PA Reps To Introduce 'Grace Packer' Bills To Protect Foster Kids

Doylestown PA

13 September, 2021

4:23 PM

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DOYLESTOWN, PA — More than five years after Grace Packer was raped and murdered by her adoptive mother and her mother's boyfriend, two Pennsylvania state representatives will unveil a package of legislation designed to protect foster and adopted children in the state. Reps. Craig Staats, R-Quakertown, and Chris Quinn, R-Delaware County, are scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon at the Bucks County Justice Center about three proposed bills in honor of Grace Packer. Grace was 14 years old in July 2016, when she was raped, murdered and dismembered in Richland Township by adoptive mother Sara Packer and her boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan. Both pleaded guilty in 2019 and admitted they planned to kill Grace and act out a shared rape-murder fantasy with Packer's adopted daughter as their victim. Flood Victim Honored In Bucks Co.: Service Details, Fundraiser Sara Packer was sentenced to life in prison, while Sullivan received the death penalty. He spent about a year on death row before dying from an aneurysm in April 2020. Grace was born in August 2001 as Susan Hunsicker. She was placed in foster care in February 2004 in Berks County and taken in later that year by Sara Packer. Sara Packer fostered dozens of children between 2000 and 2010 with her then-husband, David Packer, who was later convicted of raping a teen they fostered and molesting Grace from 2006 to 2010, the Associated Press reported. Free Coronavirus Vaccine Clinic Coming To Bucks Co. State Park Sara Packer also served as an adoption worker in Northampton County from 2003 to 2010, when she was fired over allegations of misconduct, the Morning Call reported. The Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office in April 2019 opened an investigation into the state Department of Human Services' handling of Grace Packer's case, which is still underway. The first bill set to be introduced by Reps. Staats and Quinn calls for Pennsylvania's statewide child abuse database to be fully implemented by the end of 2022, not 2023 as currently projected by the Department of Human Services, according to a memo from the lawmakers. Stolen Valor: Bucks Co. Man Sentenced For Posing As POW The second bill would bolster the Child Protective Service Law's requirements for county child welfare agencies to retain records, while the third bill would address inconsistencies in that law related to reports of suspected abuse, the memo says. Staats and Quinn said that "not a single regulatory or statutory change has been made since (Grace Packer's) death" and urged other lawmakers to co-sponsor the legislation to "help ensure our child welfare system never again fails a child as it failed Grace Packer."