The state yesterday asked the federal court to dismiss a class-action lawsuit filed in June by the state child advocate, who claimed the Department of Children, Youth and Families had tragically failed to protect many children in its custody.

In the motion for dismissal, prepared in part by Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, Lynch and other state lawyers questioned the appropriateness of the remedy sought by Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston — namely asking the federal court to take control of DCYF.

“Rhode Island has a Family Court with both the ability and expertise to review any and all DCYF cases ...,” Lynch said in a statement. “Indeed, Rhode Island’s child advocate is one of these very resources. She has always had complete access to DCYF’s records and to the Family Court.”

Lynch said Alston could easily seek the Family Court’s help if she deemed intervention is needed.

“The fact that she didn’t, and has never done so for any of the children whom she claims are not getting the attention they need, does not stop her from doing so in the future,” Lynch said.

Alston filed the class-action suit in June and portrayed the entire child-welfare system as overburdened and mismanaged.

“It’s beyond broken,” she said at the time. “It’s demolished. It doesn’t work.”

Her suit claimed children in foster care were being molested and beaten and, in one high-profile case, killed. Her suit claimed state caseworkers labor under “excessive caseloads,” too many children were being placed in institutions and group homes, and that children were being reunited with parents who had abused them.

Alston, who was appointed by Governor Carcieri — one of the parties now asking that her suit be dismissed — claimed in the class-action suit that the state has known about systemic problems in DCYF for years and failed to meet some basic obligations to the children in its care.

“This, to me, is a last resort,” Alston said at the time she filed the class-action suit.

Her suits used pseudonyms for 10 children in foster care who claim they’ve been damaged by the state system, including two brothers who were allegedly returned over and over again to parents who abused them.

In the state’s motion for dismissal, filed on behalf of Carcieri and the directors of the Department of Health and Human Services, lawyers termed the definition used in Alston’s suit to describe the proposed class of victims as “ambiguous.”

They claim Alston defined the parties as “all children who are or will be in the legal custody” of DCYF who may have been abused or neglected. The motion for dismissal claims that definition is too broad to allow a judge to ascertain membership of a class of alleged victims.

Further, the motion for dismissal claims, Alston didn’t include “foster” children in her own definition of those she was representing.

Because the parties of the class-action suit aren’t more specifically defined, the lawyers for the state argue the class-action suit should be dropped.

tmooney@projo.com