Children Forge New Lives in Wake of Tragedy

Marco Barrera’s children never celebrated a birthday, never dressed up for Halloween and never went to bed on Christmas Eve expecting Santa to visit the Pacoima garage where they lived until 1998, when their father was arrested in the beating deaths of two of his 14 children.

For six of those children, the nightmare of their early life--living in a crowded garage, selling corn on street corners and the threat of regular beatings for the slightest misdeed--seems almost over.

They are together in a loving foster home and are excelling in school. After years of physical and emotional abuse, the older children are focused on their future. They talk about their biological parents and have tried to erase many of those ugly images from their memories.

“I can’t believe I ever lived there,” Barrera’s 15-year-old daughter said.

The father, a 51-year-old Mexican national, was found by a sheriff’s deputy burying one of the slain children in Angeles National Forest. Barrera was convicted last summer of two counts of first-degree murder and is awaiting a Dec. 13 sentencing. He could receive the death penalty.

The children are part of the complicated family tree that involves Barrera, his wife and her sister. Barrera fathered six children with Maria Ricardo, the sister of his wife, Petra Ricardo.

Maria Ricardo is imprisoned for child abuse. Petra Ricardo was released from jail after testifying against her husband and sister.

Maria Ricardo’s children agreed to be interviewed after school Thursday in their new home, on the condition their identifies and where they live not be revealed.

All 12 of Barrera’s surviving children were removed from the Pacoima garage after the killings. Unlike their half-siblings, these six children have been kept together in one home, despite an early attempt to separate them.

They moved into a four-bedroom ranch-style house in Southern California in August 2000, where they saw snow for the first time and celebrated holidays.

They called their new foster parents--their third since their parents’ arrests--”mom” and “dad” from the first day they moved in.

Few people outside the children’s extended foster family know the horrors of their early years, and that’s the way the children want it. They don’t want their new friends to know they are the children who watched in fear as their dad beat their half-siblings to death.

But they know others who have watched their fate unfold via the media are curious to learn more about them.

Their new house is decorated for Christmas, and the children are nearly finished with their holiday shopping. For the second year, they are buying gifts for each other to put under a Christmas tree, which they never had before.

The 8-year-old boy is fascinated with the wire reindeer near the front door that moves its head from side to side. And the 6-year-old girl recalls with excitement her first Halloween, just a month ago, when she wore a Cinderella costume and went trick-or-treating.

“Now we celebrate all the holidays and even our birthdays,” she said.

She shows off a new outfit, a long black velvet skirt and red glittery top, that she’ll wear to a Christmas party. She’s asking Santa for a television set for her bedroom and a jump-rope.

The younger girl shares a bedroom with the 15-year-old, a tall girl with long, dark hair. Their bunk beds are covered with floral bedspreads, and there are posters of popular boy bands on the wall.

Over the years, the eldest daughter has tried to protect her younger siblings, ages 3 to 11.

Now that they appear settled, she has encouraged them to change their names “so they won’t know who they had as a father.”

The younger girl had wanted to be called Britney for Britney Spears, but the idea was nixed. Her 8-year-old brother, who wears a small stud earring in his left ear, took his new first name from a sci-fi television show.

All Take Last Name of Foster Parents

Changing their names shows hope for the future. They are all taking the last name of their foster parents, who promise they will always have a place to call home.

Before the children came into their lives, the foster parents had never heard of Marco Barrera.

The couple had wanted to open their home to just one or two foster children, but welcomed all six after meeting them.

“We’ve made a lot of changes, a lot of adjustments,” the mother said.

Despite early concerns, the foster mom is happy to report only minor behavioral problems with two of the children. The four older ones are doing well in school, she said.

The 15-year-old girl talks about going to college and eventually becoming a doctor, a dream that had little chance of fulfillment until now. The 11-year-old boy wants to join the Army after high school.

Although they say they are trying to forget the past, the older children have shown their foster mom where they lived in Pacoima, and the street corners where they once sold corn. And the 11-year-old sometimes cooks corn on the cob, as his father once did.

They know their lives would be different had the authorities not rescued them. “I’d be taking care of more babies,” said the teenage girl, who vows never to have children of her own.

“I would be trying not to get in trouble,” added the boy, recalling his fear of Barrera.

They all attend weekly counseling sessions and have had the benefit of ongoing psychological care since they were removed from their home nearly three years ago, their attorney, Lisa E. Mandel, said.

The last time they saw their half-siblings was at the funeral for one of the children--2-year-old Lupita--last summer. The photographs of the small, white coffin covered in flowers are saved in the middle of the family album, before those of the children’s first camping trip.

The older children would like to get to know their biological father’s other family, but they know those feelings may not be reciprocated.

“They blame me, they blame my mom,” the 15-year-old girl said.

The court has banned Barrera from contact with his minor children, said Mandel, who represents the four older siblings.

The girl testified against Barrera in the trial’s penalty phase, and said she wants to be in the courtroom when he is sentenced. She is curious about the proceedings and clings to every detail about her father’s incarceration.

The 11-year-old said his father “made faces” at him in court. He said he wants to see his father again “to ask him questions, like why did he do it.”

After seeing his dad in shackles and jail clothes, the boy told his foster mother, “He doesn’t look the same. My dad doesn’t look scary no more.”

The children, however, have visited their biological mother, Maria Ricardo, in jail and received letters from her. She has not written to them since September, shortly after she was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for failing to protect her niece and nephew from Barrera’s rage.

The dead children--Ernesto, 5, and Lupita--lived with Maria Ricardo and her children in the Pacoima garage. Their mother, Petra Ricardo, was married to Barrera in Mexico, where she and her children lived until 1997, when Barrera brought them to the United States.

Maria Ricardo’s lawyer, Larry Baker, said Barrera abducted her when she was 14 and brought her against her will to the United States to live. Maria Ricardo, now 31, was beaten and raped by Barrera, Baker said.

Petra Ricardo, 39, pleaded no contest to child endangerment in August 2000. She was released from jail in July.

While Maria Ricardo awaited trial, her children would visit her once a month in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. Their foster mom drove them more than an hour each way so they could maintain a relationship with her.

Ricardo’s oldest daughter said she sometimes sits in her bedroom and rereads the letters her mother has written to her from jail. She said she doesn’t respond, in part, because she has difficulty writing in Spanish.

The 15-year-old girl said her mother does not belong in prison.

“It was not her fault,” the girl said. “She was scared. . . . When you’re scared, you’re stuck, you can’t go nowhere, you can’t do nothing. I know.”

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Donations for the children may be sent to The Ricardo Children’s Fund, c/o Lisa E. Mandel, Dependency Court Legal Services Inc., The Children’s Courthouse, 201 Centre Plaza Drive, Suite 7, Monterey Park, CA 91754-2175.