When Carlina White was 17, Connecticut's Department of Children and Families (DCF) opened a case looking into her identity. Though they had doubts about the relationship between White (who they knew as Nejdra Nance) and her "mother" Ann Pettway, they didn't figure out she was kidnapped. Instead, it was White who figured it out for herself.
The DCF's concerns about White stemmed from, among other things, her lack of a birth certificate. In a statement they say they "reached out to law enforcement and communicated directly regarding the question of the identity of the girls' biological parents at the time," but that they could have gone further.
"It is incredible to me that Carlina could have lived more than 21 of her 23 years in Connecticut and gone to school, gotten medical care and been placed in foster homes apparently without anyone asking to see her birth certificate," John Rabun, executive vice president for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told the Connecticut Post. Which we guess sounds reasonable except that most agencies will accept other forms of ID - lots of people get assistance without their birth certificates for lots of reasons.
In a statement DCF admits it didn't go far enough five years ago and assures the public that they'll try harder going forward.
