Last week, a 14-year-old girl was found dead in her Boone County home. Her body was “skeletal” and “emaciated,” and it’s reported she starved to death. Her mother has been arrested on charges of child neglect resulting in death.
Family members have identified the teen as Kyneddi Miller. According to the criminal complaint, a family member told police Kyneddi had an eating disorder; the state of her body suggests she hadn’t received any medical treatment in at least four years. She also hadn’t been to school in that same amount of time — since 2019 or 2020 — allegedly being home-schooled, and had only been out of the house “twice” in those years. Neighbors told a reporter they hadn’t seen Kyneddi since 2019, but she had appeared healthy then. Neighbors also said they had seen a police officer stop by the house about two years ago, ostensibly for a wellness check.
Kyneddi’s story immediately reminded us of Raylee Browning, who was 8 years old when she died in 2018 from sepsis caused by bacterial pneumonia. She’d been abused by her father, her father’s girlfriend and the girlfriend’s sister. When teachers at Raylee’s school began to notice something wasn’t right, Raylee’s guardians removed her from public school to supposedly be home-schooled. According to other children in the household, Raylee did not get any schooling; instead, she was singled out for abuse and neglect that eventually led to her death.
The same year Kyneddi was last seen by her neighbors, 2019, Raylee’s Law was introduced to make it illegal for a child to be home-schooled if there is a credible allegation of child abuse or neglect or if the child’s guardian or home-school instructor has been convicted of domestic violence, child abuse or neglect. Raylee’s Law has been introduced in the West Virginia Legislature every year since and every year, it gets shot down. This past session, we had hope it might survive when it was amended into a microschool/learning pod bill, but that bill ultimately died.
Every time lawmakers kill Raylee’s Law, they claim it imposes onerous regulations on home-schooling families. During the 2023 legislative session, Delegate Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, said, “It seems like every year for five years, we show up and somebody tells me that me and my wife can’t be trusted.” He later added, bills like Raylee’s Law were “flat-out garbage that does nothing but denigrate home-school parents, hardworking people that believe in what they’re teaching their kids, that love their kids, that take care of them.”
Parents like Raylee Browning’s father and Kyneddi Miller’s mother?
Even if 99% of home-school parents are virtual saints, that still leaves 1% like the Brownings and Millers, and those children deserve to be protected.
We don’t have enough information about what Kyneddi’s life to know if Raylee’s Law could have prevented her death. But we know we now have two girls who died in their parent’s custody from neglect while they were theoretically being home-schooled — out of sight of any mandatory reporters who could have stepped in before the situation turned fatal.
At what point will lawmakers like Steele set aside their self-righteous indignation and fulfill their campaign promises to “protect children” by passing laws that actually protect children like Raylee and Kyneddi?
We expect Raylee’s Law will come up again next year, as it does every year. Maybe, by then, there will be a Kyneddi’s Law, too.
