On a spring day in 2010, 17 members of Mason Beach's family crammed into the living room of his uncle's O'Fallon, Mo., home and set their attention on an invited guest, St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas.

The family wanted to know why Banas had not filed criminal charges after Mason died Sept. 10, 2009, from a head injury suffered just minutes after his mom left him at a Wentzville home day care eating Cheerios in a high chair. Why, a half-year later, had nothing happened?

But Banas gave them no solace that day. In a recent interview, he said Mason's fatal injuries remain suspicious. But there were no other witnesses older than 4 in the unlicensed home day care. And beyond medical opinions, there was probably not enough evidence to convince a jury that the 18-month-old died from an inflicted injury and not from an accidental fall down carpeted stairs, as the provider claimed.

The investigation remains open. The child care provider, Lisa West, has not been charged. She stopped speaking to authorities hours after Mason's death. Her attorney, Arthur Margulis, said the death was a "heartbreaking" accident, not a crime.

So, in the absence of criminal prosecution, Mason's family made the choice of last resort for parents who have had children die in home day cares: They sued.

Earlier this month the Beaches were awarded $707,000 after a jury decided West was negligent in caring for Mason — one of the highest wrongful-death awards for a child ever awarded in St. Charles County.

Yet there's a strong chance the Beaches won't collect.

That's because West, like all other home day care providers in Missouri and numerous others in states nationwide, was not required to carry business insurance or additional liability coverage despite offering daily, for-pay child care in her home. And, unless a child care provider opts to include a special rider on a homeowner's policy, most insurance companies decline or significantly limit their liability on a homeowner's policy for the death or injury of a child in a home-based day care.

"People need to know that home day care providers don't have to have business insurance," said the Beaches' attorney, Anthony Bruning. "They need to know you take a risk by putting your child there, and if you are uninsured you will have to pay all medical costs if your child is severely injured."

REGULATIONS ARE RARE

The most recent child care licensing study by the National Association for Regulatory Administration found that only eight states nationwide, including Illinois, require home child care providers to carry some form of liability insurance, leaving most parents whose children die or are severely injured in home day cares without financial recourse.

In some cases, the insurance carriers countersue the parents of an injured or deceased child by asking the court for a declaratory judgment to relieve the company of liability in the civil suit.

That's what happened to the Beaches. About two months after they filed their suit, they learned they and the Wests were co-defendants in a separate civil suit filed by the insurer. The Beaches were served at their front door with court papers on behalf of State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. arguing the policy's $300,000 liability coverage did not apply to home day cares. That suit is scheduled to be resolved this week.

Steve Blecha of Imperial said he had the same knock on the door when he and his wife, Shelley Blecha, tried to sue their child care provider. They too learned they were being countersued by the insurance company.

"What a way to kick someone's teeth out of their head," he said. "As if we didn't have enough to deal with."

Their son, Nathan, accidentally suffocated at 3 months in a home day care near Arnold, where regulators later determined the unlicensed provider was caring for more kids than allowed by law. No charges were filed against the provider. The provider also had no liability coverage, just a homeowner's policy.

"We said, well, if no one else is going to do anything about it, why shouldn't we do something about it and sue?" Steve Blecha said of their initial decision to take the matter to civil court.

But the parents dropped the suit after learning the provider had no business insurance. Blecha said they realized the provider, a single mother, would be on her own to pay a judgment.

"In the end, we didn't want to put a family out on the street," he said.

A FAMILIAR STORY

The Beaches and Blechas describe a situation experienced by dozens of parents who have had children die in sometimes negligent or dangerous home day cares in Missouri.

Mason and Nathan were two of 45 children highlighted last year in an investigation by the Post-Dispatch on deaths in child care in Missouri from 2007 through 2010.

In that investigation, Mason was one of seven children found by state agencies to have died from suspected abuse while in child care. At the time the stories ran on the 45 deaths, Mason's identity was one of 14 that remained unknown to the paper. His name, though known by a state Child Fatality Review program, was shielded by confidentiality laws. After the newspaper investigation, his family came forward and identified Mason was one of the children in the series.

In the same investigation, Nathan was one of 35 babies whose death was sleep-related. In most of those deaths, caregivers failed to follow safe sleep practices, which led to accidental suffocation. All but four of those deaths occurred in unlicensed home day cares with no state standards or inspections.

In Missouri, most child care providers must be licensed if they care for more than four children who are unrelated to them. But liability insurance is not a licensing requirement. The Insurance Information Institute estimates the cost of purchasing an in-home business policy is less than $300 a year.

