Defendant in notorious R.I. child-abuse case has fled the country, authorities say

Three years have passed since a rescue crew transported three-month-old Tobi Olawusi to Hasbro Children’s Hospital clinically dead with 12 broken ribs, broken arms, a crushed skull and a human bite mark on one thigh.

Three years since police charged the infant boy’s mother, Arinola Olawusi, with child cruelty or neglect and his father, Olalekan Olawusi, with first- and second-degree child abuse.

Neither has been brought to trial, two years and nine months after medical staff removed the couple’s son from life support. He died soon after.

Why has one of the state’s most infamous cases of child abuse not advanced through the legal system?

In the father’s case, the answer is simple, officials say: Olalekan Olawusi fled the country sometime prior to his son’s death.

Donald Freeman, a supervising deputy U.S. marshal and member of the Rhode Island Fugitive Task Force, said marshals tracked Olawusi to Nigeria, but there the State Department ran into problems trying to extradite him because of political instability in that country.

Meanwhile, the case against Arinola Olawusi has crept along with some 25 pretrial court conferences or hearings since April 4, 2017, records show.

“This matter has been continued a number of times for a variety of reasons,” said Kristy dosReis, spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, “including defense motions for change of counsel and mental-health evaluation of the defendant.”

The next court date for Arinola Olawusi is set for Oct. 2.

Her listed lawyer, Robert Munns, did not respond to a telephone message left with his law partner.

The case of Tobi Olawusi had been the subject of a Providence Journal investigation in 2017 examining the procedures that the Department of Children, Youth and Families uses to allow newborns to go home when the competency of a parent is in question.

Arinola Olawusi delivered Tobi on Dec. 23, 2016, at Kent Hospital. Hospital social workers placed a hold on releasing the baby, records showed, because of the mother’s psychiatric history and the fact the DCYF had already taken away her older child in 2015.

Despite the warnings, DCYF caseworkers moved ahead with a so-called “safety plan” that would allow Arinola to take Tobi home.

The plan banned Arinola Olawusi from ever being alone with her newborn son. However, the only other person who lived in the house was her husband, Olalekan Olawusi, and he worked.

“I’m surprised and frankly a little disappointed this case hasn’t been dealt with,” said Rep. Patricia Serpa, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, which held hearings into the case following The Journal’s report and an investigation by the state’s Child Advocate Jennifer Griffith.

“The public needs to know that child safety is everyone’s concern,” Serpa said.

At a hearing before Serpa’s panel of lawmakers in January 2018, then-DCYF Director Trista Piccola said safety plans like the one used in this case are no longer being approved.

But she stressed that multiple parties failed in the case of Tobi Olawusi, noting that there were several service providers involved in addition to the DCYF, and that a Family Court judge had approved the “safety plan.”

Griffith, the state’s child advocate, pushed back, saying the court might not have approved the plan if it had a more accurate picture of the circumstances from the social worker involved in the case.

Shortly after her arrest in April 2017, Arinola Olawusi — who records show had been committed to Butler Hospital after previously giving birth to a child — told Providence police her husband bit Tobi and pulled at his legs “to make him grow” and be strong.

In March, she filed for divorce.

She listed as reasons: “Abandonment of marriage, wickedness, domestic abuse, he murdered our baby.”

tmooney@providencejournal.com

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