Diane Ramirez - 2019

The circumstances regarding who allowed Morris Small Family Home to be in operation and how they were approved as foster care home seems to remain unclear. Maybe it is just easier to blame the owners at the facility instead of looking at those who were supposed to monitor and supervise the foster home.

There is a risk that an investigation into that area would reveal a really broken system. A system which in the end claimed the life of a on only 17-year-old girl. Diane Ramirez should not had a such tragic end to her life. Suffering while being ignored like she was in just another correctional boarding school while her life slowly ended. She was supposed to be protected by the system and instead it failed her, when it allowed her to be placed at a run-down foster home where the only interest seemed to make it as cheap as possible to have children placed there. Not even the gas for a drive down to a hospital where the poor girl could have been given treatment seems to be in the budget.

Of course now the authorities goes after the employees and owneers of the place and their responsibility cannot be ignored. They should bear the consequences of their actions. But other children could be at risk of ending up in the same senseless way if the system is not changed.

We will pray for her family. May she find peace where she is now.

Sources

• Family of teen who died while in foster care furious after suspect released from jail (ABC 7 Eyewitness News)
• Calif. Foster Mom Charged with Murder, Dad with Sexual Abuse After Teen's Death Prompts Investigation (People Magazine)
• Riverside County foster parents charged in death of disabled teen girl appear in court (ABC 7 Eyewitness News)
• A year after her Spectacular Prom, California teen dies at controversial foster home (The Mercury News)

Jerry Trivett - 2003

Jerry Trivett suffered from an illness which was costly to treat. Tumors grew in his system. His mother couldn't afford proper treatment of the illness and he ended up being thrown around the foster care system. The illness affected his behavior and even foster families often had to return him so he could go to a new place.

He ended up in an over-crowded for-profit facility named High Pointe in Oklahoma. Here he got into a fight with another patients and he got slammed to the ground. He suffered a lot of pain over the next days but his pleas to be taken to the hospital just down the road for an examination was ignored. When they in the end allowed him to be transported to the hospital after losing consciousness they didn't mention the fight, so he was not treated in the proper way.

Maybe he had suffered internal damage and was slowly bleeding to down. We don't know because none tend to have paid an interest in him. Only when he died the system who send him to the facility started to look for fall-guys. While the facility was closed 9 months later only people on the ground suffered consequences due to his untimely death.

It seems that the system was meant to cost him his life. Where were the support for the foster families so they could have taken care of him with extra help to their homes? Where was the support for his birth mother in the first place so she could have taken care of his treatment appointments so he didn't have to be placed in the foster system?

15 years was all he was allowed before he died.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• From Pennsylvania to Oklahoma - and the end of the line at age 15 (Philadelphia Media Network)
• DHS has far to go to protect these kids About 200 live in out-of-state centers that the Phila. agency still struggles to monitor. (Philadelphia Media Network)

Roger Eugene Benson - 2011

Roger Eugene Benson was given 15 years in this life. He was a poor boy that went into the foster system ending up as the ball in a pinball machine living numerous places before he couldn't take it anymore. This death became more noticed by the society than his entire life because he disturbed the rush hour traffic when he jumped off a bridge to kill himself.

People became angered because they were delayed while the authorities cleaned the road for his remains but they really should be angry at the way the foster system is put together. The system is not free of charge for the taxpayers, it does cost a lot of money and it was established to be there for the minors who are supposed to be neglected by their families. It was supposed to give boys like young Mr. Benson a second life, not inflict emotional torment to a point that the minors who are placed in the system choose not to live anymore.

The system failed young Mr. Benson. May he find peace where he is now.



Sources:

• How Could You? Hall of Shame-Roger Eugene Benson case-child death (Rally Ethics for Orphans & At-risk Minors)
• The life and death of a teenager in state care (My Northwest)
• Victims 2010 - (Fornits Wiki)