RICHARD WEXLER can be a jerk.

He sent me a nasty e-mail this week in response to my column about the child-abuse death of Charlenni Ferreira. I had noted that a handful of neighbors appeared to have witnessed Charlenni's slow, torturous murder.

They just didn't know it.

My column was a plea that we call DHS whenever we suspect child abuse - even if we normally believe that making the call should require more than a feeling that something isn't "quite right" with how a child is being raised.

"If Charlenni's painful life and excruciating death teaches us anything," I wrote, "my hope is that it will make us dial DHS anyway, to err more on a child's right to well-being than on a parent's right to be boss."

Wexler wrote that my clueless recommendation could end up hurting kids.

History shows, he said, that when an abuse horror gets big media coverage, a predictable response results:

People overreact by phoning child-protection hot lines with "every little thing" they fear is abuse. Even if these reports turn out to be marginal, they still require investigation, pulling overburdened agency workers from substantiated cases needing urgent attention.

Worse, the agency, in its panic to portray a willingness to protect kids, rushes to place them in foster care without fully investigating whether that's the best solution.

The tragedy, Wexler said, is that studies show that most mistreated children placed in foster care fare worse than if they'd remained with the family who'd originally mistreated them.

No wonder my advice that we keep DHS on speed-dial sent Wexler over the edge.

"I'm angry at the sadists and brutes who torture children . . . but also at the . . . journalists whose self-indulgence only increases the likelihood that it will happen again," Wexler fumed.

I admit that my first instinct was to write the guy off. Since when is it "self-indulgent" to write of the helplessness a city feels over the death of a child?

Except that Wexler comes by his testiness honestly. He's a longtime child-welfare advocate, author of Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse, and head of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

Having spent 33 years analyzing studies, crunching numbers and seeing what happens when abuse makes headlines, he's in a better position than anyone to explain how the media gets it wrong in its effort to make things right for abused kids.

So I called Wexler for a chat. Turns out he's not just angry but also smart and passionate - my favorite kind of jerk.

Philadelphia removes children from their homes at the highest rate of any big American city, Wexler says. The rate is 50 percent higher than in Los Angeles, more than double the rate in New York and six times higher than in metropolitan Chicago.

"Unless you think Philadelphia is a cesspool more depraved than all other cities, there's something going on," he said.

Trouble is, he noted, our kids are no safer in foster care, if we use two reliable assessment measures: whether, within six months from an initial report of substantiated abuse, a child had been abused again; and if a child sent home from foster care is returned to care within 12 months.

In Philly, high numbers in both cases indicate a "take the child and run" mentality, he said, which only worsens after highly publicized abuse atrocities.

For example, after the Inquirer's October 2006 series on child fatalities under DHS care, the number of children torn from their homes soared by 28 percent through January 2007 - the result of what Wexler calls "panic placement."

"DHS was able to get the panic under control," he said, and the numbers leveled off until June. Then a report was issued by a mayoral committee to study child welfare in the city, and the removals surged again, this time 14 percent through September.

"The surge indicates panic placement, not thoughtful placement," said Wexler.

That's not to say that some removals didn't end up being warranted. But, as Wexler has noted in his literature, "When caseworkers are overwhelmed with children who don't need to be in foster care, they have even less time to find children in real danger, so more such children are missed.

"That's why, in the few jurisdictions large enough to detect a pattern, foster-care panics repeatedly have been followed by increases in child-abuse fatalities."

Good God!

I asked Wexler if he was suggesting that the media not report horrific abuse cases, out of fear of DHS "over-correcting" with panic placement.

"I'm not suggesting less journalism," he stressed. "I'm suggesting
 
more. Don't stop reporting after the big stories come out and get [the big] reaction. Report the over-correction, and let there be reaction to [those stories] too.

"Don't tell half the story."

Point taken, sir.

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:http://go.philly. com/

polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at

http://go. philly.com/ronnieblog.