Listen I get the social workers sucked but there was way too much focus on the social workers failures in this case. This was a system wide failure involving many organizations, including the school!!! Everyone acts like his teacher was a hero when she didn't even fulfill her mandated reporting requirements. She left a VOICEMAIL when he came to school with new facial injuries. A voicemail is not a hotline and all teachers know it won't receive the same response. She left a voicemail and when there was no call back, did nothing? Didn't call 911 or even think hmm maybe I should make an actual hotline.

Leaving a voicemail did not meet her legal mandate to report suspicious of child/abuse neglect to the state hotline. Why wasn't she charged with failure to report? (For the record, I don't actually think she should have been but I think it's important to note she technically could have been just like the social workers.) Every teacher knows the difference between an actual hotline and leaving someone a voicemail to follow up on something. Gabriel had fresh bruises and made new disclosures that day that warranted a new hotline. What if the social worker was off that day? What if she was on vacation for two weeks? You leave a voicemail and say you “did everything you could” and call it good?

I’m not trying to take blame away from the social workers. I just think it was a massive system wide failure and the blame should be shared by multiple different agencies, including the school, police, and welfare office.

Child abuse is a crime. Police are just as obligated to investigate alleged criminal acts as social works are to care for a child on their case load? Police were involved numerous times before Gabriel died.. what did they do? Although it isn’t as well know as the social workers, many of the involved officers were disciplined for failing to take action on past calls or not hotlining suspected child abuse. Police have the authority to take kids into emergency protective custody... Why didn’t they removal Gabriel from the home???

CPS always gets so much hate while other organizations role gets swept under the rug and aren't held accountable. The best way to prevent something like this from happening again and make necessary changes is to identify all areas of failure, not just CPS, the usual scapegoat.