Photo: Justice for Anthony/Facebook
Ten-year-oldAnthony Avalosloved playing sports and being outdoors. He was known for his kindness and inclusive spirit, and he stood up for people who could not stand up for themselves.
“If someone was getting bullied, he would tell the bully that it wasn’t nice, to leave them alone,” Anthony’s uncle David Barron tells PEOPLE.
But while Anthony was protecting others, who was protecting him?
On June 21,Anthony died after being found unresponsive a day earlierat his family’s house in Lancaster, California, outside Los Angeles, where he and his six younger siblings lived with momHeather Barron, 29, and her live-in boyfriend,32-year-old Kareem Leiva.
It was Heather who first called 911 on June 20 to report that Anthony was hurt. She claimed he had been injured in a fall, according to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. But prosecutors say what her son endured was far worse: years of abuse until the very end of his life.
According to prosecutors, Anthony’s mother only reported the injuries — bruises, cuts and a brain injury among them — once he could no longer take any more pain.
Speaking with PEOPLE, his uncle David wonders darkly if his death was not some kind of mercy.
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“Because he was on summer vacation … who knows how much he would have had to suffer if he were still here?” David says.
“Maybe passing was better for [Anthony],” he explains, “because he didn’t have to suffer anymore.”
Heather and Leiva, arrested in June, have both been charged with one count of murder and one count of torture in Anthony’s death and one count of child abuse in the alleged beating of the boy’s younger brother.
Leiva faces an additional count of assault on a child causing death.
On Wednesday, the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office announced that they faced an allegation that Anthony’s killing was “intentional and involved the infliction of torture.” That means, if convicted, they could be put to death.
Prosecutors are seeking to build their case on years of alleged violence and neglect in Anthony’s home, both against him and his younger siblings.
Maria Barron/Facebook
The abuse in Anthony’s home, which dates back at least to 2013, exposes the rending question at the heart of such cases: Could something — could someone — have been done differently to save this child?
This account of Anthony’s home life and death and how it was investigated is based on interviews with his family and officials with the county’s Department of Children and Family Services as well as a review of documents from prosecutors and the internal investigation launched after Anthony died.
Anthony’s mother and her boyfriend remain behind bars in lieu of $2 million bail each and have pleaded not guilty.
They will return to court in November.
Heather’s attorney, Dale Atherton, said he doesn’t feel comfortable commenting until he is better versed in the facts and allegations. “I haven’t had the chance to go through the discovery yet,” he told PEOPLE.
Attorney Dan Chambers, who is representing Leiva, also notes the “mountain” of material requiring review in this case.
“There’s just a lot of unanswered questions, in terms of what was going on in the house with the kids and who is responsible,” he says.
Disputed Report That Victim ‘Liked Boys’
Both the L.A. County sheriff and DCFS are investigating.
At some point before he died, Anthony had disclosed that “he liked boys,” Brandon Nichols, the DCFS deputy director,told theL.A. Timesin June. Nichols did not say whom Anthony told, though he described this as the boy coming out as gay.
This disclosuredrew national attention to the caseand seemed to more closely link it with the death of Gabriel Fernandez, whom prosecutors argued was beatenbecause his mom’s boyfriend believed he was gay.
However, L.A. sheriff’s Lt. Derrick Alfred, an investigator into the homicide, told PEOPLE this summer it was not clear if the belief that Anthony was gay had anything to do with his death.
Alfred said then that investigators asked Heather and Leiva about the sexuality claim and though Alfred was “not at liberty to say what they said … [it was] nothing that would enable us to say definitely that was a motivation for any kind of abuse.” (Reached for comment this week, Alfred referred PEOPLE to prosecutors.)
Chambers, Leiva’s attorney, is more skeptical, describing it as a “rumor” and “a red herring.”
“I haven’t heard a shred of evidence to support it,” he says.
Any corroboration that Anthony was tortured for being gay would be sent to the district attorney, who could pursue a hate crime enhancement of the charges against both suspects, Alfred says.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Cagle, the DCFS director, declined to elaborate on what his deputy told theL.A. Timesthis summer, but he confirmed both that quote and what he told KABC were accurate.
“It was something mentioned in one statement that was collected, but we can’t draw a conclusion about that at this point,” Cagle says. He did not comment further, “because it could go to motive.”
Anthony’s uncle David says he doesn’t know if his sister or her boyfriend knew that Anthony told others he “liked boys,” but he says that — according to the widespread abuse that authorities are alleging — the violence in their home seemed more endemic.
“It was going to happen no matter what. Maybe it was just to give themselves a reason, I don’t know,” he says. “But I don’t think they needed a reason. I think whatever happened to Anthony was going to happen anyways.”
DFCS, he tells PEOPLE, is trying to “create an argument as to why the boyfriend would lose it and do something to Anthony — a sudden burst of emotion, Heather and the boyfriend found out about it [that Anthony ‘liked boys’] and that is the reason for it.”
