GIOVANNI DeLAO-PEREZ - 6 yo (2010) - De Soto (SW of KC) KS

De Soto KS ---- A De Soto woman made her first court appearance Thursday on child
abuse charges after police found her 6-year-old son starving and
confined in her unfinished attic.
Rachel L. Perez, 26, was charged Wednesday with child abuse
and aggravated child endangerment.Johnson
County sheriff’s deputies found the fragile boy with his skeletal
structure showing in an attic just hours after they arrested his mother
for an outstanding warrant, they said Thursday.They went to the
home in the 8200 block of Center Drive in De Soto about 5 p.m. Tuesday
because a relative asked them to check on the boy, they said.
They did not see him and the mother told them he was not there.At
11 p.m. the same day, the deputies went back at the request of the
relative and found the boy confined in the attic, they said.
Deputies said they are still investigating how long the boy was in kept the attic.
He is now at a hospital being treated and is in police protective custody, they said.

A 26-year-old De Soto woman is in jail, charged with child abuse and
aggravated child endangerment involving her 6-year-old son.
About 5 p.m. Tuesday, Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputies went to
the home of 26-year-old Rachel Perez, who lives in the 8200 block of
Center Drive in De Soto. The Sheriff's Office said deputies were
responding to the request of Perez's step-mother, Christina Foster, to
check on Perez's 6-year-old son. Deputies checked the home but did not
see the boy, and Perez told officers the boy was not there. At that
time, Perez was arrested on an outstanding warrant for driving with a
suspended license, issued by the city of Olathe.
About 11 p.m., deputies returned to the home, again at the request of
Foster, and found the boy, who they described as very fragile and
malnourished, in the attic of the home.
The boy was transported to a hospital by Med-Act and is presently in
protective custody while being treated at Children’s Mercy Hospital. His
condition is listed as critical.
Perez is being detained at the New Century Adult Detention Center.
Further investigation is being conducted. It
is unknown how long the boy had been confined to the attic.
Perez has two other children and is approximately four months
pregnant. The other children, girls ages 8 and 5, are in the custody of
Perez's father and step-mother in Bonner Springs. They are in good health.
Perez was charged with child abuse, aggravated child endangerment and
driving with a suspended license at a court appearance today, Thursday,
Aug. 19, 2010. Her next court appearance will be next Thursday, Aug. 26.

Christina Foster, Perez's stepmother is a hero. Not only is she already caring for 2 of her children she has saved a 3rd. I note how persistent she had to be and get LE to go a second time to the house. LE need to look properly the first time IMO. Perez is another one of these serial breeders who never want to look after children but keep on having them. Why do we let them walk out of hospital with their babies in the first place? They need to be adopted out and the mother sterilized IMO.

The 6-year-old boy found starving in a filthy De Soto attic is
recovering, and his grandparents are trying to get custody, their
attorney said Friday.The boy was found this week after the maternal grandparents
asked the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office to check on his welfare.
They had not seen him in about four months and were concerned, said attorney Sarah Swain.
The boy, who has Down's syndrome, had always been small, but the grandparents
did not know why or how things got so bad that he was put in an attic.
“The family has no idea of what brought this on,” Swain said. “They want to know.”
Rachel L. Perez, 26, had her first court appearance Thursday on charges of
child abuse and child endangerment. She is also the mother of two girls,
ages 8 and 5, and is pregnant with another child, the attorney said.
Swain said the grandparents were seeking custody of the children,
and a court hearing was scheduled for October. For now, all the children are in state care and Perez is in jail.
Deputies found the boy Tuesday after they twice went to the duplex in the 8200
block of Center Drive. The first time, the mother told them the boy was
not there, and they arrested her on an outstanding warrant.
They went back about six hours later at the request of the grandparents
and found the boy confined in the attic.He is now recovering at Children’s Mercy Hospital.

