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“A broken femur in April and now an acute lacerated liver and rib fracture?” Lederman wrote in an email obtained by the Herald under the state’s public records law. “FOR AN ELEVEN MONTH OLD,” she added.
Lederman ordered DCF to file a petition seeking to strip the boy’s parents of their right to raise him.
Carolyn Cornelius, a DCF investigator who is looking into how the boy’s liver was torn, said the agency closed the case because the state Department of Health’s Child Protection Team, which examines children for evidence of abuse and neglect, found the mother’s story credible. Before doing so, DCF offered the mother subsidized child care — which, she said, the mother refused.
In hindsight, Cornelius said, the Child Protection Team’s Miami chief, Walter Lambert, “does think it should’ve been a different finding previously, and they are certain now that this constitutes child abuse.”
Likewise, Cornelius added, had she been the investigator in the April incident, she would have done more to protect the baby.
“Had I worked it, it would’ve been totally different,” the investigator said.
Figarola blasted the agency for offering the mom only free day care, and other “services” that the investigator said she could not specify.
“She left her baby in a chair unattended,” Figarola said. “Even believing the best of this mother … the only service you offered was child care, and, when she refuses, you leave her alone.”
Before the hearing ended, members of the youngster’s family and close friends asked Figarola to allow them to visit the boy. Figarola became angry , wondering why none of them had stepped in to prevent abuse of the child.
With a severed liver, the judge said, the baby likely would have bled badly — which Cornelius confirmed. Anyone who changed the youngster’s diaper would have seen the blood.
“No, no, no!” the judge said. “Have you heard anything we’re saying?”
‘covering it up’
“Nobody who had contract with these poor little babies will have contact now,” the judge stipulated, referring to both the infant and his older sister. “Something happened to this child, and nobody is owning up to it, and people are covering it up … Now you can express all the concern you want, but when the baby needed someone, no one was there.”
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