker and his supervisor, according to emails seen by syracuse.com. They also shared that video.
In an email the next day, the caseworker told Sam and Theo that he called Emmons on the phone and asked about hitting Rykelan.
“Just wanted to let you know that I’ve contacted Josh and spoke to him about the situation … ,” the caseworker wrote in the email to Sam. “Josh denied any use of physical discipline with Rykelan. He did say Rykelan had a small scratch on his face. He thinks he got it from rough-housing with the girls up there. This is huge transition for all parties involved and we want it to be as smooth as possible.”
The caseworker also visited Rykelan at Sam and Theo’s house. He didn’t directly ask the child about being hit, they said, and left after about 15 minutes with the child.
The visits and the concerns continued, including one in which Emmons admitted he left Rykelan alone for at least two hours. The child had a bathroom accident and sat in his own feces until Emmons came back from another part of the house.
The couple gave syracuse.com a video of Emmons talking about it. Prompted by mounting worry about how Emmons was treating Rykelan, the couple decided to film Emmons surreptitiously.
“I got distracted and was down there for a couple of hours and he ended up pooping on himself,” Emmons says in the video.
No one else in the house was watching Rykelan.
Sam said she shared the video and their concerns with the caseworker.
On March 4, Sam and Theo met with the caseworker, his supervisor and another supervisor. Sam said the couple was coerced into dropping their fight for Rykelan.
They said Rykelan’s caseworker and his supervisor told them if they continued to challenge Emmons for custody, they would lose and Emmons would be allowed to take Rykelan without any guaranteed supervision from the department.
But they were offered a second option, they said. If they dropped their challenge before the next scheduled hearing in April, the caseworkers could transfer the case to Onondaga County and have Rykelan monitored for a year.
The Adamses accepted that arrangement, thinking they would at least still have “eyes on him,” Sam said.
Josh Emmons was given permanent custody of Rykelan on March 13, less than a month after Sam and Theo reported that Emmons had hit Rykelan.
No one from Cortland County transferred the case to Onondaga County.
There were no eyes on Emmons, at all.
Used diapers, garbage and a ladder
Ten days before Rykelan moved in with Emmons, Rykelan’s case supervisor visited the two-bedroom one bathroom house where nine people were living. Rykelan became the 10th. That visit was in response to the concerns the Adamses raised about Emmons at the end of February, according to emails between Sam Adams and the caseworkers.
The trouble started at the front door, according to notes written about the visit by the case supervisor. The knob was falling off and the door would not latch. A broken window was covered in plywood, according to the notes obtained by syracuse.com.
Inside, the case supervisor noted, several dirty diapers were scattered throughout the house. Bags of trash and energy drinks were everywhere, along with old food left in several places. Dirty dishes filled the sink.
The most dangerous note was at the bottom: Children had to climb a fold-out ladder to get to their sleeping quarters in the attic.
Sam and Theo said Emmons was held to a much different standard than they were. In order to have Rykelan stay with them, they had to undergo a rigorous background check and training. Their home also had to pass inspection. That was as it should be, they said.
They had a room all painted and decorated for Rykelan, but ended up having to switch his bedroom because that room had a glassed-in gas fireplace with a switch on the wall that was well out of the child’s reach. They moved his room. They put a railing on their basement stairs, even though they were not planning to let the then-13-month-old venture down those stairs.
What the Cortland County case supervisor saw in Emmons’s home was enough to raise questions about whether the children living there already were being neglected, said William Gettman, former deputy director of the state Office for Children and Family Services. Gettman is CEO of Northern Rivers Family Service, a nonprofit family services agency in Albany.
Gettman said the Cortland supervisor should have called Onondaga County child protective workers to raise concerns about the safety of the children already living there.
That visit should have been added to the pile of reasons to keep Rykelan from living with Emmons, Gettman said.
Gettman said common sense would have told most caseworkers to keep Rykelan in foster care: “Nobody took a step back to say, ‘Does this make sense?’ ”
Gettman also reviewed an interview by WSYR with Kristen Monroe, the Cortland County commissioner of social services. In that interview, she says her department knew about Emmons’s conviction but it was too long ago for them to consider.
Gettman said that’s not true. The conviction was not enough, alone, to deny custody to Emmons, but the county should have added it to the other concerns, Gettman said. The argument; You’ve got a guy with a history of hitting children who is now being accused of beating another child.
“Where is the common sense?” Gettman said.
Other evidence of abuse
Gettman said he saw nothing in the reports that were filed with Cortland County Family Court Judge David Alexander, and included in Sam and Theo’s notice of claim, that showed the department dug into Emmons’ history.
In January 2019, Emmons beat his then-girlfriend’s son severely, according to the woman, Kimber Emm, and court papers. He was supposed to be babysitting the 3-year-old while Emm was working a night shift.
Emm said she found bruises all over her son when she put him in the bath the next day; some were in the shape of fingerprints.
Emmons pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to 10 months in county jail. Emm’s son is now 8. His liver must be checked regularly because the beating damaged it, Emm told syracuse.com.
Gettman said social service departments nationwide are being pushed to find permanent placements for children instead of leaving them in foster care, which costs about $1,000 a month. But nothing should outweigh a child’s safety, he said.
Gettman said the judge also should have asked more questions. The Cortland County Social Services report that recommended Emmons get custody of Rykelan included reams of information about his mother’s troubles, but almost nothing about Emmons.
“I don’t see that level of full diligence about vetting the father,” Gettman said.
Gettman said if it had been his case, he would have suggested services to help Emmons deal with the mess at home and continued to allow supervised visits with Rykelan.
The county’s actions and potential mistakes in Rykelan’s case are detailed in a Child Fatality Review that was done six months after Rykelan was killed. Monroe, the Cortland County commissioner; and the state both refused to release the report, which is supposed to be public.
Eight months after showing up in Rykelan’s life, Emmons won full custody of the child. Sam and Theo never saw him alive again.
Sam and Theo showed text messages asking to visit Rykelan that were met with a chain of excuses from Emmons. They last asked to see the little boy in the days leading up to May 24, his 4th birthday. Emmons never responded, according to text messages between Sam Adams and Emmons that Adams provided to syracuse.com.
Two days later, Emmons called 911 to report that Rykelan had been seriously injured in a fall from that pullout ladder to the attic.
But the little boy’s injuries and bruises told a different story. Just two months after being granted custody of Rykelan, Emmons had beaten him to death.
Rykelan died May 29, 2024. Sam and Theo raised money for his funeral. They filled a posterboard with pictures of him doing his favorite things: reading his Llama Llama books, playing with his dinosaurs, and getting into mischief with his dog, Penny. A trip to the dentist. Trick-or-treating.
A nearby table was piled with Playdoh, his treasured Paw Patrol characters and his books. Rykelan knew all the words to “Go, Dog. Go!” even though he could not yet read.
Sam and Theo shared Rykelan’s ashes with his mom, Kenzie, who grieved alongside them at his funeral.
She said she was devastated by her son’s death. He was her motivation to get sober, which she has been for more than a year now. She wanted to stay in his life.
“Rykelan has a brother he’ll never know because of (social services) and his father,” Kenzie said.
Emmons did not attend his son’s funeral.
More than a year later, Sam Adams stands in Suggett Park. They used to walk there with Rykelan all the time. Rain the day before has made a big puddle. If Rykelan were there, he’d have to jump in it. Sam would laugh at the splash.
A pack of little boys chases each other on the playground. They shriek with joy as bubbles float by, glowing in the late summer sun.
Sam stands quietly, holding on to a memory.
Contact reporter Marnie Eisenstadt anytime email| call or text 315-470-2246.
