Evil exists. If you need proof, just look at the horrific case of little Charleeni Ferreira.
Charleeni, age 10, of Philadelphia, Pa., died on October 21, 2009. Her father, Domingo Ferreira, 53, and stepmother Margarita Garabito, 43, were charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child.
So how bad was the abuse? The police called it “torture.”
Charleeni actually died from an infection that resulted from broken ribs that were not treated. She had a host of new and old injuries, including a fractured pelvis and a 7-inch gash on her head that had been stuffed with gauze and covered with a hair weave.
For more details, read Signs of Charleeni’s “torture” were hidden, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
What makes this case so appalling is that a school nurse reported suspected child abuse. In the three years before her death, Charleeni was seen by numerous doctors, a psychiatrist and a therapist. The Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) provided services to the family for five months.
Now, the DHS commissioner is trying to figure out what went wrong.
Bamboozled
Here’s what I think happened: One or both of the parents were sociopaths, and they bamboozled the child welfare workers.
The parents denied any abuse—workers described them as “hurt” by the allegations—but agreed to intervention anyway. After a period of supervision, child welfare workers closed the case. They also recommended that Charleeni’s parents contact a legal aid agency if the school nurse continued to complain about child abuse.
Charleeni herself was also terrorized and manipulated. She told a doctor at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children that her family treated her “like a princess.” Welts on her hand occurred when she accidentally stabbed herself with a pencil in the dark. She and her parents always had explanations for her injuries, although they didn’t always match.
Perpetrators
Police apparently believe that the stepmother, Margarita Garabito, was the main perpetrator. But the father, Domingo Ferreira, didn’t stop her. In fact, he showed no remorse and fell asleep in the police interview room. Then, Ferreira hung himself in his jail cell.
This, of course, is convenient for the stepmother. Her court-appointed attorney terms the suicide “an admission of guilt.”
See Charleeni’s death blamed on her dead father, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I don’t know who initiated the child abuse. Women can be abusive sociopaths. They can also be accomplices, under the control of male sociopaths.
Evil exists
So what’s the lesson here?
Evil exists, but it can be concealed by seemingly plausible explanations.
Evil exists, but it can be disguised by expressions of concern.
Evil exists, but victims can be too terrorized to speak of it.
People who are in a position to see signs of child abuse—doctors, teachers, social workers—need to understand that evil does not want to be discovered, so they must pay close attention to any small clues.
Very true … and very sad that teacher training programmes give ONE day on child protection and usually focus on sexual and physical abuse rather than psychological and emotional. There is no content on psychopathy or personality disorders and the signs to look out for. I included a workshop for a full day when I could but doubt my organisation will incorporate it in an ongoing way although I have advocated for this to happen. If teachers don’t know the subtle signs then how are they to know which families and children to monitor more closely?
Abuse is not always as obvious as black eyes and stitches. People who are around children need to know the more subtle ways torture can be enacted over long periods of time. I would also highlight that teachers can only do so much – they are often bound by time constraints and ridiculous demands for documentation. Yes they are in a good position to see things and to hopefully advocate for help, but getting that help and documenting their concerns takes time and if they are not supported to do this by management then where does that time come from? From their own personal time and their personal family’s time? Is that fair?
Most fulltime teachers already give 10 – 15 hours a week for free – there are limits to what one person can actually do. I see this move to put more and more responsibilities on teachers that actually belong on the shoulders of other professionals in other agencies. What about the child protection agencies>? Why are people afraid to refer to them for investigation? Why is the cure sometimes worse than the illness? In my country many children have been removed from poor home situations but put into worse situations by agencies charged to protect them. Some children have been raped and killed by caregivers that were supposedly rigorously checked out.
We have to also consider the move to corporate care for children – many after school and holiday programmes and certainly early childhood programmes are run by private corporations that sometimes have shareholders. These entities exist for one purpose only – to make profit for shareholders. And the way they usually try to trim expenses is by cutting back on staffing … hence more on each individual and no time to really investigate what is happening for individual families.
Doctors have adopted a similar ethic in recent years with appointments trimmed back to a bare slot of time to hear the complaint and then a while to prescribe. This is hardly ideal for investigating a family situation.
