MIAMI, Fla. -- An angry judge assailed representatives of Florida's Department of Children and Families and barred Carmen Barahona from having contact with three adopted children after the Barahonas' adopted 10-year-old girl was found dead, stuffed in a garbage bag and her twin brother nearly dead from burns and being beaten.
DCF got a complaint on Feb. 10 that the girl and her twin brother were being bound, a complaint that came from one of the children's playmates to a teacher. DCF says Carmen Barahona obstructed efforts to investigate, claimed she didn't know where the twins or their adopted father Jorge Barahona were, and that the couple was estranged. A DCF representative told Judge Cindy Lederman at the hearing that Carmen Barahona was lying.
"The mother was secreting the children and lying to the investigator," a DCF attorney said. An 11-year-old boy taken from the Barahona home Tuesday told DCF the twins were routinely "bound and locked in the bathroom" and released only to eat.
Meanwhile the condition of the 10-year-old found clinging to life off I-95 on Monday is worsening. His kidneys could be shutting down; he was being moved from St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach to the Burn Unit at Jacksonville Memorial Hospital.
In a custody hearing held Wednesday in Miami, Lederman was incredulous that DCF got a complaint Feb. 10 and one of the children ended up dead Feb. 14. A DCF investigator said probe was slowed by mother's lies and interrupted by a weekend.
"So we don't do investigations on weekends?" a wide-eyed Lederman asked.
A DCF spokesman admitted the agency had numerous contacts with the family over the last 7 years.
She ordered that the kids go to therapeutic foster care and that "no one that had any idea what was going on in that home will have any contact with these children whatsoever!" She turned to Carmen Barahona and said "Do you understand me?"
A doctor for DCF testified that the other two children, a 7-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, seemed healthy and "engaging." The 11-year-old boy is autistic but "very bright and verbal."
Miami-Dade police on Saturday arrested Carmen Barahona, the adoptive mother whose 10-year-old daughter was discovered dead on Valentine’s Day along Interstate 95.
She and husband, Jorge Barahona, will be facing charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and child neglect for the slaying of Nubia Barhona.
Carmen Barahona, 60, went voluntarily to Miami-Dade police headquarters for questioning late Friday. She was booked into jail Saturday afternoon, a jail spokeswoman said.
More details of her arrest were not immediately available Saturday afternoon.
It was on Valentine’s Day that a road ranger in West Palm Beach found Jorge Barahona’s red pest control truck on the shoulder of Interstate 95. Victor, Nubia’s twin bother, was in the front cab drenched in toxic chemicals, Nubia in the flatbed, decomposed and stuffed in a trash bag. Jorge Barahona was passed out nearby.
Victor was released from Jackson Memorial Hospital’s burn unit last week, and child welfare administrators have said he is recovering nicely in a therapeutic foster home, though he will need continuing medical care and counseling.
Miami-Dade police and prosecutors assumed control of the death investigation after Victor, finally well enough to be interviewed, suggested to detectives that Nubia’s injuries were inflicted inside the family’s West Miami-Dade home.
Detectives have searched the home several times, recently hauling away a bathtub. The Barahona’s 6-year-old granddaughter reported to a therapist that the twins were being bound hand and foot and made to spend hours upon hours inside the bathtub of the family’s home.
The therapist, on Feb. 10, called in the tip to a Department of Children and Families abuse hotline — four days before Nubia’s corpse was found. The state child welfare agency has drawn intense scrutiny since the discovery. DCF has released a host of agency records detailing the twins’ abuse over much of their short lives.
Nubia, records showed, was petrified of her adoptive mother, who, she told school workers, would beat her feet with a sandal if she learned the girl had wet her pants. Nubia also was afraid her mother would learn she was hoarding food in a book bag because she was always hungry.
Last week, Carmen Barahona filed for divorce against her husband. The woman’s lawyer said Carmen had been the victim of domestic violence for much of her marriage, and should not be held responsible for what occurred inside the Barahona’s West Miami-Dade home. Carmen asked for custody of her three surviving adoptive children, though the children all are under the supervision of DCF, which has placed them in area foster homes.
Victor, agency heads have said, may be headed to Texas, where a paternal aunt and uncle have sought custody of him since 2004.
Jorge Barahona remains in the Palm Beach County Jail without bail on charges of attempted murder and aggravated child abuse.
Sullen, speechless and looking exhausted, Carmen Barahona made her first court appearance Sunday (via CCTV) in front of a judge to face murder charges in connection with the death and abuse of her adopted 10-year-old daughter and the girl’s twin brother.
