“Watchdogs needed to protect children”, Review Atlas
Judy Guenseth, Opinion, Monmouth, May 8, 2020
Recently I watched a documentary series, “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez” about a small child who died at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend. The content was difficult to digest due to the extreme abuse this 8-year-old boy experienced. Many indicated they were unable to watch this series. It is mind boggling that one human can treat another human in the manner he was treated. I can’t handle the awful abuse any better than others, but my past and present work with abused children provides a vantage point for evaluating this tragedy.
Gabriel was given up by his mother as an infant and raised by several different family situations before he eventually returned to live with his mother about a year before his death. Throughout that year he was beaten, starved, fed cat litter and kept locked in a small cabinet in his mother’s bedroom. He was allowed to go to school but only when he didn’t have apparent evidence of abuse.
Despite numerous hotline calls to child services from his school teacher and others who were in contact with this child, no thorough investigation occurred. Child services or law enforcement arrived at the child’s residence without seeing the child and took the word of the mother that the child was OK. The child at one point even confessed to his teacher that he didn’t want to tell her things anymore because someone would come to his home, and he would later be punished for it. This happened in Los Angeles County, California. And that is key information in understanding the missteps that ended in a child’s death.
The Federal government passed the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act or CAPTA setting a minimum standard for what constitutes child abuse or neglect. That definition reads, “Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.” – U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services. However, this is only the blanket requirement and each state must provide their own definition of child abuse and neglect, and create their own system for resolving those same issues.
Every state organizes their own child services departments differently. For Illinois, there is the Department of Children and Family Services or DCFS, which oversees and integrates with all 102 counties while other states organize with each county as separate entity.
Child services in Los Angeles County is a standalone entity and answers only to their county commissioners who, once elected, often hold office for life. Granted, this county is as large as some states in population, yet their child services doesn’t answer to any outside feedback group.
If it hadn’t been for a seasoned newspaper reporter picking up the story, the atrocity of the Gabriel’s death wouldn’t have been made known to the public. As well, the documentary indicated the leadership within the department knew there were procedural problems and case errors, but tried to mitigate those issues in secrecy. Yet, in spite of the high media exposure and the creation of a child services review board appointed by the county commissioners, another child death occurred with nearly the same circumstances.
Two things stand out in documentary, first the important role the local news reporter had in bringing to light the systemic failures that lead to the child’s death and secondly, the LA County child services inability to correct those systemic failures even after the public became aware of them.
The tendency of bureaucracy is to grow and over time focus on practices that ensure survival of the organization often at the cost of primary purpose. This is called mission creep and it is exactly what L.A. County child services did in this situation. They didn’t want their failures exposed in order to protect the organization even though their in-house policing was woefully inadequate.
The general public usually doesn’t have the time or the resources serve as watchdog monitors over long-standing government systems. Legally mandated outside feedback review boards which have no tie to an organization provide the healthiest bureaucracies. Also, local news reporters who know how to dig for information can play a key role in recognizing organizational inconsistencies and failures. It’s unfortunate the beat reporter is a dying breed.
There should be no glorification of the child abuse which occurs daily in our communities, but documentaries like this should be an opportunity to learn from the errors which resulted in this child’s murder. It is also a springboard to support watchdog elements in our communities to protect children from abuse, first in their homes and second from the very systems designed to protect them.
Judy Johnson Guenseth is a longtime resident of Galesburg, where she works in the public sector.