Grace Packer Was Killed By Her Foster Parents. Lawmakers Want It To Never Happen Again

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 at 3 p.m. Wednesday 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.

See previous coverage: Grace Packer's Adoptive Mother Sentenced To Life In Prison

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.

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.

Grace Packer lived in several counties with Sara Packer, but child welfare agencies were not able to share their reports and findings with each other at the time. The statewide database is designed to address that issue.

The second bill would bolster the Child Protective Service Law’s requirements for county child welfare agencies to retain records.

If the bill is passed, agencies would be required to keep unfounded reports of child abuse in the state's database for 30 years, instead of one year. The retention period for valid reports would increase from 10 years to 30 years.

Information that could identify victims of child abuse would be expunged from those reports when the victim turns 23, the bill says.

Reports compiled after Packer's death by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services recommended several changes to the state's child welfare system, including longer retention periods before child abuse reports are expunged.

Child welfare agencies investigated multiple allegations of abuse against Sara Packer and David Packer, but destroyed their reports after being unable to corroborate those accusations, the Morning Call reported. That meant caseworkers investigating later allegations did not find previous reports detailing Grace's history of abuse, the report states.

The third bill would address inconsistencies in the Child Protective Service Law related to general protective service reports, which detail a child's risk of harm due to conditions or circumstances other than abuse, the memo says.

The law uses the terms "valid" and "invalid" but does not define what determines whether a report is valid or invalid, the lawmakers said. The proposed bill lists reasons a report would be considered valid, including a child living without proper parental care or control, subsistence or education.

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.”