CBS News Chicago Investigators has obtained a communication from Judge Patrick Murphy, who serves on the Juvenile Court in the Child Protection Division, to Chief Judge Timothy Evans responding to an ethics complaint filed by the Cook County State's Attorney against him for giving gifts to "abused and neglected" foster children who appear before him.

In the communication, Murphy said he will stop giving gifts to children as the Judicial Inquiry Board investigates the complaint, and notes that the complaint – which he said he has not seen directly – stated that it is the state's attorney's office's stance that it is unethical for him to give gifts to some children but not others.

"I have tried to assist those whom I believe to have been beaten down but have the wherewithal, with some assistance, to overcome neglect both by their parents and by the child welfare system," he writes.

Murphy writes about the cyclical nature of the abuse and neglect he sees in the Child Protection Division, dealing with children who are abused and neglected, and whose "parents were abused and neglected if not by their parents then by a history of Jim Crow, racism, slavery and much more."

"About 95% of what we see is the result of extreme, unrelenting and desperate poverty," he writes.

Murphy openly admits to giving gifts to children and lists some of the notable ones in his letter to the chief judge.

He writes he gave $300 to a foster parent to buy Christmas gifts for her two foster children, noting that she also has two children of her own, speaks almost no English, cleans houses for a living, and was waiting to adopt the foster children despite a "logjam" he said was created by DCFS.

In another instance, he said he promised a 20-year-old man who had been a ward of the court in Illinois for most of his life a financial reward if he either got a job or got into college. He gave him $100 when the young man told him he was enrolling in Truman College.

He says he gave a family of five from Venezuela who "was living in squalor" $60-$80 after court appearances so they could buy lunch. He also paid for a YMCA membership for a 14-year-old after DCFS refused to pay for it. He later recused himself from the teen's case so he could help him and his grandmother, who served as his foster parent, find new housing after she was evicted from Section 8 housing, gave him his old football cleats and paid to help him play high school football, and then gave him a used bicycle.

He says he promised a young man a pro-style football if he attended summer school so he could graduate from eighth grade. With the complaint, he said he will not give this gift but encouraged other officers in in the court to get together to give him the ball if he follows through on his promise to go to school and graduate.

CBS News Chicago spoke to a source who said that judges typically can't give gifts to litigants because they must remain neutral, but proceedings in the Child Protection Division aren't adversarial in nature and judges are acting in the best interests of the children, which is a different situation than criminal courts.

CBS News Chicago reached out to Chief Judge Timothy Evans' office, who responded that Judicial Inquiry Board proceedings are confidential and declined to comment further.

"Further, the Board's Rule 5(a) provides that, 'all information and materials, written or oral, received . . . by the Board in the course of its work, insofar as such proceedings and information or materials relate to the question of whether a judge is guilty of misconduct or suffers from disability, shall be confidential and privileged as a matter of law,'" the statement said.

CBS News Chicago reached to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office who said they are unable to comment at this time. 

• Judge
• Cook County
• Children