“But it won’t work. They have a prior history of abuse,” Claypool continues. “I think it is irresponsible for them to mention it.”
He says the family is calling for an investigation into the social workers to determine if they should be held accountable for Anthony’s death, though it was not immediately clear if authorities were doing so. (Such criminal inquiries are not unprecedented in California.)
“I have never seen more red flags of an impending death of a child,” Claypooltold theL.A. Times: “That is deliberate indifference toward the life of a little boy.”
Claypool said in July that DFCS investigated 88 claims of abuse at Anthony’s home — involving him and his siblings — and found that 15 of them were “substantiated,” according to theTimes.
A History of Investigations
Among those who reported possible abuse or neglect were law enforcement, relatives, school employees, therapists and others. (The school district where Anthony was enrolled declined to comment to PEOPLE.)
A few of the reports were substantiated, but most were determined to be inconclusive or unfounded. The OCP report also found that “numerous interviews with the children occurred wherein the children indicated no issues.”
Cagle, the DCFS director, tells PEOPLE that he isn’t sure where Claypool arrived at the number 88, for total abuse claims in the home, or that 15 were found to be substantiated.
But he says it’s possible Claypool was inadvertently reviewing duplicate reports about the same incident, given the number of different individuals who made reports.
DCFS last had contact with Anthony’s family in November 2016, according to the OCP report. After more than three years of suspected abuse or neglect within the family, including two substantiated incidents, all reports to the agency ceased that fall.
Between 2015 and 2016, Anthony’s mom completed programs on domestic violence and parenting.
And then, in June, he was killed.
Much remains unclear — and may never be known — about what changed after November 2016. Cagle stresses that, without any continuing reports, DCFS was unable to maintain contact: “We can’t go back out there out of curiosity.”
“The actions of the caseworkers in this case were appropriate actions and … we provided the kind of services that the family needed at the time,” he says, adding, “We feel comfortable that the caseworkers did what they should do.”
Anthony’s death has been “very difficult” for the agency staff, Cagle says.
“It’s something that lingers with you because you do want the best for children,” he says. “To have a child die after you have been involved with the family, is just something you never ever want to experience.”
Whatever happened to Anthony between 2016 and his death, the pain did not stop.
Some of the complaints of abuse at home are listed in an L.A. County District Attorney’s Office court filing in the murder case. In one incident, it was reported that Anthony and three of his siblings were hit with a hose. On another occasion, the kids were hit with a belt on their legs and buttocks, locked in their rooms for hours and had dirty diapers thrown at them.
Leiva was also accused of lifting Anthony and slamming him on the floor, then kicking him in the stomach, according to the prosecution filing. In an incident in April 2016, according to prosecutors, Leiva allegedly made the children fight each other.
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“It was also reported that the children were withheld food, were placed in time-outs for long periods of time and were eating food out of the trash can because they were so hungry,” the D.A. filing states.
The outside report found that child welfare workers had seemingly acted appropriately over the four years they were involved with Anthony’s family, ending in 2016. Nonetheless, the report recommended several areas for systematic reform, such as lessening caseloads and improving investigative training for social workers.
Anthony’s uncle David tells PEOPLE that over the years he called child welfare workers at least five times and had confronted his sister about the alleged abuse of Anthony and three of his oldest siblings.
David says that Anthony’s father “wasn’t allowed to see [him].”
“He would always try to be there for him, buy him clothes and stuff, but Heather would just throw them at him and tell him to stay away,” David says. “It sucks, because he wanted to be there. He even asked Heather a couple times if she was struggling financially — ‘if you want I can take Anthony, he can come live with me.’ If she had just let him, he might be alive still today.”
‘A Lot of Things They Could Have Done’?
At times, according to David, his sister seemed to acknowledge the violence in her home, which she pinned on her boyfriend.
Heather would say, “Kareem wasn’t going to be there anymore, she was going to be a better mom and that everything will change and be better,” David recalls.
Eventually, however, she refused to let David and his wife see Anthony and some of his siblings, David says.
“After we called children services, she was afraid if she lost her kids she wouldn’t be able to get her welfare money anymore so she thought we were messing with her livelihood,” he says. “Anthony told us that if he said hi to us he would get spanked beside his head. She told him that we’re not his family, our kids aren’t his cousins and to ignore us.”
David hadn’t seen Anthony for three years before his death.
“There are files that stated that Anthony said he was being deprived of food and being locked in rooms and abused,” David says. “I don’t know what else qualifies as proof. The kids tell them what’s happening and there’s other reports from adults and teachers they report and they called me and my wife to make a statement and reported it — so there’s multiple people.”
“There’s a lot of things they [the agency] could have done that they didn’t that I feel is almost common sense with dealing with kids,” David says, “but I don’t know their policies and exactly what they’re allowed to do and not do.”
What he does know is this: Anthony is dead — a fate he never deserved.
“He was just a great kid,” David says. “Everybody fell in love with him instantly.”
source: people.com
