Anitere Flores is willing to test her clout in the Florida Senate to fight a leadership decision to delay indefinitely the remaining $3.5 million in payments owed to the victim of one of the state's most horrific DCF-related abuse cases.
And I can't heap enough praise or gratitude on Miami Republican Flores and the rest of a group of South Florida legislators -- GOP Reps. Jose Felix Diaz and Erik Fresen and Democratic Sen. Eleanor Sobel -- for their righteous outrage, and for insisting that justice be done quickly and completely.
Mary Ellen Klas' Herald/Times story on Sunday, "Legislators vow to get payment to abused child," hit me like a ton of bricks. Please read it if you haven't already. It seems to me the Florida Department of Children and Families' negligence in the Barahona case just won't end.
In case you might have forgotten this case:
DCF agreed to pay $5 million to settle claims arising out of the 2011 death of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona and the horrific injuries suffered by her twin brother, Victor, at the hands of their adoptive parents.
How horrific? When Nubia was found, her decomposing body was "swimming in chemicals and stuffed in a garbage bag in the flatbed of her adoptive fathers pest control truck in Palm Beach County." Her twin Victor was in the cab of the truck with their adoptive father, Jorge Barahona. Victor was alive but unconscious, his body pocked with chemical burns.
An investigation after Nubia's death revealed that the children -- including two other adopted siblings -- routinely were choked, beaten, forced to eat cockroaches and food that contained feces, and forced to watch as plastic bags were placed over each others heads.
DCF overruled the recommendation of a guardian ad litem that the Barahonas be denied adoption. And when school personnel and others who observed the children's condition over a period of many months urgently appealed to DCF to intervene, no agency action was taken.
Klas' story reeks of attorney-advised lawmakers afraid to become too liable, take too much responsibility, set too much of a costly precedent to compensate a child who suffered unconscionably, as much through the incompetence of a state agency as at the hands of his adoptive parents.
To get the remaining $3.75 million, DCF officials have told attorneys they have to get the historically tight-fisted state Legislature to approve the payments in a "claims bill."
Though Senate President Andy Gardiner is standing by his general counsel's and DCF's recommendation that the payments be put on "indefinite hold," Coral Gables attorney Neal Roth, who negotiated the settlement for Victor, said he expects Gardiner ultimately to do the right thing. Gardiner looks more favorably on claims bills than former President Don Gaetz did last session, he said.
Historically, Florida lawmakers don't take kindly to claims bills.By law, governmental agencies are protected from paying more than $200,000 for wrongdoing unless the Legislature agrees to lift the cap in a claims bill. Which is why lawmakerslook at the passage of such bills as encouragement to sue the state. As one lawyer told me, "There are a lot of dead kids in South Florida because of DCF. What if they all wanted a big settlement? That's what the Legislature is afraid of.
Its an injustice of incredible proportions ..., the Herald quotes Flores as saying. I wont rest until there is something we can do to help him and his new family.
(Incidentally, Victor Barahona is not with his "new" family. He is with theblood relatives who tried desperately to adopt the twins before the DCF adoption machinery decided in favor of the Barahonas.)
For now, everything positive for Victor halts. Never mind the settlement agreement. Why? Because -- surprise, surprise -- DCF screwed up. Again. They failed to agree to settlements for Victor Barahona's two siblings, forcing their attorneys to file lawsuits.
First we paid lawyers to make this deal. Now we pay lawyers to un-make the deal. Isn't anybody going to complain on behalf of the taxpayer? Hundreds of thousands of dollars for lawyers, but nothing more for the child victim of unspeakable abuse, who remains in treatment today?
I don't know about you, but if I were in the Florida Legislature, I would consider myself part of the problem if I weren't standing strong with Flores, Sobel, Diaz and Fresen, working to do the right and honorable thing for these victims of a broken state agency.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