There has to be a way to protect children and hold CPS/DCF accountable. That they operate within the extreme secrecy of family court is a big problem. Family court needs to be transparent and all of the players need to be held accountable with criminal penalties for wrong doing and negligence. We need citizen oversight boards. Once again, Rilya Wilson comes to mind.
(03-07-2011, 08:02 PM)shitstorm Wrote: There has to be a way to protect children and hold CPS/DCF accountable. That they operate within the extreme secrecy of family court is a big problem. Family court needs to be transparent and all of the players need to be held accountable with criminal penalties for wrong doing and negligence. We need citizen oversight boards. Once again, Rilya Wilson comes to mind.
I am reminded of Lisa Steinberg. I was heartsick over her story.
Goddamn, look at that bullshit about FL DCF!!! These insane people were FOSTER PARENTS and allowed to ADOPT????????????? These fucking Florida DCF scumbags need to go to prison, right along with the filth they placed these poor children with. Mutherfuckers are responsible for the disappearance of Rilya Wilson and the worst that came out of that were slaps on the wrists and a few people fired. When it was revealed that Rilya had been missing for over a year, and that the case worker had filed FALSE REPORTS about checking on her, it also came out that Florida had lost track of FIVE HUNDRED CHILDREN. FIVE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!!!! How do we know they weren't sold into some sex trafficking/kiddie porn ring? WE DON'T. Half of the dept could be pedophiles and nobody would know because nobody is accountable. Conversely, CPS/DCF at al, are just as notorious for taking kids away from loving families when they shouldn't be!!!!!!!!
OMG, everything is so fucked up. This is the nanny state, in action, overseeing the dirtbags of society. It's incompetent and corrupt morons in charge of the slave plantation.
Why are these fucking immigrants in this country?! Like we don't have enough of our own dirtbags? We need MORE??? And, lets make them FOSTER PARENTS!!! Yeah, that's a great idea. Oh, fuck, we are so screwed as a country.
it also came out that Florida had lost track of FIVE HUNDRED CHILDREN. FIVE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!!!! How do we know they weren't sold into some sex trafficking/kiddie porn ring? WE DON'T. Half of the dept could be pedophiles and nobody would know because nobody is accountable. Conversely, CPS/DCF at al, are just as notorious for taking kids away from loving families when they shouldn't be!!!!!!!!
OMG, everything is so fucked up. This is the nanny state, in action, overseeing the dirtbags of society. It's incompetent and corrupt morons in charge of the slave plantation.
Why are these fucking immigrants in this country?! Like we don't have enough of our own dirtbags? We need MORE??? And, lets make them FOSTER PARENTS!!! Yeah, that's a great idea. Oh, fuck, we are so screwed as a country.
Throwing money at it will NOT help.
[/quote]
I feel your pain shitstorm. Agree with every word you wrote.
(03-07-2011, 08:02 PM)shitstorm Wrote: There has to be a way to protect children and hold CPS/DCF accountable. That they operate within the extreme secrecy of family court is a big problem. Family court needs to be transparent and all of the players need to be held accountable with criminal penalties for wrong doing and negligence. We need citizen oversight boards. Once again, Rilya Wilson comes to mind.
I am reminded of Lisa Steinberg. I was heartsick over her story.
(03-08-2011, 08:35 PM)Midwest Spy Wrote: it also came out that Florida had lost track of FIVE HUNDRED CHILDREN. FIVE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!!!! How do we know they weren't sold into some sex trafficking/kiddie porn ring? WE DON'T. Half of the dept could be pedophiles and nobody would know because nobody is accountable. Conversely, CPS/DCF at al, are just as notorious for taking kids away from loving families when they shouldn't be!!!!!!!!
OMG, everything is so fucked up. This is the nanny state, in action, overseeing the dirtbags of society. It's incompetent and corrupt morons in charge of the slave plantation.
Why are these fucking immigrants in this country?! Like we don't have enough of our own dirtbags? We need MORE??? And, lets make them FOSTER PARENTS!!! Yeah, that's a great idea. Oh, fuck, we are so screwed as a country.
Throwing money at it will NOT help.
I feel your pain shitstorm. Agree with every word you wrote.
[/quote]
FIVE HUNDRED they "lost track of". FIVE FUCKING HUNDRED. That's just one state. The others are just as bad.
Storm and Midwest, if you follow just the barahona case in the Miami Herald, your rage will consume you! as it does me. as a LEO in florida, i had to often deal with them and it was an exercise in futility. i tried to understand their overwhelming caseloads, but this was life or death! i hope this case will finally cause a groundswell of change in florida. i know the judge was enraged.
and of course it's not only florida. it played a role in the Zahra case in NC as well. and countless others that are not high-profile.
