commentary by Patrick Moore
Eight months ago I received a lecture for casting aspersions upon foster parents and Child Protective Services’ case workers. The woman who criticized my criticism pointed out that I was focusing on bad foster parents and corrupt case workers rather than realizing that these miscreants are the exception, not the rule. I took the advice to heart and have since bent over backwards to be fair and balanced with respect to this issue.
Earlier this year, however, the Huffington Post and other media sources reported a case of such shocking malpractice (for lack of a better word) on the part of the Los Angeles County child welfare workers that the mind recoils in horror. (In fairness, this is not a foster care case; rather, it is perhaps the most horrific case of child abuse by a biological mother and her boyfriend that I have ever encountered.)
Graphic grand jury testimony reveals details of the abuse suffered by an 8-year-old Los Angeles County boy allegedly battered to death by his mother and her boyfriend.
Court documents made public Monday show Gabriel Fernandez was doused with pepper spray, forced to eat his own vomit and locked in a cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams, the Los Angeles Times reported ( http://lat.ms/1o9x6pK ).
The Palmdale boy died in May 2013, days after he was hospitalized with injuries including a cracked skull, broken ribs and burns.
The victim’s mother is Pearl Fernandez and her boyfriend is Isauro Aguirre. They are in jail awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to murder charges with special allegations of torture.
As part of their investigation of this case, the LA Times reviewed more than 800 pages of testimony. In a Times article, Soumya Karlamangla, Abby Sewell, and Laura J. Nelson describe the many ways in which the agencies who are supposed to protect our children allegedly dropped the ball:
Several agencies investigated allegations of abuse before Gabriel’s death without removing the boy from the home. On multiple occasions, deputies went to the family’s apartment or to Gabriel’s school to investigate reports of abuse and of the boy being suicidal. Each time, they concluded there was no evidence of abuse and did not write a detailed report.
Timothy O’Quinn, a sheriff’s homicide detective, told grand jurors that there was no indication that deputies had removed any of Gabriel’s clothing to check for signs of abuse.
Investigators searching the family’s apartment after Gabriel’s death found bloodstains, BB gun holes and a wooden club covered in his blood, according to testimony.
In short, Gabriel remained with his mother and her boyfriend despite several investigations by social workers. As a result of this incident, there have been calls for sweeping reforms to the Los Angeles County foster-care system because child welfare workers failed to remove the boy from this “house of horrors”. Two supervisors and two social workers were reportedly fired while others involved in the case received letters of warning or were reprimanded.
The beginning of the end came for poor Gabriel on May 22, 2013, when Pearl Fernandez phoned 9-1-1 to report that her son was not breathing. According to testimony, when sheriff’s deputies arrived at the apartment, she told them her son had fallen and hit his head on a dresser. The paramedics found Gabriel naked in a bedroom. He was not breathing and BB pellets were embedded in his lung and groin. He died two days after the 9-1-1- call.
“It was just like every inch of this child had been abused,” testified James Cermak, a Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic.
Because of several delays in setting a preliminary hearing, frustrated prosecutors convened a grand jury which returned an indictment on July 28th.
During his testimony before the grand jury, Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told the jurors that Fernandez and Aguirre deliberately tortured the boy to death. They did their best to conceal their atrocities with forged doctor’s notes and lies to the authorities.
“For eight straight months, he was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war,” Hatami said.
Two of Gabriel’s siblings, both of whom are minors, testified that the abuse worsened as Gabriel’s death approached. He was forced to eat cat feces, rotten spinach as well as his own vomit.
* * * * *
Gabriel was born in 2005. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to live but relatives and ended up with Fernandez’ parents for an undisclosed period of time. Unfortunately, Fernandez reclaimed Gabriel and two of his older siblings in 2012.
A mere two weeks after Gabriel moved in with his mother, his first-grade teacher called social workers and reported that the boy’s mother had hit him with a belt buckle hard enough to make him bleed. Not unexpectedly, drugs appear to have been involved, and Gabriel apparently demonstrated to the teacher that he knew how to snort cocaine despite his tender age.
Gabriel’s teacher, Jennifer Garcia, testified that she called county services several more times after the child came to school with various injuries included an injured lip which a social worker shrugged off as a “blister”.
At one point, Gabriel wrote a suicide note that was discovered by a counselor at a children’s center. She informed the authorities who once again shrugged it off because Gabriel did not describe the specifics of how he intended to kill himself.
One of the deceased victim’s siblings testified that their mother had told them to lie to social workers whenever they came to check up. He stated that he did lie “because I thought she was going to do the same things to me.”
Gabriel’s school remained vigilant and school officials asked a deputy to investigate his many absences because they suspected child abuse. The deputy claimed that he was initially given the wrong address but that when he eventually reached Gabriel’s mother by phone, she told him Gabriel had moved back to Texas and was living with his grandmother.
* * * * *
It sounds like Gabriel’s school did their level best to rescue the boy but that no one else cared enough to expend enough effort to get at the truth. Drugs were obviously involved, a fact that deputies could hardly have been unaware of. Furthermore, when reports of suggested child abuse with the same victim and the same parents surface over and over again, it seems pretty obvious that “where there’s smoke there’s fire”.
With respect to the abuse itself, I suspect that inflicting pain on the helpless quickly becomes addictive, and thus like any other form of addictive behavior, the addict must inflict more and more pain to gain the satisfaction he or she craves.
Many people who hear about this case will respond by saying that if convicted of first degree murder, Fernandez and her despicable boyfriend Aguirre should receive the death penalty, and I would not be that surprised if they do due to the torture allegations. However, since there is apparently a moratorium on actual executions in California, they may wile away their existences of Death Row for quite some time.
