Gabriel Fernandez's Social Workers Have Another Court Date Coming Up

Netflix’s true crime docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez follows the events and people connected to the brutal murder of 8-year-old boy Gabriel Fernandez in 2013. Gabriel endured ongoing abuse and torture from his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, leading to his death. The couple was convicted of Gabriel’s murder, and Fernandez is currently serving a life sentence for her role, while Aguirre is on death row for his.

They weren’t the only people involved or the only ones to go to court, though. Following the caretakers’ convictions, four social workers in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (Stefanie Rodriguez, 34, and Patricia Clement, 69, and two supervisors, Kevin Bom, 40, and Gregory Merritt, 64,) were also charged in connection with Gabriel’s child abuse and death.

What role did Gabriel’s social workers play?

There were records from Gabriel’s first-grade teacher Jennifer Garcia, who regularly called in and reported signs of abuse to one caseworker, Rodriguez, per court records. Another caseworker had also used a computer program to estimate Gabriel’s likelihood of abuse, The Atlantic reported. The results revealed his risk was high, but the supervisor Merritt closed his case. Nobody in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services effectively protected Gabriel from his increasing abuse.

All four social workers were fired from their jobs following an internal investigation into the group’s actions, CBS Los Angeles reported. They went to trial in fall 2019. The unprecedented charges against them held up to 11 years in prison, if convicted. One of the supervisors, Merritt, told The Atlantic he felt extreme guilt for what happened to Gabriel. “I don’t think there’s anything else I could have done,” he told the publication.

How did the social workers’ trial go?

So far, the social workers are going free. The defense filed a motion to dismiss their case, so they did not go to trial or appear before a jury. (That much you saw in the Netflix docuseries.)

A three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that there was no probable cause to hold the two social workers and the two supervisors on the charges related to Gabriel’s death, per Antelope Valley Press. The charges, failing to protect Gabriel and falsifying public records, against the social workers were dismissed.

But earlier this year, prosecutors attempted to get a re-hearing. In January 2020, the Los Angeles County prosecutors asked a state appellate court panel to reconsider its ruling that led to the dismissed charges against the social workers, NBC Los Angeles reported.

In the petition, prosecutors wrote, “If facts known to petitioners suggested Gabriel’s caretakers would harm him, petitioners had a duty to control Pearl and Isauro, to protect Gabriel…. It was their duty to supervise and control Pearl and Isauro’s conduct when it came to how Pearl and Isauro treated Gabriel.”

The charges against the social workers were dropped.

But, by February, the prosecutors planned to drop charges against the four social workers, NBC Los Angeles reported. Instead, they seek to close loopholes in the justice system because the law is not on their side in this case. LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey continues to stand by the charges. “There ought to be some criminal consequences,” she told the news station.

In the appellate court ruling in early January, Associate Justice Victoria Gerrard Chaney agreed that the four social workers could not be charged with child abuse. She added a dissenting opinion arguing that they could be prosecuted as public officers.

Chaney wrote: “Allowing a social worker to evade liability for falsifying a public document would incentivize social workers to put their own interests in avoiding liability for their misdeeds above the purpose of the state’s child welfare statutory scheme, which is child safety… The petitioners’ actions here prevented the system from working in whatever way it might have had they done their jobs honestly, and offers no incentive for either DCFS or individual social workers to work to reform and repair the parts of the system that may fail the children it is intended to protect.”

The social workers have one more court date coming up.

However, all four former social workers are scheduled to return to a Los Angeles courtroom on March 23. They’re not facing new charges, instead the district attorney’s office will not object to a motion to dismiss the charges against them, the Antelope Valley Press reported.

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