(03-08-2011, 08:35 PM)Midwest Spy Wrote: it also came out that Florida had lost track of FIVE HUNDRED CHILDREN. FIVE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!!!! How do we know they weren't sold into some sex trafficking/kiddie porn ring? WE DON'T. Half of the dept could be pedophiles and nobody would know because nobody is accountable. Conversely, CPS/DCF at al, are just as notorious for taking kids away from loving families when they shouldn't be!!!!!!!!
OMG, everything is so fucked up. This is the nanny state, in action, overseeing the dirtbags of society. It's incompetent and corrupt morons in charge of the slave plantation.
Why are these fucking immigrants in this country?! Like we don't have enough of our own dirtbags? We need MORE??? And, lets make them FOSTER PARENTS!!! Yeah, that's a great idea. Oh, fuck, we are so screwed as a country.
Throwing money at it will NOT help.
I feel your pain shitstorm. Agree with every word you wrote.
FIVE HUNDRED they "lost track of". FIVE FUCKING HUNDRED. That's just one state. The others are just as bad.
[/quote]
I can't even imagine the fear and pain these kids lived with, as does every other child that's abused.
How do rid our world of the monsters that commit these heinous acts? There's got to be something that can be done.
Can we really blame a governmental agency for this? Society is to blame. Someone raised these fucked up parents that can't take care of their own children. Why are there so many now?
The stupidest thing they do to "fix" this is give children to grandparents who raised the fucked up parents in the first place...
WE have to do something. Don't leave it up to the government. Be a mentor to a kid who needs you.
(03-15-2013, 07:12 PM)aussiefriend Wrote: You see Duchess, I have set up a thread to discuss something and this troll is behaving just like Riotgear did.
Rilya Wilson, VANISHED, while a ward of the of the state Florida and a fucking social worker who filed false reports for a YEAR, claiming she was visiting every month. Why isn't that bitch in prison???
(03-08-2011, 08:39 PM)Lady Cop Wrote: Storm and Midwest, if you follow just the barahona case in the Miami Herald, your rage will consume you! as it does me. as a LEO in florida, i had to often deal with them and it was an exercise in futility. i tried to understand their overwhelming caseloads, but this was life or death! i hope this case will finally cause a groundswell of change in florida. i know the judge was enraged.
and of course it's not only florida. it played a role in the Zahra case in NC as well. and countless others that are not high-profile.
I know LC. It actually depresses me. I have 3 kids, and can't imagine any of them suffering like Zahra, these two twins, and the thousands and thousands of others. I want to stick my head in the sand, because I don't know what to do.
(03-08-2011, 08:44 PM)Cracker Wrote: Can we really blame a governmental agency for this? Society is to blame. Someone raised these fucked up parents that can't take care of their own children. Why are there so many now?
The stupidest thing they do to "fix" this is give children to grandparents who raised the fucked up parents in the first place...
WE have to do something. Don't leave it up to the government. Be a mentor to a kid who needs you.
If you blame "society" then the people who are actually responsible will not be held accountable. I'm not responsible for this, you're not.
I understand the political and social bullshit that's created a lot of this but it's just too damn broad a subject to address! The corrupt in government will continue to protect the corrupt in government and "liberals" will keep making excuses for the nanny state that they have created, along with misfits that result from it, and it's all about preserving a status quo that is of financial benefit to and protects the political power of the establishment. They have created a plantation of an ignorant, criminal slave class and this is how they "manage" them.
We should either criminally charge or financially charge people who brought children into the world they can't/don't/won't care for properly. Why isn't it a crime?
I didn't create the problem, but I do mentor. It is the one thing I CAN do about it. Otherwise I just feel helpless and hopeless.
(03-15-2013, 07:12 PM)aussiefriend Wrote: You see Duchess, I have set up a thread to discuss something and this troll is behaving just like Riotgear did.
Four days after Nubia Barahona’s decomposed body was found in the flatbed of her adoptive father’s pickup truck, state child-welfare authorities completed a quick review of the 10-year-old girl’s involvement with Florida’s child protection system, and concluded that a series of abuse investigations lacked “a sense of urgency’’ and contained several instances of shoddy case work.
Nubia’s adoptive parents, Jorge and Carmen Barahona, were charged Monday with first-degree murder, child abuse and neglect for both Nubia’s death and events that led up to it. Her twin brother, Victor, was found badly burned by caustic chemicals in Jorge Barahona’s truck on Valentine’s Day, hours before Nubia’s body was discovered.
