I still cant understand that people on this site are pointing the finger at Noema. She's not some wild party girl, she's pregnant, she doesn't have a lot of education. You really think someone like her is going to fool an entire team of investigators from the FBI. Also I believe people are reading too much into what Noema's mom said. In a latino low education family context it makes sense to say "why did she have to pay?" in Spanish it sounds more normal and I feel its part of their background that makes them ask such questions, probably come from a place where if your family member gets killed its to take a revenge of some sort, since in Central America , its more common for things like these to happen. I believe it was the "perfect storm" of a stranger acting on a desire and incredulously getting away with it. Whoever it is, they are probably still in disbelief they're getting away with it. If not that Dulce had some sort of accident at the park and is right there, tho that seems unlikely because she doesn't seem like the type to wander away, in the store video she's always wrangling her little brother and keeping close to mom
I think it's the stigma of repeated teen pregnancy, added to Noema's words that sort-of indicate that at one time she does think she was a 'party girl'. But that was, also in her own words, awhile ago, and her life has changed since then. She appears to have voluntarily given up not only the 'party' behavior of drinking and possible drug use (the drug association has never been clear to me), but the friends that went with it. For any teenage girl that's a major sacrifice, and it demonstrates her maturing awareness that prioritizing her children meant associating with people who focused on their responsibilities, not just having fun with a carefree and careless crowd.
For whatever reason she does not have a job, but given her lack of education and the economy in that area it's not surprising. Plenty of people in rural S. Jersey don't have jobs, or cannot perform those that are predominant, in agriculture and food processing. Noema's life has many challenges, and some are arguably self-inflicted, but in the time the public has known of her she has seemed neither irresponsible nor particularly ill-behaved to me. Not keeping her eyes on the kids at all times out in public is a lapse in judgment, not willful neglect. She is in need of guidance and education and "adulting" skills, including decision-making, but I do feel that criticism of her parenting hits below the belt. She's not Casey Anthony; she was a child who had children, and we know children are not the best caregivers precisely because they lack maturity, responsibility, and the ability to make well-considered decisions. No doubt that's why her parents have guardianship of Dulce and Manny, and she's okay with that arrangement.
We know of nothing Noema has ever done that was intended to harm her children, which is far more than many adults twice or three times her age can manage with the kids in their charge. She is not, as far as I can tell, the bad guy here. The bad guy is whoever took Dulce away without the permission or knowledge of the family that – whatever their problems, living arrangements, economic situation, or past – love her, nurtured her and her brother alongside their young aunt, and just want her to come home safely to them.
MOO.