A lot is being blamed on "staffing difficulties" and case overloads, yet it was so obvious this child was in need of help ASAP and the case was repeatedly mishandled. The more I read about this case, the more angry I am becoming.
I won't repeat all the abuses this little girl endured the day of her death, but they are in the article. More info on how CPS mishandled the case is from your link at
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews....gency-failed-at-every-turn-records-show.html/
CPS WORKERS:CPS
Mother, Jeri Quezada
boyfriend, Charles Phifer
CPS workers: supervisor Amber Davila (fired); caseworker Claudell Banks (quit): Special Investigator Shane Fortner (resigned)
screened at Children’s Medical Center’s abuse unit, Referral and Evaluation of At Risk Children, or REACH
On Jan. 4, CPS workers were called to check on Leiliana and her 2-year-old brother because, as the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office had warned child abuse investigators, the children had recently lived with a man suspected of sexually assaulting another child.
[According to agency rules, a check should have been made within 72 hours. It took 36 days]
[Mother, Jeri] Quezada’s previous run-ins with child-protection workers in Texas and Illinois might have been foreboding if caseworkers had actually reviewed her history, which a CPS higher-up wrote that they had not done.
In the week before Leiliana’s death, Davila asked another CPS worker to track down Quezada. The mother had canceled meetings and stopped returning calls after a doctor determined bruises on Leiliana’s hands and around her eyes were signs of physical abuse.
Leiliana was pronounced dead in the early morning of March 13, and Quezada and her boyfriend, Charles Phifer, were arrested on charges of felony injury to a child.
[Special Investigator assigned to the case I February, Shane Fortner]
Fortner visited the family Feb. 9 and saw that Leiliana had an old purple bruise under her left eye and another yellow bruise near her right eye. He took photos. The girl told Fortner that she had fallen and that “there is nothing at home that scares her.”
“I advised Mr. Banks of my findings and the need to have [Leiliana] interviewed forensically ASAP,” Fortner wrote to CPS managers after Leiliana’s death.
Doctors examined Leiliana the next day, Feb. 12, Davila wrote, but she didn’t get the report until March 2, more than two weeks later.
“I was NEVER contacted by REACH,” she wrote. “I had to request the report several times.”
But two weeks earlier, REACH had called Banks during Leiliana’s examination, according to the memo recommending Davila’s firing.
“Leiliana had been seen by REACH clinic staff and concerns were noted regarding the numerous injuries observed and concern for physical abuse of Leiliana,” wrote Stacy Reynolds, a program administrator in the regional office that covers Dallas and outlying counties.
In her memo, Reynolds, the CPS regional director, wrote that “there is no indication that previous Child Protective Services history was reviewed” by caseworkers who had contacted Leiliana’s mother. The files would have been instantly available to any caseworker or investigator looking at the case.
Within a single week in November 2014, Quezada was arrested on a drug charge, Soto was arrested for fraud, and Leiliana’s paternal grandmother sued — ultimately without success — to get custody of the girl.
[Soto is a previous boyfriend, now in jail, accused of molesting a 5 yr. old at same address he was living with the mother and Leiliana]
The state separated Quezada from her children after police pulled her over and found meth in her car. But she regained custody in February 2015 after her charge was dropped and she tested clean for drug use, according to her former lawyer. The agency officially closed its investigation in May 2015.
A year later, after Leiliana’s death, the CPS memos obtained by The News referred to “previous investigations where Mr. Soto was alleged to have sexually abused Leiliana.”
In late January, Davila wrote up Banks for numerous missteps, an attitude problem and failures including: “In numerous cases the children were either never seen or had not been seen for over 5 months.”
