INDIANAPOLIS (Court TV) — Kinsleigh Welty’s father and paternal grandfather claim the young child was subjected to years of torture and abuse before her death in a new lawsuit filed against Welty’s mother and employees of a state agency.
Kinsleigh Welty is seen in an undated family photo. (Court File)
Bradly and Brian Welty filed the lawsuit on behalf of Kinsleigh’s estate after the 5-year-old died in 2024. Kinsleigh’s mother, Toni McClure, has been charged with her daughter’s murder. McClure’s boyfriend, Ryan Smith, and mother, Tammy Halsey, are also charged in connection with the child’s death.
Defendants named in the suit included not only McClure, Smith and Halsey, but also the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) and 10 of its family caseworkers, who are alleged to have allowed the abuse to continue.
According to the lawsuit, reviewed by Court TV, McClure began abusing Kinsleigh shortly after she was born. Before she was even one month old, DCS received a report of neglect in the home. Those allegations were substantiated and led to McClure’s criminal conviction on neglect charges in 2020.
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Despite her criminal past, McClure repeatedly regained custody of Kinsleigh and her siblings. A report that Kinsleigh and her siblings were “covered in marks, welts and bruises and appeared to be underfed” was substantiated, but Kinsleigh was placed back into her mother’s custody after DCS failed to present a witness at an ensuing fact-finding hearing.
From November 2023 to January 2024, there were five reports to DCS alleging Kinsleigh was abused and malnourished. In each case, the lawsuit alleges that the reports were closed as “unsubstantiated” without anyone having seen the child face-to-face.
Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic video and descriptions of child abuse.
The five months before Kinsleigh’s death were marked by severe abuse and torture, according to the lawsuit. “Kinsleigh was kept locked in a closet for up to 20 hours a day with very little food and water, and was abused, imprisoned, neglected and starved by her mother.” That closet was found to have feces and urine covering the floor.
One month before her death, DCS employees allegedly saw Kinsleigh and took photographs of her, “but did not act to remove her from the Defendant McClure’s care despite her emaciated appearance.”
When police found Kinsleigh unresponsive on April 9, 2024, she was in “a severely malnourished and emaciated state, her bones visibly protruding, with feces on her hands and feet and active head lice covering her scalp.” At age five, she weighed just 21 pounds. According to the lawsuit, Kinsleigh weighed more at age two than she did at the time of her death.
