It was expected after an appellate panel ruled earlier in the month that Social Workers shouldn’t be held accountable for not stopping the murder and torture carried out by one of the Palmdale young boy.
Los ANGELES (KABC) The Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ruled against social workers who are accused of abuse of children and falsifying documents concerning the death of 8 year old Gabriel Fernandez.
Its decision to fire was widely anticipated in the wake of the decision of an appeals panel in January, that social workers could not be prosecuted for their inability to stop the brutal murder and torture of the Palmdale boy.
The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services issued an announcement on the official website of Thursday in reaction to the decision of dismissing the charges. It declared:
We are grateful for that the Court has made this determination. Through the decades, we at the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services have made significant progress in reducing risks and increase our capabilities across the county to provide better services for the most vulnerable children and families. as a unit , we remain committed to ensuring that improvements continue.
Gabriel was killed in the month of May 2013 His mother and partner have been found guilty later of torture and murder. Evidence in the trial showed how long beatings and torture were endured.
Social workers Stefanie Rodriguez (35) as well as Patricia Clement, 69, and managers Kevin Bom, 41, and Gregory Merritt, 64, were each charged with one count of felony child abuse and one charge of falsifying documents for public use. The prosecution contends that they failed to follow the correct procedures to protect Gabriel and later forged documents in connection with the incident.
In the month of January, three justices from a panel composed of three justices from the 2nd District Court of Appeal issued an decision that ordered the court that had previously disqualified the allegations against the social workers. In a unanimous decision, the panel decided that there was no plausible reason to charge the four people responsible for falsely claiming they were the child of the family and theft of documents.
In June of 2018 Superior Justice George G. Lomeli sentenced Isauro Aguirre to be executed for murder in the first degree of the boy as well as a claim for a special circumstance of murder that included torture. Pearl Sinthia Fernandez was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, following her plea agreement to first-degree murder and admitting the torture charges.
The Lomeli also addressed an issue involving a social worker, and in the year 2018 , she rejected a motion to dismiss charges, saying that the situation happened due to it being “foreseeable. ”
The appellate court officially referred an appeal back to the the lower court again in April. The court was set to dismiss the case on Thursday.
