Behind Closed Doors

What else is there to do during quarantine than binge Netflix? They have a large selection of docu-series. They have everything ranging from Zac Efron to Jeffery Epstein to Joe Exotic. Another option is a series called “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez.” This heartbreaking series is about the true story of an eight year-old boy who was abused and killed by his parents in 2013. The family resided in Palmdale, California and the case struck rage and sorrow throughout the county and the nation. People were outraged and confused on how Gabriel wasn’t taken out of his home even after many different people made calls to social services. Four social workers were charged along with Gabriel’s parents. The charges against the social workers were recently dropped which brought up conversations of racial bias. Similar cases to Gabriel’s are more common than one might think. This made me think about how quarantine is effecting social work and child abuse victims.

I spoke to Michele Moore who is a Child Welfare Worker working during COVID. She answers calls on a Child Abuse Hotline in Oakland, Calif. She formerly was an Emergency Response Worker, “I was the first person knocking on the door to tell people a child abuse report had been made, so it wasn't always pleasant.” She explained that she stopped doing home visits because “I was tired of being out in the field, and kind of putting my life on the line especially when I got pregnant. So then I had a desk job, and I was safer in the office.”

According to kidsdata.org, nearly 700 thousand children are abused in the U.S annually and about four out of five abusers are the victim’s parents. When Social Services conducts home visits they have to ask permission of the parents to talk alone with their kid. This is a problem considering parents are most likely the abusers. Social workers often go to the school to talk to kids because it's a neutral setting, they don't feel like their parents are trying to tell them not to talk. According to Michele Moore, “By law we have the right to go and do that, which makes parents mad sometimes.” This poses a problem in regards to COVID because going to the school might not be an option. In 2012 more than 16 hundred children died or suffered neglect at the hands of their own parents. The DCFS in Los Angeles has hundreds of cases to watch over. Some caseworkers have dozens of cases at a time. Child services are overrun and understaffed. Michele Moore explained that she felt overworked at times, “You almost have one case a day, and then you have emergency referrals so it could have been up to 25 or 30 child abuse cases at a time when I was working in the field.” This brings up a real concern when talking about quarantine. Normally some children would be able to go to school and stay with their parents for a shorter amount of time. However with quarantine, many children are stuck at home with their abusers with no way to get out.

The opportunity to go out gives abused kids another advantage. They interact with people who could potentially see visible signs of abuse and maybe report them. A teacher, counselor, or any person they come into contact with could see bruises or marks. Working with the Child Abuse Hotline, Michele Moore noticed “Most of the time it's the schools calling the hotline. All the professionals are mandated reporters but we get mostly schools and doctors, but a lot of neighbors too. It is more concerning with COVID because the kids aren't being seen so if they get hurt, no one's there to call and have someone intervene.”

When talking about social work it would be obtuse not to talk about the racial bias that is present. Michele Moore touched on this when describing the demographics of her county, “There's mostly poor people, mostly African Americans. African Americans make up about 12% of Alameda County, and they're about 85% of who gets called on in our county, because they're more in the public. It's very disproportionate. I think when people live in public housing there's more people looking in on them. For instance when a woman has a baby they do a tox screen more often on black women than they do on white women. The bias is already there.” She brings up an interesting point. When a community is looked at more for abuse it makes sense that abuse rates are higher. This doesn’t necessarily mean that abuse happens more but that it’s reported more. Lower class communities are being hit more than upper class communities by the Coronavirus. The lack of health care means that these communities are less likely to seek medical attention. Unemployment causes problems in regards to food and schooling. This can cause a spike in neglect for children, which is the most common form of abuse.

Michele Moore stated “taking away kids is only like 5% of the job. It seems like it's 100% of the job on TV, but it's really just 5%. It's only for the really bad cases when we remove them. We try to keep the kids with their parents as much as possible and just help them.” Unfortunately, in Gabriel Fernandez ’s case it was wrong to keep him with his parents. There are many layers when talking about what the social workers could’ve done better. Would they have cared more if he was white? Did they talk to enough people? Did they try hard enough? “Parents usually let me interview the kids alone, but sometimes they were there, and you just have to kind of get the idea if what they're saying is really true or if the parents kind of try to change that. It's always hard when the kids aren't willing to say what happened and we can't really do anything. You have to know something's happening.” Sometimes it comes down to judgement and these social workers made the wrong call.

There are new sets of problems because of quarantine. Social work is a hard job and now is even harder. Kids are stuck at home with their possible abusers, signs of abuse are less likely to be noticed, and the tough times raise tensions in different households. Quarantine is not affecting us all the same. We need to keep an eye out for our youth. We don’t know what’s really happening behind closed doors.

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