How could a six-year-old weigh just 17 pounds? There are new details about the disturbing discovery of a DeSoto boy
found in an attic. The attorney for the grandparents of little
Giovanni De Lao is demanding accountability from law enforcement and,
especially, state child protective investigators.

The boy is making progress at Children's Mercy. It's his grandparents
who turned in their own daughter for neglect. Their attorney, Sarah
Swain, has harsh words for investigators and say little Giovanni might
be dead if it wasn't for his grandparents.

Sheriff's deputies were back at the home of Rachel Perez Friday. We
don't know if they found new evidence of neglect, but their belated
discovery of Giovanni is drawing heavy criticism.

"Between when the police were first there and he was discovered, we're talking about a span of 10 to 12 hours," Swain said.

After deputies arrested Perez, her 8-year-old and 5-year-old daughters
were given to Perez's current boyfriend. Investigators said there was
no sign a little boy even lived at the house. That's when the
grandparents demanded deputies go back.

"And after calling Giovanni's name a few times, there started to be a
faint response, following up on that, they went inside the house and
sort of tracked where the sound was coming from and ended up underneath
an opening to the attic," Swain said.

Sheriff's deputies originally said six hours had gone by, but now admit
it was nine hours. However, they add, that's because it was nine hours
before family members asked them to go back, after Perez claimed she
hadn't seen the child in weeks, insisting he was with his biological
father.

"They blew it and by making the time frame seem shorter, that's less
time that this little boy was up in the attic, all by himself with no
food or water, soiling himself," Swain said.

Swain saves her real frustration for SRS workers. She says they were
warned for the past six years that little Giovanni was skin and bones.

"We should imagine what the concentration camp survivors looked like and
that gives you an idea of what Giovanni looked like," Swain said.

At 17 pounds, he was much smaller than his younger sister.

"SRS needs to be held accountable for situations where reports are being
made, where children are obviously being neglected and they choose to
do nothing," Swain said. "Their job is to protect children and Giovanni
was not protected by them."

SRS admits they received a report, but won't say how many or what they did, insisting it's confidential.

I'm a friend of the great-grandma, she is the one that kept calling the authorities. Thank God for her. If she hadn't done that, he would not have survived. I talked to both her and the boy yesterday, he sounded really good. Better than I expected. He seems to be in good spirits. He loves his great grandma dearly and feels at home with her, so that helps. She wants to thank everybody for their prayers and support. She said she didn't know what she would have done if the LEO left again without finding him. She probably would have had to break in and look for him herself because she was not going to leave without him.

Mom wrote:I'm a friend of the great-grandma, she is the one that kept calling the authorities. Thank God for her. If she hadn't done that, he would not have survived. I talked to both her and the boy yesterday, he sounded really good. Better than I expected. He seems to be in good spirits. He loves his great grandma dearly and feels at home with her, so that helps. She wants to thank everybody for their prayers and support. She said she didn't know what she would have done if the LEO left again without finding him. She probably would have had to break in and look for him herself because she was not going to leave without him.

Welcome Mom and thank you so much for posting. That's great news and cheers us up a bit to hear the wee boy is now doing well and will be loved and cared for.

The DeSoto mother who has been accused of child abuse was
in Johnson County court on Thursday.Rachel
Perez, 26, was arrested last week when they found her 6-year-old son
malnourished and covered in filth living in the attic of her home.Perez,
who has two other children, is four months pregnant. Her attorney wants
Perez to be allowed to go to a residential facility for high-risk
pregnancies, but a judge has not approved that.

* * * * *

Rachel Perez, the De Soto woman charged with child abuse and
aggravated child endangerment for starving her 6 year-old son in the
attic of her home, is seeking a reduction in her $250,000 bond.
Perez appeared before the Johnson County District 1 court this
morning asking for her bond to be reduced to $5,000 or less, citing her
pregnancy as the reason for the reduced amount.
Johnson County Judge Peter Ruddick set a hearing for Sept. 17 to consider the request.
Perez, 26, is approximately four months pregnant and has two
daughters, who, as of Monday, are in state custody. Her son, who has
Down syndrome, was found by sheriff's deputies in Perez's attic on
Tuesday, Aug. 17, emaciated and covered in feces. The boy was taken to
Children's Mercy Hospital to recover.

