Bill Diamond, a centrist Democrat Maine statesman and statehouse fixture who fought to protect vulnerable children, has died.
The former longtime member of the Maine House and Senate, as well as an ex-secretary of state, died Sunday at the age of 80.
Not long before his passing, Diamond did several interviews blasting his own party – and specifically its governor – for failing to protect Maine’s underprivileged kids.
The conservative Democrat from Windham, who served as a constitutional officer under a Republican governor, said that two-term Gov. Janet Mills needed to take a stronger stance to initiate real change protecting foster children.
Diamond said in a recent WGME-TV interview he heard crickets when he offered to collaborate with the state children’s-advocacy agency to create a better system.
He put the blame squarely on Mills for inaction.
“Governor Mills could really put an end to this if she decided to speak up and say ‘enough is enough, this is done and we’re going to correct this,’” Diamond said.
“But until something changes this is going to go on and on and there’s going to be excuse after excuse.”
Diamond’s harsh analysis of the way Mills has handled children comes in the wake of a state report The Maine Wire publicized holding the governor accountable.
In that piece, The Maine Wire’s chief editor, Steve Robinson, wrote that the Mills-fawning legacy press was as responsible for killing children as Mills is due to its lack of reporting on the highly-critical state report of her failures defending needy children.
“The report shows a government bureaucracy that has become an utterly dysfunctional mess, one that is getting kids killed and doing untold damage to the ones who survive botched state interventions,” Robinson wrote in January 2023. “It is failing to perform even the basic functions of any child welfare agency.”
Diamond, well known as a child advocate, targeted that agency’s incompetence under Mills. In the months leading up to his death he was particularly outspoken about his frustration over the state’s failure to protect children.
Toward the end of his life, he was trying yet again to raise concerns about Maine’s failing Office of Child and Family Services, citing issues such as children being placed in unsafe homes and dying despite alleged agency involvement.
Diamond said he believed the system needed significant change and offered to work with the state to improve it.
He blasted Child and Family Services, stating that the agency has a culture of secrecy and was not adequately protecting vulnerable children.
Diamond charged that children were being placed in homes with domestic violence.
He said children were still dying in Maine households despite the agency’s involvement.
Diamond believed that the current leadership was not addressing these issues effectively – and he held Mills particularly responsible for the inaction.
The former teacher, principal and school superintendent spent the end of his life as a staunch critic of the state’s child-welfare system.
Diamond served 13 terms in the Legislature between 1976 and 2020 and secretary of state from 1989 to 1997.
As a state senator, Diamond led investigations into the killing of two girls, including 10-year-old Marissa Kennedy of Stockton Springs, who died in 2018 at the hands of her mother and stepfather.
The state got 25 reports about Kennedy and her family in the 16 months before her murder, but it did not confirm abuse until she died.
Those cases, as well as other more recent ones focused on by Diamond’s nonprofit group Walk A Mile In Their Shoes, put the child-welfare system under its heaviest scrutiny since the 2001 killing of 5-year-old Logan Marr by her foster mother.
“Marissa didn’t need to die; Logan Marr didn’t need to die,” he said in an interview just a month before died. “But the reason they did is because the department didn’t do their job.”
Walk A Mile In Their Shoes, the agency Diamond helped found to protect vulnerable kids, headlined its website this week, “Farewell to Our Founder, Bill Diamond.”
On the website, Diamond recently wrote that he was diagnosed with “a challenging medical condition,” causing him to step away from the day-to-day work of the organization.
“We are more committed than ever to continuing our mission in stopping the abuse and homicide of children in state care,” he wrote.
The Maine Wire will feature continued coverage of Diamond’s legacy in a personal tribute later this week.
