Murdered Girl Remembered With Special Service
MIAMI (CBS4) -- A memorial was held Sunday in memory of 10-year Nubia Barahona, whose body was found Valentine's Day stuffed in plastic in the back of her adoptive father's truck off I-95 in West Palm Beach.
Nearly three dozen people attended the service at St. Paul Lutheran Church in south Miami-Dade. The service was the work of several mothers who knew Nubia and her twin brother Victor during the time they attended Blue Lakes Elementary school.
The children's adoptive parents, Carmen and Jorge Barahona, withdrew them from the school last year in order to home-school them.
"And even though she may not physically be here, we still have her alive in our hearts, and she will remain alive in our hearts," said Lissette Mendez Balladares, whose daughter was a close friend of Nubia.
"There is nothing in this world a 10-year-old child could do, to deserve the lifetime of abuse these two children endured," said Joanne Muniz, one of the event's organizers.
The mothers at this memorial say they knew something was wrong at Nubia's home. Some say they had informed school officials.
"We saw her hungry, she would ask my daughter for food, my daughter would give her food, the teachers would give her food, we would take her extra food, but there's only so much we could do because she's a minor," Balladares said.
On Friday an independent panel of child welfare experts met for the first time to discuss one of the worst child abuse cases in South Florida history. The panel is trying to determine what went wrong in the state's effort to protect Nubia and her brother.
Victor continues to recover from chemical burns at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Jorge Barahona, meantime, is charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse for allegedly pouring those chemicals Victor the same day that Nubia's body was found in the pickup's flatbed stuffed into a bag and steeped in unknown chemicals.
Andrea Fleary, the Department of Children and Families caseworker assigned to investigate reports of abuse in the Barahona, home has been placed on administrative for her handling of the case.
Fleary received a report that Victor and Nubia Barahona were being tortured four days before Nubia's body was found, but she didn't call police and put the investigation on hold over the weekend.
Last week Miami-Dade Judge Cindy Lederman upheld an earlier ruling that Victor and two other children adopted by the Barahonas should remain in state custody.
On Friday, Judge Sandy Karlan ruled that Jennifer Perez, the daughter of Carmen Barahona, will not be allowed to visit her 7-year-old daughter who reportedly told a therapist that she saw Nubia and Victor being abused in the Barahona home; it was this therapist who reported it to DCF.
During the hearing, DCF's top Miami child welfare attorney said Perez psychologically abused the child by exposing her to the torture of the twins, and that she ordered her daughter never to discuss the family secrets with anyone.
"I never told my daughter anything like that," Perez said. "The only thing I told her, when I got the DCF call is not to tell her father. Because in the past I've had a problem with her father, so I told her not to say anything until I knew exactly what was going on. And I could put the pieces together."
Perez told CBS4 she rarely went into the Barahona home, and the few times she did, things appeared to be normal. She added that she didn't think much about the fact that she hadn't seen Nubia for a while because she was always in a rush to take her daughter home and beat traffic.
Perez says she wants people to know that she's a mother and that "if I would have known those kids were hurting and suffering I would have not let that go on."
