Judge Seals File of Missing Florida Girl

A judge refused to immediately open the state child-welfare agency’s file on a missing 5-year-old girl Thursday but promised to make it public upon completion of a police investigation into her disappearance.

Miami-Dade County detectives had argued that the investigation would be seriously compromised if the file from the Department of Children & Families were released, as at least six news organizations had requested.

The top priority should be finding Rilya Wilson, then going after whoever took the girl, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman said.

“We all hope and pray that she is safe and she is alive,” Lederman said.

Kathleen Kearney, head of Florida’s Department of Children & Families, also refused this week to immediately release case records on the girl to Gov. Jeb Bush’s blue-ribbon panel, appointed to determine how Rilya could vanish from state custody and be missing for 15 months before officials noticed.

Before reading Rilya’s file, the panel will have to sign a confidentiality agreement and promise to keep the contents of the file secret, Kearney said. Bush wants an interim report from the panel by May 20.

“We will never, ever be perfect. Ever,” said Kearney, who took over the department in 1999. “I accept full responsibility.”

Kearney’s department reported Rilya missing April 25, long after losing contact with the girl.

Rilya was an infant in 1996 when the state placed her in the care of Pamela Kendrick, whom the child’s mother had met while dating Kendrick’s nephew.

“I was with her for the first three years of her life,” Kendrick said in an interview Thursday with Associated Press. “I made it possible that she could have a normal life, because I cared for her as my own.”

Rilya was removed from Kendrick’s home on April 17, 2000. State officials investigated allegations of abuse there in 1998 involving other children, but the inquiry was dropped, records show.

After being taken from Kendrick, Rilya lived with Geralyn Graham, who has identified herself as the girl’s grandmother. Graham said she last saw Rilya in January 2001 when someone claiming to be a caseworker took her.

Detectives are treating Rilya’s case as a possible homicide.

A DNA test is being conducted to determine if a girl found beheaded in Kansas City, Mo., in April 2001 is Rilya, but Kendrick said Thursday that she doesn’t believe it is the same child. Rilya’s ears were pierced when she was 8 months old, she said. Kansas City Police Sgt. Dave Bernard said Thursday that the child found there did not have pierced ears.

Seeking the files in court Thursday were lawyers for the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune, CNN, “Dateline NBC” and WTVJ-TV, NBC’s affiliate in South Florida.