A judge Thursday dismissed charges against four social workers who were accused of failing to protect an 8-year-old Antelope Valley boy whose mother and her boyfriend were convicted of his May 2013 torture death.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli — who had previously denied the defense’s request to dismiss the case — noted that a state appeals court panel had ordered him to vacate that ruling in the case of Stefanie Rodriguez and Patricia Clement and their supervisors, Kevin Bom and Gregory Merritt.
“Accordingly, pursuant to the court of appeal’s directive, the motions to dismiss are hereby granted,” the judge said.
The four were charged in March 2016 with one felony count each of child abuse and falsifying public record in connection with Gabriel Fernandez’s death.
District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced in February that “state law is not on our side” in the case filed by her office against the social workers following the appellate court panel’s ruling.
“My office vigorously pursued those who directly caused Gabriel’s death and those who failed to intervene to protect him,” the county’s top prosecutor said in a written statement released in February. “While we prevailed against those who inflicted the injuries, the appellate court rejected our theory of criminal liability against the social workers, who my office believed had a duty to protect Gabriel.”
In a statement released Thursday, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services said, “Over the years, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has taken significant steps to mitigate risk and improve our capacity countywide in order to best serve vulnerable children and families and as a department we remain committed to ensuring that reform continues.”
Isauro Aguirre — the boyfriend of the child’s mother — was sentenced to death in June 2018. He was convicted of first-degree murder, and jurors found true the special circumstance allegation of murder involving the infliction of torture.
The boy’s mother, Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, was sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading to first-degree murder and admitting the torture allegation.
An autopsy showed that the boy had a fractured skull, several broken ribs and burns over much of his body. His teacher testified that she called Rodriguez multiple times to report that Gabriel told her that his mother punched him and shot him in the face with a BB gun.
In its Jan. 6 ruling, the three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal found that Rodriguez, Clement, Bom and Merritt “never had the requisite duty to control the abusers and did not have care or custody of Gabriel” for purposes of the child abuse charge leveled against them and that they were “not officers” within the meaning of the Government Code section involving falsification of public records.
Associate Justice Victoria Gerrard Chaney concurred that the four could not be charged with child abuse, but wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that they could be prosecuted as public officers under the relevant government code section.
“Allowing a social worker to evade liability for falsifying a public document would incentivize social workers to put their own interests in avoiding liability for their misdeeds above the purpose of the state’s child welfare statutory scheme, which is child safety,” Chaney wrote.
“The petitioners’ actions here prevented the system from working in whatever way it might have had they done their jobs honestly, and offers no incentive for either DCFS or individual social workers to work to reform and repair the parts of the system that may fail the children it is intended to protect,” she added. “We have, in effect, encouraged DCFS and its social workers to cover their tracks if they stumble on the cracks in the system.”
Defense attorneys — who argued that the abuse and torture escalated months after a file on the boy had been closed and that there was insufficient evidence to take him away from his mother — took their case to the appellate court after Lomeli called the young boy’s death “foreseeable” and denied a motion to dismiss the charges against the four.
The appellate court panel refused Jan. 23 to reconsider its ruling, and the District Attorney’s Office subsequently decided against asking the California Supreme Court to review the case.
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