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 the state’s 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 pig pen on the property of his father and stepmother Michael and Heather Jones in November 2015.
Both are serving 25 years to life 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 in the Kansas Legislature approved the settlement during a brief public meeting Tuesday.
Police found the remains of the 7-year-old, seen here, in a pigsty on his father and stepmother’s property in November 2015
Michael and Heather Jones are serving 25 years to life 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 abused several years before his death.
Their last physical contact with him was nearly 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 claimed the state and social workers could have ‘stepped in and saved’ Adrian ‘at any time’ but ‘chose to act as disinterested bystanders’.
The Kansas agency claimed that frequent movements made it difficult to keep track of the boy.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, one of the lawmakers who approved the settlement, said she believes the state faces “a lot of responsibility” for what happened.
Kelly said the issue was not the potential damages of a lawsuit, but the lawsuit distracting it from “the mission at hand” of improving the child welfare system.
“It really had to do with wanting to get it settled and not spend time litigating in the courts for what could certainly be 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 eldest sibling, half-sister Keiona ‘Kiki’ Doctor, in 2012
Matt Birch, a solicitor representing the family, said: ‘This has been a long journey for Adrian’s family.
‘The most important thing for the family was hopefully to make a change and make it less likely that this will happen in the future.’
Police had responded to the home in 2015 for 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 in late September.
The investigation into her claims yielded chilling evidence of years of abuse with Heather, morbidly proud of how she tortured her stepson and documented 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, chained, tied, starved and beaten.
His stepmother called him ‘the boy’ instead of using his first name. While she and Adrian’s father looked after their six girls, he was singled out for abuse of the worst kind.
Injuries photographed included deep lacerations to his face and lips, which he had sustained when he tried to chew his way out of the cardboard cell his parents had created for him in a shower cubicle.
The investigation into her claims yielded chilling evidence of years of abuse with Heather, morbidly proud of how she tortured her stepson and documented it in photographs
He was locked behind a plywood door in a shower room, forced to stand for hours in stagnant water up to his neck, chained, tied, starved and beaten
Heather pleaded guilty to manslaughter in November 2016 and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years
He was also photographed wearing a cutting board taped to his chest and strapped to an inversion table.
The pair were arrested in 2015. Heather pleaded guilty to manslaughter in November 2016 and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years.
In May 2017, Michael Jones received the same sentence after also pleading guilty in March of the same year.
In 2013, Adrian told a case worker in Missouri, where the family was living at the time, that his father kept hitting him in the head.
‘My dad keeps hitting me in the head and punching me in the stomach and my mum keeps pulling my ears and it really hurts.
‘Mum and dad lock me in my room alone. Mom and Dad can’t feed me,” he said during the interview, which was prompted by an anonymous caller reporting concerns about Adrian’s welfare.
Shockingly, he was allowed to continue living with the couple and they moved to Kansas City, Kansas, soon after.
When he died, Adrian was a small bag of bones and his final months were a living hell.
Instead of a proper burial, the child was fed to pigs that 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 that his father had bought specifically for the purpose of getting rid of his emaciated body.
A multi-year legislative review of child welfare services followed the boy’s death.
In 2021, ‘Adrian’s Law’ required officers and caseworkers to visually observe children alleged to be victims of abuse or neglect.
The state has also moved to improve doctors’ training in recognizing abuse and to offer ‘wrap-around’ services for troubled families.
Birch said he and the family hope that through the lawsuit and the 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 details were not immediately available and Birch said he could not comment.