What we have is a problem of central government. Through a process of gradualism in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost benefit analysis’ and ‘key stakeholder returns’ all major social services have been stripped of much needed resourcing to deal with these problems. Our hospitals are short staffed and dealing with permanent turnover problems, our kindies and preschools have the same problems and schools have burgeoning class sizes and never ending curricular changes foisted on teachers. Without resourcing there is little that can be done. Perhaps awareness needs to be raised in governments in our respective countries that psychopathy and sociopathy are disorders that cut across all sectors of society, harm people of all ages and need the concerted effort of all govt departments to work together in supporting victims as they deal with the aftermath. Public awareness also needs to be raised – most people still think a sociopath is a mass murderer – they don’t realise he could easily be their next door neighbour.
It is a huge problem. But perhaps more of a problem is the fact that humans don’t seem to care about one another anymore. In advocating the Western ideal of independence and personal autonomy we leave people to their own hell if they make the wrong choices or encounter the wolf on their path. This is a business ethos, but is not suited to dealing with such human situations – no cost can be attributed to the pain a sociopath inflicts – there aren’t funds enough in the world to cover it.
The other problem is the partner of the sociopath is likely to defend them. This is possibily the biggest stumbling block of all. How can you go against the family in seeking help for a child when one person disagrees there is a problem … would be very difficult to get management support for subtle signals in that kin dof situation where there are no obvious bruises or cuts.
Thanks for writing this – made me think,
This is the right time, to put extreme public pressure on the agency that ignored the abuse to have the responsible people fired. Only by example, they will learn not to ignore such cases.
Rosa,
If I could tell you ONE thing to look for when the child is a pre teen or young teenager….I would say to pay CLOSE attention at how SHE percieves things.
Not so much what she puts “out there” but how she takes things IN.
She may still seem loving and fine on the outside at 10/12/13 years old…What she projects “out” to you and others might seem perfectly normal.
At that age pay very CLOSE attention to how she RECIEVES love and other emotions. Look closely to see if you think she is really “absorbing” it, taking it in?
To me the childs perception SEEMS very important in determining this at this age.
That might not be what a “professional” would tell you. But from my experience, and the abrupt change that my son went through at puberty……I just think it is a KEY in this.
Recently one of our local TV anchors in Little rock, a beautiful young woman was murdered. She lived a day or two in the hospital. a physician and 2 hospital employees accessed her medical records out of CUROSITY and “violated her privacy.” They were publicly charged and convicted and sentenced and “crucified”—and yes, what they did wasx WRONG, but PRIVACY is so highly valued while SAFETY of a child seems to be so lightly taken. The laws of “privacy” seem to guard the RIGHTS of people with an STD but not the SAFETY of their partners. As a medical professional I was prohibited from telling the wife of a man that he had an STD.
I couldn’t sew up a cut on a finger of a 14 year old kid, without her parents’ permission, but I could give her birth control pills and not tell them. A young girl who has started her menses is entitled to “sexual privacy” but yet the law says I must report it if she is having sex, yet can be prosecuted by another law if I DO report it and “violate her privacy.
WHERE DID COMMON SENSE GO?”
Witsend:
I will do that.
But, at the ages 10/12/13, aren’t kids trying to get away from their parents? It’s like they want nothing to do with their parents at that age.
Kids don’t want to be hugged or kissed by their parents at that age, especially in front of their peers.
So, how do you tell what is normal and what is not?
I once suspected child abuse as a teacher, and went to the home, because the kids were always stealing at school, but they were only stealing food! (one of the boys was in my class). So I wondered, but had nothing to report. So I went to the home. It was a foster mom. She told me a sad story about how the biological mother had never fed the kids so now that had a phobia about not getting enough food, so much so that she had to put a lock on the refrigerator. Young, gullible me, believed her. I went away thinking what a wonderful woman to take in all those foster kids.
