angiEmedia

Foster children are often at higher risk for child abuse than kids who live with their biological parents. Today, there is yet another dead foster child with the foster parents on the run from police.

On July 18, 2010, a 3-year-old girl named Serenity Julia Gandara was found dead with signs of trauma to her head and torso in the home of her foster parents in Bakersfield, California. Her 4-year-old brother Isaiah was still in the home.

The foster parents, Carla Torres Garcia and Alberto Garcia, fled with three other children reportedly born to Carla. Their names and ages are Carlos Joe Solvalvarro, 10, Crystal Garcia, 4, and Alberto Garcia Jr., 4.

The children left behind, Alberto’s dead niece and still-living nephew, had been removed by the courts from their mother’s home reportedly due to drug use.

Police are looking to find the Garcias who are reported to have fled the home in a white SUV with the following description:
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In 2008, a 14-year-old boy was flying by himself on a Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Orlando. The boy and his family claim that Southwest Airlines refused to change his seat even though he was being sexually harassed and offered illegal drugs by an intoxicated woman sitting next to him. They have filed a $50,000 lawsuit against the airline in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging the airline is negligent because the woman was obviously harassing the boy and was drunk or on drugs yet the airline refused to protect the child despite repeated requests for help.
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We’ve recently heard that San Diego family court Judge Edward Allard III, department F9 at the Sixth Avenue courthouse, has been racking up a growing pile of complaints. While this is no different than many of the abusive and corrupt family law judges in San Diego, there are reports that he’s about to be moved out of department F9 over his unwillingness to be a reasonable judge. Rumors are that he will shortly be removed from the family law bench and possibly moved to some form of “purgatory for judges.” Video criminal arraignments were mentioned as one possibility.

We’re a bit skeptical of the rationale for Judge Lorna Alksne removing him from family law courts. If she were to apply the same reasoning to other judges in her oversight, she and many others would be joining Allard in purgatory. Perhaps it is simply a way for Alksne to play sleight of hand and blame others for the abusive, corrupt, and destructive practices of many of the judges under her supervision.

We don’t have details on particular cases of misconduct, but note that Allard’s RateTheCourts.com ratings look poor. Out of 29 surveys completed, he’s earned an F (0.29) rating. A representative comment is this one:
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The San Diego District Attorney’s office including DA Bonnie Dumanis and DDA Laura Gunn do not have immunity for their misconduct, ruled a Federal court in a $20 million lawsuit against them and other parties involved in the wrongful prosecution of Cynthia Sommer.

(from Bonnie Dumanis Embattled San Diego District Attorney has new Major Loss to Cynthia Sommer)

Sommer spent two years in jail awaiting trial, being tried and was found guilty of the murder of her husband, twenty-three year old Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer. Sommer was arrested on November 30, 2005 and convicted of the murder of her husband on January 30, 2007. However she was freed by a Judge in San Diego County on November 30, 2007 when her conviction was overturned and she was granted a new trial after new lab testing showed no arsenic whatsoever in Sgt. Todd Sommer’s tissues.

The federal court ruled there was enough evidence against San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Laura Gunn, Deputy District Attorney for the County of San Diego, that the two women per the Federal Court’s rulings; “Dumanis and Gunn fabricated evidence and continued their investigation after they knew or should have known that Plaintiff was innocent.”

Speculation is that the initial tests that showed very high levels of arsenic were due to contamination. A defense expert witness testified that the initial tests showing arsenic levels 1020 times normal were physiologically improbable and inconsistent. Given the alarming track record of misconduct of the district attorney’s office under Dumanis, there are obvious questions about the source and reason for the contamination.
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