A mother accused of starving and abusing one child has given birth to another while in custody.
Rachel Perez, 26, was arrested in August after authorities found her
6-year-old son in the attic of her DeSoto home. The space was extremely
hot and the boy, who has Down syndrome was malnourished and covered in
feces.Perez was pregnant at the time of her arrest and recently delivered a baby.Deputy
Tom Erickson of the Johnson County Sheriff's Department said it's not
terribly uncommon for the jail to house pregnant women.

"We book about 4,000 women every year with an average age of
about 31, so you have to imagine that within that 4,000 women, we're
going to have several that pregnant," Erickson said.
He said most women are usually released from custody before they give birth.The
jail has a medical unit that resembles a typical physician's office.
Pregnant women, like any other inmate with medical needs, are examined
there and receive prenatal care.

"We are responsible for making sure that they have the care and
are in the appropriate place to give birth," Erickson said.Erickson
said most inmates who are in labor are taken to a hospital, often the
nearby Olathe Medical Center. He said they were under guard during the
time of their stay."We have to have a uniformed officer
there the entire time they're there," he said.Hospitals
have social workers on staff who will determine, along with the baby's
mother, who will take care of the newborn. The new mother returns to
jail and gets post-natal care from the jail's medical personnel. If they
have additional problems, they would return to the hospital."We
spend a lot of time every year at the hospitals for many different
reasons, childbirth just being one," Erickson said. "(It's) actually a
very small portion of the time we spend in hospitals every year."