Only later the boy had bruises and so I kept him in at recess and asked what had happened. Something about the shame in his face when he told me he had fallen on his bike made me kneel down beside him and say “No, your mom did that didn’t she? ” (which I suppose was stupid but I was listening to my gut for once) and the tears welled up in his eyes and then I told him it was okay, that even mom’s who love their little boys make mistakes like hitting them or not feeding them. And then he really started sobbing. And I knew and reported it and they took them from the mother, but I don’t know what happened to her after that.
He was skinny! What made me believe he was so determined to take food that she had to padlock the refrigerator? He should have been fat…all the kids should have been fat…if that were the case! She was pocketing the money given to her for their care and wasn’t even feeding them, and was depending on the school’s free breakfast and lunch program, but that wasn’t enough.
I guess I just didn’t comprehend that a woman could be lying to my face.
NOW I know what her problem was. I still have to shake myself even after example after example, to know that they don’t always look evil or seem mean, etc. UGHHHHH!
omg, Jah,
I’d need therapy after that. I need therapy anyway.
sooooo depressing.
How could God do this to so many people, I’m having a crisis of faith today.
Rosa,
The answer is both yes and no. At thit age they might tend to “want” to appear independent in front of their peers. But its mostly just for “show”. Because they are all in the same boat.
They NEED rides to school, practices, sporting events, sleepovers, the mall, ect. Just about everything they do at this age still includes alot of parent involvement. Lots of time spent in the car! You can feel almost like a taxi service for a few years. Lotta good communication can happen in a car…
Kind of like the joke, where the 13 year old daughter stomps up the stairs to her room yelling “Leave me alone, I don’t need you” to her mother…..And 5 minutes later comes down asking….”Mom could you drive me and Susie to the mall”?
ALOT of hot and cold….. I love you – Go Away.
I don’t have alot of experience with girls. Because I had boys.
All teenagers present challenges. But if you show them love and your pretty sure they PERCIEVE it as love, that is what you want to see.
Tonight, my youngests daughter’s homework assignement was to look up four words in the dictionary. One of them was Malevelent: WOW!!!!! WHAT? HUH? She tells me that every student gets a different set of words.
This whole thread has me thinking of how to teach my children to be perceptive of “crazies.” When things like this happen, I have to look up to heaven and wonder….
The irony is… the three older kids are more aware of those that are not “normal” then I am. They call evil “evil” immediately, while I’m still waiting for more information to decide.
I believe their awareness has a lot to do with teaching them that they have a voice, and to trust what they perceive no matter who is telling them otherwise (including me).
I can’t help but feel there is a spiritual awakening. We receive gifts, insights, whispers of knowing, words on a home work assignment, that confirm we are on the right path.
Hmmmmm… much to ponder.
Alright well we are collectively concerned about stupid privacy laws that priviledge those who harm others and about a lack of awareness and lack of funding through central agencies and how to teach children about bad people.What ideas can we come up with here?
I saw further up the posts people were talking about teaching children words for complex emotions =- that is definitely something I stress with training teachers – children don’t have words to describe states they cannot name – they just know it feels yuck but can be supported through sensitive questioning from an adult to nail down what the yuck feeling is and what caused it. Another thing I stress is not making children say sorry if they hurt someone – that teaches kids to be fake and say it just for adults without meaning it.I instead make a fuss of the victim and ignore the perpetrator while attending the upset child.After a while I talk with the perpetrator and outline what they did and the effect it had on the other child.I ask them to go and do something to make the other child feel better.It seems to work most of the time – they can’t just spit a ‘sorry’ at the kid they thumped – they actually have to think of something that will salve the hurt feelings. It might be getting a book or a cold cloth for the child or giving them a hug or listening to how they feel.
I think ultimately with the ‘crazies’ and ‘baddies’ we have to tune kids into their gut – if they follow their gut they generally won’t go wrong. We do tend to get a funny feeling around these people for some reason- incongruency of elements of their personality? I don’t know. I guess I would see this approach as educating children that there are people in the world who don’t care if they hurt people – they just don’t ever play nice. And sometimes they pretend they are nice people. I would like to see a lot more body awareness with children – so they can tune into what is actually happening in their bodies. I think this might be the only assistance with sociopaths. Maybe when we met them we were too removed from our bodily wisdom?I was definitely.
Lots lots lots to think about. The posts here always trigger more questions than they answer!