GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Kent County mom charged in her baby’s suffocation death had lost parental rights to previous children due to substance use and domestic violence.
That’s one of the revelations in a report released in December by the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA), a state-funded watchdog that monitors Michigan’s child welfare system, including Children’s Protective Services.
Wesley Rau was two-months-old when he died in August 2023 at the family’s home on 19-Mile Road in Cedar Springs.
Kent County’s Medical Examiner ruled Wesley’s death accidental, the result of “presumed asphyxia by suffocation” due to a “co-sleeping situation.”…