PHILADELPHIA _ The adoptive mother of slain 14-year-old Grace Packer had 30 foster children in her care over the course of a decade, and her foster rights were terminated seven years before her daughter's death, state officials said Friday.
The Pennsylvania Office of Children, Youth and Families also acknowledged it has launched its own investigation in the wake of the rape and murder charges filed this week against Sara Packer and her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan.
Agency spokeswoman Rachel Kostelac said Packer, 41, lost her rights as a foster parent in 2010, the same year her then-husband was prosecuted in Allentown for sexual crimes against Grace and a foster sister. Packer also lost her job as a Northampton County adoptions supervisor that year for reasons not yet made public.
But Packer continued to care for her adoptive daughter.
Kostelac declined to say why Sara Packer's foster parent privileges were revoked, citing the pending charges in Bucks County against Packer and Sullivan as one reason. She also declined to discuss details of the ongoing reviews by state and county human services agencies.
"The death is now being investigated as child abuse," Kostelac said. "Because of that we are kind of unable to say a lot of things by statute while the investigation is going on."
The state has launched its own probe, as have agencies in Bucks and Montgomery counties, she said.
Left unanswered is why, after foster parenting rights were revoked and amid the criminal sexual case in Allentown in 2010, Lehigh County's human service officials allowed Sara Packer to continue caring for Grace.
A message left Friday for Lehigh County Office of Children and Youth Services chief Pamela J. Buehrle was not immediately returned. When The Philadelphia Inquirer called the office Thursday, a person who answered said there would be no comment.
It was in Lehigh County that Packer was first granted foster parenting privileges 17 years ago, Kostelac said.
But state officials have no record of how much Packer was paid in fees during that time because those payments are between the county and the private agency with whom a foster parent works to gain eligibility, Kostelac said.
Prosecutors say Packer and her boyfriend killed Grace Packer in a rape-murder fantasy that involved homes in Abington and Quakertown.
The girl was allegedly raped in a Quakertown attic, murdered, dismembered and eventually dumped in a wooded portion of Luzerne County. The charges were announced by Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub amid a probe that also involves officials from Montgomery, Northampton, Lehigh and Luzerne Counties.
The family had lived in Lehigh County for at least a decade before moving to Abington, where they lived until Grace's death.
Kostelac said state public welfare agents began examining aspects of the girl's history in child welfare supervision after her remains were found and identified late last year.
"The state department started to review the case from chronological order," Kostelac said. "Private agencies involved (also) started to gather the information regarding the county child and youth services involved."
