The state of Kansas will pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of Adrian Jones, who was murdered and fed to pigs by his father.
The suit, filed by the child’s mother and relatives in 2017, said that the state child welfare agency should have removed him from an abusive home before he was starved and tortured.
Police found the remains of the 7-year-old in a pigsty on the property of his father and stepmother Michael and Heather Jones in November 2015.
Both are serving 25-years-to-life sentences for his murder, after they beat and locked Adrian in a shower stall and watched him deteriorate on surveillance camera.
Gov. Laura Kelly and top leaders of the Kansas Legislature approved the settlement during a brief public meeting on Tuesday.
Police found the remains of the 7-year-old, seen here, in a pigsty on the property of his father and stepmother in November 2015
Michael and Heather Jones are serving 25-years-to-life sentences for his murder, after they beat and locked Adrian in a shower stall and watched him deteriorate on surveillance camera
The Kansas Department for Children and Families received reports that Adrian was being abused several years before his death.
Their last physical contact with him was almost four years before his death, according to more than 2,000 pages of records released in 2017 by the agency.
The records showed that the three of them moved frequently between communities in Kansas and Missouri.
The lawsuit argued that the state and social workers could have ‘stepped in and rescued’ Adrian ‘at any point’ but ‘chose to act like disinterested bystanders.’
The Kansas agency argued that frequent moves made it difficult to keep tabs on the boy.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, one of the lawmakers who approved the settlement, said she believes the state faced ‘a lot of liability’ for what happened.
Kelly said the issue wasn’t the potential damages in a lawsuit but the litigation distracting it from ‘the mission at hand’ of improving the child welfare system.
‘It really had to do with wanting to get that settled and not spend time litigating in courts for what could be definitely months, maybe even years,’ she said.
Dainna Pearce, Adrian Jones biological mother, is seen here in Lawrence, Kansas, in 2017. She has now been awarded $1 million from the state
Adrian is seen here kissing his oldest sibling, half-sister Keiona ‘Kiki’ Doctor, in 2012
Matt Birch, an attorney representing the family, said: ‘This has been a long journey for Adrian’s family.
‘The most important thing for the family was to hopefully make a change and make this less likely to happen in the future.’
Police had responded to the home in 2015 due to a domestic violence call with Heather Jones accusing Michael Jones of beating and choking her.
Once there, she blurted out that the boy’s father had fed him to their six feeder pigs two months earlier at the end of September.
The investigation into her claims yielded harrowing evidence of years of abuse with Heather, sickeningly proud of how she tortured her stepson, documenting it in photographs.
He was locked behind a plywood door in a shower, made to stand for hours in stagnant water up to his neck, shackled, bound, starved and beaten.
His stepmother called him ‘the boy,’ rather than use his given name. While she and Adrian’s father cared for their six girls, he was singled out for abuse of the worst kind.
Injuries that were photographed included deep cuts to his face and lips which he’d suffered trying to chew his way out of the cardboard cell his parents had created for him in a shower stall.
The investigation into her claims yielded harrowing evidence of years of abuse with Heather, sickeningly proud of how she tortured her stepson, documenting it in photographs
He was locked behind a plywood door in a shower, made to stand for hours in stagnant water up to his neck, shackled, bound, starved and beaten
Heather pleaded guilty to murder in November 2016 and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years
He was also photographed wearing a cutting board duct taped to his chest and strapped to an inversion table.
The pair were arrested in 2015. Heather pleaded guilty to murder in November 2016 and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years.
In May of 2017, Michael Jones was given the same sentence after also pleading guilty in March of that year.
In 2013, Adrian told a Children’s Division worker in Missouri, where the family was living at the time, that his father kept beating him in the head.
‘My daddy keeps hitting me in the head and punches me in the stomach and my mom keeps pulling on my ears and it really hurts.
‘Mommy and Daddy lock me in my room by myself. Mommy and Daddy can’t feed me,’ he said during the interview which was promoted by an anonymous call reporting concerns about Adrian’s welfare.
Shockingly, he was allowed to carry on living with the pair and they relocated to Kansas City, Kansas, shortly afterwards.
When he died, Adrian was a tiny bag of bones with his last months being a living hell.
Instead of a proper burial, the child was fed to pigs his father had bought, seen here, specifically for the purpose of getting rid of his emaciated body
Instead of a proper burial, the child was fed to pigs his father had bought specifically for the purpose of getting rid of his emaciated body.
A multiyear legislative review of the child welfare system followed the boy’s death.
In 2021, ‘Adrian’s Law’ required officers and caseworkers to visually observe children who are alleged victims of abuse or neglect.
The state also has moved to improve doctors’ training in recognizing abuse and to provide ‘wrap-around’ services for troubled families.
Birch said that he and the family hope that through the lawsuit and 2021 law ‘there will be more eyes on these kids.’
Adrian’s family members also filed a lawsuit in 2017 in Jackson County, Missouri, also in the Kansas City-area, against officials in that state.
The case was settled in 2020, but the details were not immediately available, and Birch said he couldn’t comment.