By REP. STEPHANIE GARCIA RICHARDI have spent the last four years of my professional career with nine year olds for six hours a day, 180 days out of the year. I spend more time with them during the school year than their families do. So it came as a particular blow to me to hear the tragic news of the death of Omaree Varela. A kid who could have been one of my kids.
Of course we all remember the tragic story of 9-year-old Omaree Varela who died at the hands of an abusive mother, despite the fact that law enforcement officers had just recently intervened in his case.
I, along with some of my colleagues in the House—including Speaker Ken Martinez—sought to have a legislative response to Omaree’s tragedy, and others like his. In the 2014 legislative session, we co-sponsored the bill HB 333, named Omaree’s Law, to try and address some of the shortcomings in the system that had been laid bare by Omaree’s case.
One of the issues that had become apparent in Omaree’s case was the fact that despite just having visited his home in response to a 911 call and hearing his parents verbally berate him, law enforcement officers never filed a report. And this despite the fact that little Omaree had had visible injuries on his body, consistent with abuse, at the time that law enforcement officers had visited his home.
In response to that knowledge of a child “falling through the cracks” of the system, we made sure to incorporate into our bill a definition and description of “substantiated claims of abuse or neglect.” This definition included a list of those injuries known to be indications of abuse, in addition to, the existence of a previous record of a family that has had child abuse reports filed on them. While we were not initially successful in passing Omaree’s Law, we began a conversation about filling some of the large gaps in the safety net for abused and neglected children.
This conversation has been continued by the Child Abuse Taskforce, formed in the wake of Omaree’s death. Some recent policy changes to Albuquerque Police Department and Children, Youth and Families Department recommended by this Taskforce, are set to address some of the very same concerns we raised with our legislation.
In particular, APD officers will now be required to receive “specialized training in order to more easily recognize signs of child abuse, neglect and sexual assault” and will now be “required to make police reports for EVERY child abuse call.” This ensures police officers can identify signs of abuse AND will create a record in the system for a family that has had multiple child abuse reports.
Additionally, the Taskforce called for the development of APD’s new CARE officers (Child Abuse Response Evaluator officers) and placed APD’s Crimes Against Children Unit with CYFD investigators so they can work more closely together.
While these are by no means sweeping changes, they do address some of the issues that were raised with the legislation I helped to champion in 2014. Is our issue of child death as a result of abuse solved for our New Mexican children? By no means. But I am encouraged by the impact of these institutional changes and plan to continue to sound the alarm for the safety of our most vulnerable; our kids.
