I was innocently reading my New York Times last week when I was startled by this ghastly headline:
“Judge Let Abusive Parents Keep Daughter. Days Later, She Was Dead.”
A judge in Brooklyn overruled city concerns that a one-year-old, Ella Vitalis, was being abused and allowed her to return to her parents’ care the day before she was fatally injured in September, according to court papers obtained by The New York Times.https://t.co/bOi4ms9918
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 3, 2023
As we shall see, this wasn’t a mistake; it was the logical consequence of a demented ideology that demands “reuniting” helpless children with their psychotic parents.
See if you can spot any telltale signs that Ella Vitalis should not have been sent back to her parents, Johnson Vitalis and Lafeyette Browne, ever, under any circumstances, even if they were the last people on Earth.
Ella first came to the attention of the authorities last year when she was just 3 weeks old and police, responding to a domestic violence call, found her with two broken ankles, a fractured skull and a brain hemorrhage. The parents had no explanation for any of this.
Child welfare authorities promptly placed both Ella and her 1-year-old brother, Liam, in foster care with their grandmother.
Just a month later, Ella’s father was left alone with her during a child visitation and, in that short amount of time, managed to slice the little girl’s tongue with a “sharp object,” requiring her to be fed intravenously for six days.
So far, Ella’s parents had spent a total of three weeks and a few hours with her, during which time she ended up with multiple broken bones, a brain hemorrhage and a bloody, mangled tongue.
So naturally, when family court judge and de Blasio appointee Erik S. Pitchal was assigned Ella’s case this past August, he ordered the children to be “reunited” with their parents. What a happy homecoming that must have been!
Over the next month, Ella’s parents managed to avoid sending her to the hospital, but judging by the cuts and bruises found on her body in September, it was not from lack of trying. The parents blew off all five follow-up appointments with child welfare specialists, so in September, case workers returned to court and again asked Judge Pitchal to remove the children.
He denied the request. (If only they’d said the parents were objecting to Ella becoming a transgender!) The next day, her parents delivered the fatal blow, striking Ella’s head with a blunt object, leaving her unresponsive. They explained to authorities that the welts all over her body resulted from her “drinking too much milk.” After five days on life support, she died.
Who could have seen that coming besides anybody? One of the judge’s defenders, Gladys Carrion [Email her], a former children’s services administrator and currently a senior fellow at the Columbia Justice Lab (and apparently a world-renowned expert on circling the wagons), told the Times, “This is not an exact science.” It’s not “science” at all. It’s having the common sense of a basset hound.
Most people have no idea, but the obsession with keeping “families” together is another zany progressive cause. Part of the reason is that godless liberals who dismiss religion as a bunch of hocus-pocus believe there’s some mystical, supernatural connection between kids and their biological parents—even if the parents are Charles Manson and Lizzie Borden.
But a big reason are those fatal words, capable of annihilating everything in their path: “disparate impact.” It seems that black parents are more likely to abuse their kids than white parents. As put by NBC News/Pro Publica last year, inspired by “the 2020 demonstrations for racial justice nationwide, family rights activists have made a renewed push to change the child welfare system—including the repeal of the [1997 child safety law].”
(They’re great people, aren’t they?)
Before the “rights activists” dismantle another basic pillar of civilization in the name of “social justice,” let’s pause to remember why the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in the first place.
In 1996, Sister Josephine Murphy, who worked at St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home, appeared before Congress, begging members to reconsider the “families first” policy of the Family Reunification Act and replace it with "children come first.”
Here’s a portion of her testimony:
Alice, a little 2-year-old who had to have stitches for vaginal lacerations because she had been raped. Kathy, 2 weeks old, came to us with gonorrhea of the throat. Pam, who at 15 months of age suffered from venereal warts. She had been sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend and needed surgery because of it. Surgery was scheduled, but before it took place, she was discharged to her mother and right back to the same situation.
A report by the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect listed some of the ways children had been killed by their parents in 1993: Here are a few:
At that time, about 1,200 to 1,500 kids were being killed by their parents every year. After passage of a law putting kids’ safety above keeping “families” together (and avoiding racial stereotypes!), that number was cut in half. Today, about 700 kids die at their parents’ hands every year.
Under Joe Biden’s active, hands-on leadership, progressives are getting everything they’ve ever wanted. They’ve flung open the border, emptied the prisons, embroiled the nation in faraway wars and established anti-white racism as our national creed. Giving homicidal parents a “second chance” is surely coming up on the agenda.
Let Ella Vitalis’ hideous death remind Americans why we shouldn’t let progressives anywhere near child welfare laws.
Ann Coulter is the author of THIRTEEN New York Times bestsellers—collect them here.
Her book, ¡Adios America! The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hell Hole, was released on June 1, 2015.
BONUS CONTENT!
Nice story in the Times’ Comments:
This beautiful child Ella so young entering this world to only experience horror, abuse, pain and now death, what she endured in her short time on this earth, gut wrenching
Many years ago I witnessed a young mother all of a sudden out of nowhere punch her son and knock him to the ground in a major supermarket, the child yelled out in horror, he already had bruises, scratches, bite marks on his arms, neck, face he was so rail thin as he lay crying in pain. I ran over to the little boy and he clung unto to me for dear life I called the police and they came to take the mother away she was a Crack head and had major priors and she kept yelling at her son, that it was his fault for what happened.
The officers asked if I would accompany the little boy to the hospital and they would come too so I can give a statement as to what I witnessed, Of course I did and the supermarket manager brought sandwiches and juice for the little boy who was still crying In the ER he was examined.
Labs ordered, CT Scans and X-rays whole time he would not let me go when child services arrived they were told the little boy would need to be admitted for surgery. I volunteered to be his caretaker and advocate after my providing them with my professional credentials etc. They were convinced in that moment that the little boy could not go through the surgery without me...
After surgery I filed court papers to adopt him I am proud to call him my Beautiful Son, he will be 25 yrs old in March!