On Feb. 18, four days later, state Department of Children & Families administrators completed an 11-page analysis of their efforts on behalf of the children, detailing a host of lapses involving five child-abuse and neglect investigations that followed the twins’ placement in the Barahonas’ then-foster home, as well as the actions of privately run foster care and adoption agencies under contract with DCF.
The report was provided to The Miami Herald in response to a public records lawsuit filed last month.
A review of the investigation records for two abuse reports in 2010 and 2011 show:
• Records don’t document that “diligent efforts’’ were made to locate Nubia and Victor after the state’s abuse hotline received a Feb. 10 call that the children were being bound with tape and locked in a bathroom. The twin’s adoptive mother, Carmen Barahona, told a DCF investigator the children were with her husband, a statement police now say was meant to mislead investigators.
• No law enforcement agency was notified of the Feb. 10 abuse allegations before Nubia was found dead. “Based on the allegations of bizarre punishment and physical injury, [police] involvement would have been critical at the onset of the investigation,’’ the report said.
• A June 2010 report that Nubia was “uncontrollably’’ hungry, very thin and losing her hair should have been labeled by the agency’s Tallahassee-based hotline as an allegation of abuse — not as a report that the Barahaonas needed help from the state. Coding the complaint an abuse report could have placed the family under “closer scrutiny’’ when the investigation began.
Police said Monday that the children had been beaten and tortured for a year prior to Nubia’s death, which would have included the time of the June report. The June investigation was closed with a finding of no need for services or intervention by the state.
• The investigator assigned to the February hotline call, Andrea Fleary, did not attempt to interview the Barahonas’ two other adoptive kids outside of Carmen Barahona’s presence. The two children, the report said, “appeared to be strongly influenced by their caregiver,’’ and may have been more forthcoming in a private conversation with the investigator. Records, in fact, show one of the two children had tried to tell an investigator about a family “secret,’’ but was shunted aside by Carmen.
Records don’t specify whether the investigator for a 2007 report that said Nubia was dirty, unkempt and hungry interviewed the children away from the parents at the center of the complaint — though the report said “Nubia is afraid to talk.’’
The report also takes issue with the performance of foster-care and adoption workers with either DCF, which privatized foster care around 2005, or Our Kids, the lead foster-care agency now under contract with the state. The Barahonas were licensed foster parents from July 1999 through July 2009.
Records don’t show that the twins were seen by caseworkers every 30 days, as required, and interviewed by caseworkers “during the majority of home visits’’ through their five years in foster care, the report says.
Notes in case files also do not show that caseworkers contacted doctors, teachers, childcare workers or others to confirm information that was provided by the Barahonas before the twins were adopted in 2009, the report says.
And, most importantly, records repeatedly documented an “immediate need’’ for dental care for the children, though the kids apparently seldom or never went to the dentist. At a court hearing last month, a Child Protection Team doctor said the Barahonas’ three surviving children all need extensive dental work, including root canals and extractions.
At a hearing of an investigative panel Monday, the head of the privately run Center for Family & Child Enrichment, Delores Dunn, said case managers from her group made 48 visits to the family between June 2005 and May 2009, when the twins were adopted.
During tense questioning by the three-member panel in which Dunn was repeatedly asked to specify ways the process could be improved, she said that, in hindsight, “I would not [do anything] different. I cannot say to you that anything that we did caused this death.’’
fleary gets her sorry ass handed to her by the Judge--->
A review of the investigation records for two abuse reports in 2010 and 2011 show:
• A June 2010 report that Nubia was “uncontrollably’’ hungry, very thin and losing her hair should have been labeled by the agency’s Tallahassee-based hotline as an allegation of abuse — not as a report that the Barahaonas needed help from the state. Coding the complaint an abuse report could have placed the family under “closer scrutiny’’ when the investigation began.
Police said Monday that the children had been beaten and tortured for a year prior to Nubia’s death, which would have included the time of the June report. The June investigation was closed with a finding of no need for services or intervention by the state.
Is this the "special conditions" coding mentioned in the previous article?
And why wouldn't this be classified as neglect at the very least?
![[Image: Rilya_Wilson_149916e.jpg]](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/multimedia/dynamic/00149/Rilya_Wilson_149916e.jpg)
![[Image: 110224_DCF_child_abuser_investigator_Andrea_Fleary.jpg]](http://www.wsvn.com/images/news_articles/210x118/110224_DCF_child_abuser_investigator_Andrea_Fleary.jpg)