Missing Relisha Rudd. Via MPD.

Two of D.C.’s deputy mayors defended a report that concluded the city could not have prevented the disappearance of Relisha Rudd from a homeless shelter, while withholding many details because of confidentiality concerns.

That frustrated Councilmember Jim Graham, who chairs the Human Services committee. “I cannot accept the idea” that Rudd’s disappearance was not preventable, Graham said.

Rudd was last seen on March 1 with 51-year-old Kahlil Tatum, a janitor at the D.C. General homeless shelter where she lived with her family for nearly two years. Tatum was found dead of a suspected suicide at a D.C. park in late March, and Rudd is still missing.

A report on Rudd’s case released in August found that the many agencies who came into contact with her family — from Child and Family Services to D.C. Public Schools — could not have prevented her disappearance. It did, however, outline several recommendations based on findings by the Deputy Mayors for Education and Health and Human Services.

This included a recommendation that the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which runs D.C. General on behalf of the city, mandate its employees to report violations of the fraternization policy. The review found that shelter employees had knowledge of Tatum’s interactions with Rudd, but did not report it.

Graham posited that the conclusion of the report was added to keep the government safe from legal action. Both Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services B.B. Otero took offense to that claim.

“That’s really an affront to the review team that worked on the report,” Otero said of Graham’s conclusion.

Graham on several occasions read from an unredacted report, visibly frustrating both deputy mayors. He questioned why the Child and Family Services Agency could not be named, when it was clear it was the agency referred to in the redacted report.

“I’m going to say CFSA,” Graham said. “If that gets me in trouble, then it gets me in trouble.” He later accepted a private briefing with the deputy mayors to get more information on the report.

The report also found that DCPS did not refer Rudd to CFSA within the mandate two-day period after she accrued 10 unexcused absences. Her family claimed that Rudd was under the care of a “Dr. Tatum,” and DCPS gave Rudd’s “mother additional time to collect the medical documentation” before turning the case over.

The Ward 1 Councilmember questioned whether this delay would have prevented Rudd’s disappearance. Smith said, even if DCPS would have sent a CFSA employee to D.C. General within two days, it was already too late. She could not provide the date when a social worker actually went to the shelter.

“And frankly, it is thanks to a school social worker that an alarm bell was rung,” Smith said of how city officials were first alerted to Rudd’s disappearance. She also noted that Rudd’s family gave DCPS false information.

After continued prompting from Graham, Smith said the report’s conclusion originated with the review team. The report was reviewed by the Office of the Attorney General, Otero said, but specific changes requested from that office were not detailed. When asked if anyone from the review team questioned or disagreed with the conclusion, Smith said the entire team agreed the conclusion was “consistent.”

While “solid” and “constructive,” Graham said he’s never seen a government report where the findings and conclusion were as inconsistent as the one on Rudd. He said there were many things agencies involved “could have done and didn’t do.”

“We’ll never know,” Graham said. “We only know that there were [D.C. General] staff members who did nothing when they should have something. And had they done something it might have been different. It is hypothesis, you’re right, but I’d like to think that sometimes we can help each other. Sometimes we can take actions that help each other.”

“And we believe that this family received a lot of those actions and support — and a great deal of it — over the course of a long period of time,” Otero said.

“They did,” Graham replied, “but there hasn’t been any current assessment of whether the family was functioning by all of these people who were helping them.”