Update:
Since posting this story on August 2oth, unsurprisingly, we’ve received a variety of comments. Everyone is horrified but everyone does not agree as to what should be done, particularly with regards to Gabriel’s siblings and the possibility they may be called upon to testify against Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre at trial.
Child advocate Lori commented on August 20th:
Don’t hold your breath Patrick, on a lengthy sentence. Maybe it will happen since this case has received media attention but the statistics show that crimes against children rarely ever get anywhere near the consequences meted out to people convicted of crimes against adults, or even property crimes. Before people get their panties all in a bunch over this let’s just consider a few things. In all likelihood who will be the star witnesses against mom and stepdad? Yes. The surviving siblings. Who are also victims. Witnessing abuse to a loved one is horrific abuse in itself, sometimes worse than being the one injured.
I don’t care what happens to these “parents”. Yes, I smile when my mind gives me a pleasant picture of them strung up like pinatas with Lady Justice and her blindfold under them with a baseball bat but in reality I don’t care if they go to prison for life or walk free. I care about not victimizing any more children. Do not fool yourselves, testifying against their mom will scar these children for life. Again. They have been hurt enough, now we will let the system take over their abuse? These “parents” are done. They will not be abusing any more children. This is not a case of death due to neglect or stupidity. This is murder by cruelty and they will not ever be allowed to raise any more children. We no longer need to worry about protecting the surviving children from them. Now we need to protect these surviving children from the system, the prosecutors and public opinion demanding revenge. Trust me on this one, these children need protecting right NOW.
I recently had a child in my home that suffered incredibly similar abuse but survived. Same story, different state. After a year of worrying and begging the prosecutor and the victims’ rights advocate to please not abuse this child any more by making him testify, they finally offered mom a plea to take a couple of misdemeanor assault charges instead of going to trial with several felony child abuse charges. I don’t think the decision had anything to do with caring one bit about the child, or anything I said either…. I think the decision was due to children being the crappiest witnesses ever. The defense annihilates them on the stand. Kids lie. They also don’t have the kind of linear memories adults have. They don’t remember locations and dates, or even do a very good job of sequencing events. Easy prey for a defense attorney. They are incredibly easy to manipulate and confuse by both sides. And both sides do it.
Kids don’t hate. This is an adult emotion (aren’t we proud?). Children love their parents regardless of how they are treated. They want and need their parents to love them. They are a part of their parents. If you take this child and try to turn them against their parents you are not only scarring them but you are also telling them they are also “bad” or “evil” or worthless. Look at children in ugly divorces and the damage done when parents bad mouth each other. Now multiply that by whatever number you want. Kids blame themselves for their parents’ divorce. They also blame themselves for the abuse they receive. It’s kind of human nature. If it isn’t our fault then we must be helpless, luckless victims with no control over our lives. Wow. Please don’t describe me that way.
Plenty of therapists and prosecutors will argue that letting them testify will empower them and help them overcome the trauma and give them a voice. Yeah. Whatever. I pick up the pieces every day. I listen to the stories and rock them back to sleep after nightmares. And I tell them their parents love them. All the time. Which may just make me a big liar but oh well. I tell them that it wasn’t their fault and it wasn’t because they weren’t loved. I tell them that I know lots of parents and lots of kids and I have never met a parent who didn’t love his child. (Yes, my nose is growing, but hey, I tell the little ones I believe in Santa too so shut up). I also tell them that I have met lots of parents that can’t take care of their children or keep them safe. I remind them that I can’t fix cars, doesn’t mean I don’t care about my car. What it means is we all have things we can do and things we can’t. They are loved and worthy of love. Someday these kids will be adults (many are) and they can look me in the eye and say, “you were so full of crap” but most say instead, “thanks for letting me grow up without judging my family”. They have a whole lifetime to be an adult and hate all they want.
I am not saying to give the parents a “get out jail free” card. I am saying let’s remember who counts here. It takes a village, which is more than a pretty catchphrase (are you listening Hillary? ‘Cause there are some confused Central American children that wonder why you don’t want them in your village). Whatever happens to these parents let’s not forget to protect the children.
Today (October 13th), a commenter named Tempus apparently read Lori’s comment and angrily replied in a veritable rage:
So sorry. You are myopic beyond belief on the subject of ‘protecting’ the surviving children here. They NEED to testify. They NEED to exorcise the atrocities committed against their brother. Your cavalier little dismissal of the possibility of a long sentence is not only ludicrous, it is imbecilic; these monsters will be very lucky to escape the death sentence. In case you haven’t noticed, this case is smeared all over the Internet and will continue to be for years to come. What would, of course, be best is to give the parents not the death penalty (appealed until doomsday with taxpayers maintaining the monsters for decades) but life without parole IN GENERAL POPULATION. They would, and one sincerely hopes, WILL then get what they deserve. You are so delusional on the subject of children, on whether or not they ‘hate’, and on the world in general it is simply horrifying.
Rick Stack also seeks a long sentence, but in his usual calm and reasoned manner:
This “mother” and her boyfriend need to receive a very long prison sentence so that they do not have a chance to ever be parents again. I hope that they do not get out of prison until they are both old and gray, although I share Lori’s fear that they may get off with an unreasonably light sentence. I somewhat differ from Lori’s opinion that the two older children should not be required to testify against their mother and her boyfriend because we’re talking about a murder case here! If these two miscreants somehow are able to beat this rap for lack of evidence because the two older children do not testify about the abuse that they witnessed, the mother may succeed in regaining custody of her two surviving children and the cycle of abuse might begin again.
And so it goes, my friends. Meanwhile poor Gabriel has been released from this mortal coil and his abusers have yet to stand trial. I’ll keep an eye on this case and will check back periodically.