Mom of boy whose father fed him to hogs gets $1 million after claiming child welfare failed to save him
The mom of a 7-year-old boy who was killed by his father and then fed to pigs in 2015 received $1 million from the state of Kansas to settle a lawsuit that accused child welfare officials of failing to intervene and save the boy from his horrifying fate.
The settlement was made public on Wednesday following the 2017 lawsuit brought by little Adrian Jones’ mother, maternal grandmother and adult sister.
Authorities said Adrian’s father, Michael Jones, and his stepmother, Heather Jones, brutally beat and tortured the boy for years before his death.
Michael, 53, and Heather, 38, copped to first-degree murder and are serving 25 years to life in prison for the horrific killing.
“This has been a long journey for Adrian’s family,” family lawyer Matt Birch said.
“The most important thing for the family was to hopefully make a change and make this less likely to happen in the future.”
Adrian’s mother, Dianna Pearce, lost custody of the boy years before, and his father was granted full custody by Kansas child welfare authorities, according to reports.
The suit was filed in both the Sunflower State and in Missouri against Kansas’ Department of Children and Families and against 10 employees of Missouri’s Department of Social Services for failing to intervene and because they “chose to act like disinterested bystanders,” the suits charged at the time.
The Missouri suit was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2020.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and leaders in the state legislature approved the settlement in a short public vote Tuesday over the case that had been slated for trial in April 2025.
Adrian had been living with his dad, a former bail bondsman, and stepmom in Kansas City, where he was beaten and locked in a shower naked for months while he was recorded on video as he wasted away.
His remains were found in a pigsty outside the home Michael and Heather were renting in November 2015 after cops received a domestic violence call.
Years before Adrian’s death, the Kansas Department of Children and Families had received reports of his abuse but hadn’t had any contact with the trio for nearly four years before the child’s death as the trio often moved around in Missouri and Kansas, according to troves of records released by the agency.
Kansas Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes on Wednesday said they agreed to the settlement because they didn’t want the trial to distract from the “mission at hand” of improving the child welfare system.
As a result of Adrian’s death, the state passed “Adrian’s Law” in 2021 requiring child welfare workers to observe in person any child alleged to be a victim of abuse or neglect.
The law also implemented changes to help doctors receive better training in identifying abuse in kids.
Birch said he and the family hope between the suit and the law, “there will be more eyes on these kids.”
The Joneses were accused of escalating their cruel abuse of the child as they sought to control him, including tying him to an inversion table, cuffing and shocking him and starving him, according to court records.
In November 2017, months after Michael took a guilty plea, he sought to retract the plea, claiming his lawyer pressured him into it and claiming he wasn’t guilty of the crime he admitted to.
He remains in prison after being convicted of murder.
With Post wires
