Child abuse usually occurs not in a home but outside. However, the maltreatment of Gabriel Fernandez is an issue mysterious to everybody in society.
Though some adults tried to help him, but couldn’t work out, and was unfortunately killed at eight years old in May 2013. Since that time, Gabriel’s case has incited outrage and shock.
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Gabriel Fernandez: The Story behind the Incident
Gabriel Fernandez was only eight years of age when he passed on in the wake of being beaten by his mother and her boyfriend
He was born into the world on February 20, 2005, in Palmdale, California; Gabriel Fernandez had been facing trouble every day.
The Wrap disclosed that his mom, Pearl Fernandez, didn’t expect other kids when he was given birth and left him at the clinic.
Pearl previously had a record of child abuse and neglect. One year after, Booth Law reported that a relative had informed child Protective Services, saying that Pearl was beating another child and no action was taken.
Gabriel spent most of his time on earth with his uncle and his relatives, He afterwards moved in with his grandparents.
However, in 2012, despite the fact that Pearl had accusation of hitting her little girl and failing to take care of her, Pearl out of nowhere demanded that Gabriel shouldn’t be taken off by his family members and that she needed him back.
According to the Atlantic, Pearl took Gabriel back since she needed government assistance. Despite the objection of Gabriel’s grandparents, she brought the kid once again into her home in October 2012.
There, Gabriel lived with his mom, her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, and two more established kin, 11-year-old Ezequiel and 9-year-old Virginia.
Before long, Jennifer Garcia, Gabriel’s 1st-grade teacher at Summerwind Elementary in Palmdale, California, began to see that the boy showed the sign of being abused. Gabriel explained everything to him.
“Is it normal for mothers to hit their children?” he asked Garcia one day in October 2012. “Is it normal for your mother to hit you with the piece of the belt that has that metal thing on the end? Is it normal for you to drain?
After school that day, Garcia called a child abuse number, which put her in contact with a case manager named Stefanie Rodriguez. Despite the fact that Garcia at first felt consoled, the maltreatment of Gabriel Fernandez appeared to proceed.
One day, he came to class with lumps of his hair missing. Consequently the other day, Gabriel Fernandez showed up with a harmed lip and let Garcia know that his mother had beaten him.
In January 2013, he appeared with round wounds all over and confessed to Garcia that his mother had fired him with a BB firearm.
Garcia constantly contacted Rodriguez, yet the case manager said that she was unable to talk about the subtleties of Gabriel’s case.
Rodriguez had, truth be told, visited the Fernandez home, however, Gabriel frequently narrated the story and Rodriguez noticed that the children at the home appeared “properly dressed, apparently solid, and had no imprints or injuries.”
Unfortunately, his maltreatment was more terrible than Rodriguez or even Garcia understood. Furthermore, in May 2013, Gabriel Fernandez’s mother and her sweetheart mercilessly beat the eight-year-old to death.
The Murder Of Gabriel Fernandez
On May 22, 2013, Pearl Fernandez called 911 to report that her child, Gabriel, was not breathing. Paramedics showed up and tracked down the kid with broken ribs, a cracked skull, missing teeth, and BB pellet wounds on his body.
However, the Atlantic reported that Pearl Fernandez’s boyfriend Isauro Aguirre said he attempted feeling his heart, thereby shifting the blame of Gabriel’s wounds on “roughhousing” with his more seasoned sibling.
It later came out that Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre had tormented the eight-year-old with a “BB weapon, pepper splash, coat holders, and a homerun stick.”
Gabriel Fernandez passed on two days after the fact of his wounds on May 24, 2013. Consequently, the stunning of shocking of his maltreatment and the homophobic intentions of his abusers became exposed.
The Atlantic reported that Gabriel Fernandez regularly experienced serious maltreatment on account of his mother and Aguirre.
This occurred for eight months. Once in a while, they stuffed a sock in his mouth and bound his hands and lower legs, and then secured him in a cabinet they called “the cubby.”
They called him gay (perhaps on the grounds that he had recently been raised by a gay incredible uncle), rebuffed him at whatever point they saw him playing with dolls, and constrained him to wear dresses.
Gabriel’s kin, Ezequiel and Virginia, the couple likewise made him eat “a great deal” of feline excrement, constrained him to run from a BB firearm, and hit him so hard that he was unable to relax.
Moreover, Gabriel’s therapist had revealed before his demise that the kid had been compelled to perform oral sex on a family member and that he’d composed notes saying that he needed to commit suicide. In any case, despite the many admonition signs, he was unfortunately never protected.
Pearl Fernandez was sentenced to life in jail for Gabriel’s homicide, and Isauro Aguirre was condemned to death.
The Aftermath of the Eight-Year-Old’s Death
In the aftermath of Gabriel Fernandez’s death, both Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre were arrested and accused of the kid’s murder. Pearl conceded to first-degree murder and was condemned to life in jail.
According to Los Angeles Times, Pearls Fernandez’s said “I need to say I’m sorry to my family for what I did” said in court in 2018
“I wish Gabriel was alive. Consistently I wish that I’d settled on better decisions. Please accept my apologies to my kids, and I believe they should realize that I love them.”
The adjudicator, nonetheless, got straight to the point. As explained by The Wrap, he said that Gabriel’s passing had been awful to such an extent that he’d nearly call it carnal — with the exception of “creatures know how to deal with their young.”
Aguirre was additionally viewed as at fault for first-degree murder and was condemned to death. (At present, notwithstanding, California has suspended all death penalty, so Aguirre stays in jail for years to come.)
Notwithstanding, they weren’t the main individuals to confront the ramifications of Gabriel Fernandez’s demise. Four social labourers — Stefanie Rodriguez, Patricia Clement, Kevin Bom, and Gregory Merritt — had to deal with criminal penalties of youngster misuse and adulterating freely available reports.
Nonetheless, TIME reports that a re-appraising board in January 2020 concluded that they shouldn’t have to deal with criminal penalties.
Presently, Gabriel Fernandez’s friends and family might dare to dream that his terrible demise wasn’t in vain. However he had plainly escaped everyone’s notice of the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services, the division promised to start “another time of change” after his murder.
TIME reports that the association added new approaches to guarantee youngster security, recruited in excess of 3,000 new friendly specialists beginning around 2013 to ease up caseloads, and retrained current case managers on the most proficient method to really meet with witnesses and notice actual indications of maltreatment before it will be too late.
Unfortunately, Gabriel Fernandez’s death was actually preventable. After his instructor advised social workers of the maltreatment, action might have been taken.
The young man was left to endure and passed on because of his own guardians, as the city of Los Angeles chose not to see.