Child protection supervisor placed on paid leave

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services confirmed on Thursday that one of the top officials in the Child and Family Services Division has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Officials will not say exactly why Cory Costello, field services supervisor for CFSD, was placed on paid administrative leave.

"We are investigating allegations that have been made. No further information will be released," Jon Ebelt, the Department of Public Health's public information officer, wrote Thursday in an email.

Costello has been the target of a lot of frustration with the agency charged with protecting Montana's kids over the last few years, vocalized by parents and social workers alike.

Before becoming the field services supervisor for CFSD, Costello was the regional administrator of the Great Falls office. The Great Falls office at one time experience high employee turnover rates and was heavily criticized after 2-year-old October Perez died in 2011. The little girl, her biological mother and her mother's boyfriend were on the radar of CFSD for potential child abuse when October was beaten and killed by David Wayne Hyslop.

In 2012, the Tribune launched an investigation and spoke with former case workers from that office who blamed a lot of the mistrust and intimidation in the Great Falls office on Costello's leadership.

"It was not a team environment," Sherri Lauver said in 2012. "It just felt like everyone was watching and covering their own cases."

Cleve Loney, a former state representative who has working with October's family since 2011, said he has ideas about why she might be on paid administrative leave, but he doesn't know for sure.

"From what I've gathered it's about time," Loney said.