Okay folks I first want to say that I am sorry for ducking out on you yesterday. Once I got the partial video up and a few tweets that answered some of our long term questions, I had to check out. Yesterday’s revelations just drained the life out of me and I needed to shut down and sleep. To escape the horror Sherin couldn’t. I have seen worse cases upfront and personal but I just had to decompress and step away this time. Now, that being said let me try to spread some grouchyness.
I don’t know where to start so this may not be totally cohesive. I want to address so much my brain is whirring. Ok, the femur fracture, the femur is the largest strongest bone in the human body. It takes a huge amount of force to fracture one and the pain can be immense partly due to the fact that a it takes stress everytime the human body is upright. Because it is located below the heart it had a throbbing pain. From what I could discern from the testimony Sherin did not initially recieve treatment for it as it seemed to be found in the full body x-ray series and it had begun to heal on it’s own. If it had been treated he type of casting would depend on which end of the femur was affected. So in essence Sherin kept waking around after the largest bone in her body was broken. Take a second to digest that..................
Maria made reference in her follow up video to the Dr. testifying that the arm fracture(s) story did not match the physical findings and the fracture had been from a “twisting”. I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that meant she had 1 or more spiral fractures. Spiral Factures are the holy grail of child abuse injuries. Children’s bones are still somewhat soft to allow for growth and will actually bend to a degree before actually breaking. Most childhood accidents that result in fractures create “greenstick fractures”, so named because the bones in essence had a degree of flexibility like the “green” or fresh stick from a tree. Spiral fractures are a result of being both pulled and twisted with great force. Any time a child has a spiral fracture abuse MUST be considered. An example of an accidental injury that could cause a spiral is getting a foot stuck in a way that would prevent it from moving with the rest of the body and then falling. The rapid move and the weight transfer that would occur during the fall would create the force while the unability to move the foot would cause the “twist”. I hope that helps to give you a better visualization of the mechanics involved.
Some of us, myself included have attempted to expain the added challenges and stressors that adoption can cause on the best of parents. I have often referred to the tools necessary to cope with these stressors. Now these added challenges in no way excuse a parents abuse of the child but serves to paint a picture of what can occur. Having the coping tools to deal with it is a absolute must. I can,now that the evidence is there conclude that not only did Sini and WM not have the tools necessary to deal with those challeges, they most likely didn’t even have the toolbox to keep them in.
I know that some took offense to my post about Sini and WM being more like us than was comfortable but I stand by that. It was the fact that they seemed on the surface like the “normal” family that I believe gave them the ability to continue to hurt this child after their doctor made a CPS referral for abuse. The fact that she was a nurse made physicians give her the benefit of the doubt longer than they would have in the case of the meth heads or the single parent. Doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers and the such usually get treated differently in these incidents. They are better at coming up with good cover stories and excuses. People also tend to trust them more.
CPS should have removed both children if they could not determine who the abuser was, if for no other reason than simply because they couldn’t tell who was doing it. Sini tried to place the blame on the orphanage, the physical therapy, the other daughter and probably the day care and any one else she could come up with. On one hand they acted like the concerned parents worried about her weight and size and that would have been hard to reconcile with the x-rays and signs of abuse. Time and time again social services has failed children of abuse. It is a system that needs redesigned in a major way. The problem with CPS being held responsible for their inactivity in the case comes in because there is no one with legal standing to file a wrongful death civil case on Sherin’s behalf. Historically, it is the impending wrongful death suits that motivate social services to terminate employees that fail a child. In some states it is easier to hold them accountable for their inactivity than others. In the Gabriel Fernandez case in California 2 social workers and 2 supervisors are facing criminal trials for their part in leaving Gabriel with his killers. In the Adrian Jones case the maternal family had filed a lawsuit against Social Services in 2 states for leaving him with his killers.
At the beginning of yesterdays hearing the prosecutor entered into evidence various documents including birth certificates. She also entered into evidence the medial records of both children from Baylor. Sherin’s medical records in her short 15 months in Texas were about and inch and a half to 2 inch thick and the sisters was about a third larger in her nearly 4 years.
Maria referred to “services” from CPS in her video. Those are simply put reunification services. Those would include a reunification plan that lays out the expectations and requirements to regain custody, parent classes, anger management, random drug and alcohol testing, specific medical care or intervention. CPS has a wide latitude in the hoops it can require parents to jump through to regain custody.
As much as I hate to admit it I guess I owe and apology to Omair and the Omairettes who have been screaming loudly that Sini was the devil incarnate. They have lambasted her since the beginning. After yesterday, I too believe that she was the Alpha. That does not absolve WM. If indeed she was the primary abuser he was complicit. He knew and remained silent or if the opposite is true she knew. I now believe we are going to see a skull fracture in the autopsy. I believe Sherin suffered a head injury probably Wednesday evening or night. She missed day care Thursday we now know. She had been vomiting, a good indicator of possible head injury. They didn’t dare take her to dinner Friday evening as she was probably showing signs of the head injury with her cognitive functions altered. They knew if they sought medical care they would lose the other daughter and there was no way they would risk that for a defective child. They hoped she would pull through it just like her previous untreated injuries. When they came back from dinner she had vomited in the kitchen so they put her in the garage. At some point Sini went to bed and WM either stayed up or got up during the night and went to check on her. She vomited again and probably asperated some back into her lungs. That is the “choking” in confession 2.0. He held her with her tiny head on his shoulder until he believed she passed. She may have already passed when he went to the garage. I noticed a vent for the airconditioning in the video of the garage so she may have even been hypothermic from laying on the garage floor slowing her breathing and heart rate. She may have even been unconscious and not actually dead when he took her to the culvert. If so, death was imminent.
I think at this point it is safe to say that the two of them acted in concert to cover up the abuse and her death. I don’t know who actually dealt the blow that was the cause of death and frankly it doesn’t really matter. They both are equally responsible. They both allowed the abuse, neither reported it, the both failed to get her necessary medical attention, and they both covered up the death so as far as I am concerned they both killed her her just a surely as if they both fired a fatal shot. May god have mercy on them because I certainly hope that a jury won’t.
I am sure that I have left something important out but I need to stop now.
Here is a link to Marias video on my google drive in case anyone has trouble viewing it on her FB.
[video]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fYrbyLwcKkppU3LNIFsR-kYKf8kMZ9jz[/video]
