Girl’s Death Puts Child-Welfare Law to Test Again

Marisela Barajas was 9 days old when authorities took her and five siblings from her parents while investigating complaints of abuse in the home.

Then, after almost 1 1/2 years of intervention, a social worker recommended that the girl and her 5-year-old brother be returned to her parents on a trial basis, a step on the path to family reunification, court records show.

The decision proved fatal.

Frustrated by the toddler’s repeated misbehavior and angered when the girl bit her mother’s hand when she tried to hug the child, Maria Sabina Barajas allegedly shook Marisela so hard the girl’s eyes hemorrhaged, and beat her or slammed her against something hard enough to crack her skull, according to authorities.

The girl passed out, but rather than take her to the hospital, Barajas asked her sister to baby-sit her children. She then left for her restaurant job. Barajas told her sister the child had fallen and that she didn’t want to take Marisela to the hospital because she was afraid of repercussions by child welfare workers, records show.

In a few weeks, Barajas is set to stand trial on murder and abuse charges in Marisela’s death, a case that raises familiar questions about child-welfare laws that make family reunification a priority.

Chief among them was the death of Lance Helms, a 2 1/2-year-old boy who was beaten to death allegedly by his father shortly after a juvenile court judge awarded the man custody of his son despite an abusive past, the concerns of a social worker and the loud complaints of Lance’s aunt and grandmother.

The boy’s death was followed by a groundswell of public protest and, eventually, new laws that spell out child safety as a priority and allow courts and social workers to abandon family reunification in more instances.

But returning children to their biological parents remains the principal objective of child-welfare legislation, according to Kathy Kubota, the governmental liaison for the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. In most cases where the department has stepped in to protect children, it must later try to restore the families, usually within a year.

That was the goal of the two-month visit that put Marisela and her brother, Jonathan, back in their mother’s care.

Los Angeles Police Det. Christine Ruedas said that the original complaint against Barajas involved visible injuries to her 14-year-old daughter. But after family services stepped in, her investigation did not uncover a clear pattern of repeated abuse that would have foretold Marisela’s death.

Ruedas has criticized the family services department for its decision to begin a two-month trial with the couple’s youngest children, particularly a toddler who could not complain to social workers if she were beaten, because she did not yet speak.

“I can’t understand why they didn’t put the older kids back first, so if something would have happened, they could have talked,” Ruedas said. It is a question a department spokesman could not answer. Schuyler Sprowles said he knew only that the decision “is not arbitrary” and that an internal investigation determined social workers did “very good work” in the Barajas case.

“There was no negligence” by family services, Sprowles said. “The responsibility lies in the hands of the person who murdered that child.”

He said her death was “unforeseeable.”

Barajas’ husband, Antonio Barajas, said he believes the girl died accidentally from a fall down the stairs outside their Canoga Park home, just as his wife said. He said the worst thing his wife did was not call paramedics afterward.

She couldn’t because she does not speak English and does not know how to use the telephone, he said after a court hearing in his wife’s case earlier this year.

The couple were stripped of custody of their six children in early 1996, after family services received complaints that Erica, their 14-year-old daughter, was being abused by her mother, according to authorities and court files.

A year later, a family counselor reported Barajas and her husband, Antonio Barajas, had successfully completed family counseling and could provide a safe home for their children, according to family services.

Based on that report, a social worker recommended a two-month trial. Marisela and Jonathan were returned to their parents in spring 1997.

Sprowles said he could not comment on the specifics of the case because of privacy laws but said that recommendation “was driven by a family that was taking the right steps to reunification. It’s a huge tragedy in that respect. She [Barajas] was making marked progress.”

But Barajas somehow managed to have a seventh child and keep her at home for five months without detection by family services, authorities said.

Unlike her other children, who she raised from infancy, Barajas told investigators she never had time to bond with Marisela before she was taken away. Her relationship with the girl was different, she said.

She grew frustrated with Marisela and spanked and shook her when she misbehaved, she told authorities.

The day she died, Marisela’s body showed signs of battered child syndrome,” said Dr. James Ribe of the Los Angeles coroner’s office. There were bruises on her behind, her chest, her knee. The inside of her lip was cut by a hand forcefully covering her mouth, pushing her lip against her teeth, possibly in an attempt to quiet her, he told the court.

Days before her death, Marisela was punched or kicked in the stomach so hard she bled into the back of her abdomen and around her kidneys, according to Ribe, who described the injury as “extremely painful,” but not fatal.

The fatal blows likely came the afternoon of June 4, 1996. Barajas told authorities the child had misbehaved for two days, tearing apart a video, trying to drink toilet water, knocking over a fan.

About 2:20 p.m., the child got into the toilet again and investigators said Barajas told them she lost control. Her head was spinning and throbbing as she grabbed the girl and shook her hard, she said. Barajas claims the child was fine after that and that she hurt herself when she accidentally fell down the front steps to the house.

Investigators don’t believe her story, and an autopsy revealed injuries that are inconsistent with a fall, Ribe said. He said she died from a combination of a skull fracture and shaken-baby syndrome.

Barajas’ sister, Lorenza Hernandez, told authorities that the girl was unconscious when Barajas dropped her off and never recovered. She said she called Barajas at work three times asking her to come take care of her daughter, but she wouldn’t.

Ribe said the delay contributed to her death. Had Marisela been saved, she still would have had permanent brain damage and would have been blind for life, he said.

When Antonio Barajas returned home after work about 5 p.m., he said his brother-in-law called him over to the house. As soon as he saw the girl, he dialed 911.

Paramedics said she had no signs of life when they arrived. An emergency room doctor pronounced her dead.

Barajas was arrested June 5 and remains in custody.

After Marisela died, social workers removed Laura, the couple’s 5-month-old baby, from the house.

Antonio Barajas has been trying for months to regain custody of his six children, who have been placed in foster homes.