The recent story about the boy who was held for a year against his will in Tracy and physically abused should make our state leaders reflect on the success of our child welfare system and how serious the courts deal with child abuse.
The facts around this case are horrifying. The boy was sent to live with his “aunt” Caren Ramirez (although authorities now say that there is no relation) after his being removed from his father’s care because of abuse. It’s unclear from press account how he was placed with Ramirez, but after Ramirez daughter called authorities to report the abuse, the boy was sent to a foster care home and Ramirez was jailed. Eighteen months later, the boy ran away from the home in Tracy where Ramirez and two other adults had been brutally abusing him.
Just last September, the Bay Area was rattled by the death of a 15-year-old foster child in her aunt’s care. Jazzmin Davis had been starved, beaten and burned by her aunt for more than a year. The woman is in jail awaiting trial for murder, torture and child abuse charges to Jazzmin and her brother. Had local authorities done their jobs, Jazzmin might still be alive today.
The maddening fact is that our state leaders would rather worry about global warming and spaying dogs and cats than protect our children. These children were in the “system.” Authorities knew that the boy was being abused. The state’s solution? Send him to foster care (although the foster care system had already harmed him—it’s no wonder he ran away from that home). We didn’t even put his abuser in jail. Jazzmin didn’t even get the chance to be removed from her abuser’s care. Authorities didn’t pay enough attention to her to know that she was being so badly abused. Let’s not forget that we, the taxpayers, pay these guardians—family members or not—to “care” for the children we place with them.
Every adult in this state should feel shame about these cases. Stop for a moment and imagine the pain these two children felt for most of their lives. Many of us are spending time with our kids during this holiday season, taking them to see Santa and ice skating, shopping for gifts and attending holiday concerts. Most children in the foster care system don’t have this kind of love and attention and, worse, the government that is supposed to be protecting them isn’t. It is our tax money that supports this shameful system, including paying adults who, at times, are abusing the children in their care.
In the Tracy case, Ramirez and the couple she trained need to be in jail for a long, long time. Six children’s lives have been touched by this mess now (the abused boy, his brother and the couple’s four children). As a society, we should have zero tolerance for grown ups who abuse children.
But at the macro public policy level, our state leaders need to find a way to shake up our foster care system and increase the protections for children of unfit parents. We should look at the possibility of creating a system of orphanages where children can be better supervised and protected. The Schwarzenegger Administration and legislators should take a fresh look at the academic evidence of the success of orphanages and think about ways to support their growth. Honestly, if our leaders spent as much time trying to help fix the foster care system as they do talking about what kind of light bulbs we’re supposed to be using, maybe we’d see some improvements in lives of California’s foster children.