Child care referral agencies in Missouri encourage home day care providers to purchase additional coverage to protect themselves, but it's unknown if they follow through, said Carol Scott, CEO of Child Care Aware of Missouri.

It falls to parents to ask before enrolling a child if a provider carries such insurance, she said.

"Parents don't think anything bad is going to happen to their child," Scott said. "You don't want to imagine the worst-case scenario when you're looking for child care; you're imagining the best-case scenario for your child."

'I DID IT ON PRINCIPLE'

Some parents of children who have died in day care say the lack of other penalties for potentially negligent providers compels them to sue, even though the parents know they will likely be awarded nothing.

Ashley Brooks knew when she filed a wrongful-death suit last year that her former child care providers had no insurance in their name on their bank-owned house in Ferguson. Her attorney, William Holland, working pro bono, asked for $20 million, supposing nothing would come of it.

"I guess I did it on principle," Brooks said of the lawsuit. "I got to face them in court, and that was important to me."

Last February her infant son, Jordan, accidentally suffocated in an unlicensed home day care operated by Cynthia and Dexter Williams. Medical examiner and police records show Jordan and his older brother stayed overnight because of inclement weather. Dexter Williams put Jordan facedown on a couch after 1 a.m. and fell asleep next to him. Sometime within the next three hours, Williams rolled onto Jordan, and the baby suffocated.

The unlicensed providers were never charged with a crime.

Earlier this month, the Williamses waived a jury trial in the civil case and represented themselves in front of St. Louis County Judge Robert Cohen, taking responsibility for the death. The hearing took 15 minutes.

In what's called a 'show verdict," the judge awarded $3 million to Brooks, knowing the dollar figure would amount to a statement on negligence and extreme loss, but not a real payout. Brooks said she won't pursue the family's assets because they have very little.

"I can't really say they felt like they understood the severity of what happened and what they did," she said. "I don't think they grasped how much my life has changed and what has happened, because nothing in their life has changed."

ON THE PUBLIC RECORD

Brad and Rebecca Beach, Mason's parents, said financial compensation did not drive them to sue Lisa West and her husband, Scott West. The Beaches said they originally did not want to sue because they wanted to avoid an emotional trial.

But after the family meeting with Banas, Mason's parents agreed to file a wrongful-death suit so it would be on public record that Lisa West was suspected of hurting Mason in her home day care. They held out hope that new evidence might come to light in the civil trial to aid in future criminal prosecution.

Banas, the St. Charles County prosecutor, or a member of his office was present in the audience throughout the three-day trial earlier this month.

But West never took the stand. Invoking the Fifth Amendment, she refused to answer any questions about her day care or the incident in a pretrial deposition.

Her husband, out of town the day Mason was hurt, declined to tell a jury what his wife had told him about the incident.

Bruning, the Beaches' attorney, was allowed to present to the jury two conflicting arguments about what happened to Mason. One contended that Mason's death was caused by improper supervision and a failure by West and her husband to install a safety gate at the top of their home's basement stairs.

The other argued intentional battery and relied heavily on medical testimony from St. Charles County Medical Examiner Mary Case and Ann DiMaio, an emergency room physician at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in charge of child abuse forensics. Both said Mason's extensive head injuries — including retinal hemorrhaging, damage to both optic nerves and bleeding, swelling and shifting of his brain — could not have been caused by a stair fall, and were instead evidence of an inflicted blow.

Thomas Young, a former Jackson County medical examiner, testified for the defense. He argued that he did not believe an adult could shake a baby to death and discarded national research — some of it written by Case — on shaken baby syndrome.

After testimony, Judge Nancy Schneider ruled the Beaches would have to choose which theory they wanted the jury to consider: negligence or inflicted injury, but not both.

The Beaches said they decided to go with negligence — the easier verdict to prove.

The $707,000 jury decision in their favor gave them little relief.

"I don't think anything really came of the trial," said Rebecca Beach a week later in her O'Fallon home, as she rifled through a plastic box of photos of Mason on her kitchen table.

After Mason died, Rebecca Beach said she and her husband did not return to their Wentzville home because they could not bear to look at Mason's toys in their living room or his room. They put it on the market and lived with a relative for seven months.

Last year, the parents learned of the criminal prosecution of two other area day care providers who had children die in their care. In one case in Eureka — where there were also no adult witnesses — the caregiver is charged with second-degree murder and felony child abuse.

Yet the Beaches say Mason's child care provider remains unpunished.

"Our life was turned upside down and destroyed in every way, and they have just been allowed to go on about their business," Rebecca Beach said. "They're not being held accountable for it."