http://www.kmbc.com/r/26943727/detail.html

The little boy who was found in a De Soto attic last summer, starving and covered with filth, looks pudgy and happy now.But
when he heard his great-grandmother call his name in an empty house and
scratched the ceiling in reply on Aug. 17, his little body could stay
alive for no more than a day.After hearing a pediatrician’s
assessment and other testimony on Tuesday, Johnson County District Judge
Peter Ruddick ordered the boy’s mother, Rachel Perez, 27, to stand
trial on charges of attempted second-degree murder, child abuse and
child endangerment.The judge said he sympathized somewhat with
defense arguments that it made no sense that Perez intentionally tried
to kill her son, who has Down syndrome. But in what is “an ugly,
horrible set of facts,” he said, “… nothing here makes sense.”Deputies
and the great-grandmother found the boy, now 7 years old, hours after
Perez was arrested on traffic warrants by a deputy who was sent by the
boy’s grandfather to check his welfare. Perez’s two daughters were taken
into safe custody after the arrest, but her son stayed unnoticed in the
attic, covered with excrement, until he was rescued.The
pediatrician, Lisa Spector, testified Tuesday that the boy “had no fat
tissue left on his body.” His ribs showed, he’d lost hair and he was
severely dehydrated.“He would not have survived more than 24 hours without food,” Spector said.The
boy’s 5-year-old sister testified on video that her mother started
keeping the boy in the unfinished attic about two years ago. He often
slept there, she said.Her mother also would not feed her brother when she and her sister ate, she said, and “he cried for hours” over that.She
said her mother also told her and her sister not to reveal that their
brother was in the attic. Her mother also sometimes “smacked” her
brother, she said.The other sister, now 9 years old, also said
her mother told her not to tell that she left her brother home alone,
shut in closets, a bedroom or the attic.“She said he was too
annoying and he kept crying and screaming or something so she left him
in the house,” the older daughter said. “She kept him away from people.”
Perez’s boyfriend, who was at the home the day of her arrest
from about 10 a.m. until deputies arrived in the afternoon, said he did
not know the boy was in the attic. Perez also did not bring the boy with
her when she and her daughters frequently visited him, boyfriend Jose
Acosta said. She told him the boy was with his biological father, he
said.Sgt. Brian Deer testified that, at the jail before the boy
was found, he asked Perez where her son was. She said that her son was
with his father and that she hadn’t seen the boy for two weeks, he said.Even
after Deer told her that she might remain in jail for days before she
got out on bail, she said she did not know where her son was, he
testified.Authorities went back to Perez’s house that evening
with the boy’s great-grandmother. She called his name, Sgt. Evan Comerio
said, and they heard a scratching noise from the ceiling.When
they opened a small door to the attic, he said, the boy’s legs fell out.
He seemed to be just bones, Comerio said, and he was covered with feces
and urine.There was fecal matter throughout the foul-smelling
duplex, and tools and other dangerous objects were strewn everywhere, he
said.Detective Scott Atwell later asked Perez why she didn’t say her son was in the attic, he said.“The only thing she would say was it sounded bad,” he said.The
defense agreed that evidence supported charges of abuse and
endangerment, but lawyers fought over the attempted murder charge. “Mom admits that she didn’t want (her son) and feels overwhelmed with his care,” prosecutor Chris Brown said.She
didn’t feed him, didn’t take him on outings, he said, and “when given
the opportunity to help him … she doesn’t tell anybody.”If the child had died, Brown said, “this would be a no-brainer second-degree murder charge.”Defense
lawyer Jason Billam said his client was guilty of bad lifestyle choices
and bad parenting but did not intentionally try to kill her son,
because at the time, “she’s still feeding (the boy), as crass as it
sounds. We know there is feces and urine on his clothes.”Perez
thought she would quickly get out on bail and could get her son out of
the attic, he said, just as she had returned and gotten him out in the
past.The judge set a March 18 arraignment date.All of the Perez children, including a fourth child she recently delivered while in custody, are now in state care.Within
two months of the incident, the pediatrician testified, the son
regained much weight and his hair. He was getting speech therapy,
physical therapy and starting to walk.During a break in the hearing on Tuesday, relatives showed a picture of him smiling.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/25/2682555/horrific-treatment-of-child-found.html#ixzz1F4oiBR8m

Sounds like a "hate" crime to me. Just sayin'. Or does that only pertain to certain people? It will be interesting to find how/why the SRS workers that were called missed this. Still can't understand why these women that start having babies in their teen years don't use birth control.

Pictures of a starved 6-year-old boy with Down syndrome — a boy found
confined in a De Soto attic — looked as if they could have come from a
concentration camp.But jurors will not have to look at the photos. The boy’s mother stopped that Friday with a guilty plea. Rachel
Perez, 27, stood with her lawyer and cried as the judge read the
charges, then pleaded guilty to child abuse and child endangerment and
no contest to attempted second-degree murder.There was no agreement on the sentences, and Judge Peter Ruddick set a May 26 sentencing date.Defense lawyer Jason Billam said he thinks the harshest sentence she can get is 104 months, more than eight years.Prosecutor Chris Brown said that may be correct but he will present more evidence of the severity of the crimes at sentencing.Authorities
have said crime photos in the case are as horrible as those from a
concentration camp. But the plea prevents prosecutors from asking jurors
for findings of aggravated circumstances that would allow a judge to
double the sentences.At the hearing Friday, Brown gave only a quick summary of what happened.On
Aug. 17, deputies went to the home to check on the welfare of the boy
and Perez told them he was with his father. They arrested her on
outstanding traffic warrants and took her to jail, where she again told
authorities the boy was not in the home.Deputies returned that
evening and found the boy in an unfinished attic, among “broken wood,
sheet rock, exposed nails and insulation.” He was covered with feces and
urine. He was so starved his ribs showed, and a doctor said he would have soon died had he not been found.Interviews with his two sisters established that Perez would feed the girls but not the boy, Brown said.Both sides will argue their positions in a hearing before the sentencing.The boy, his two sisters and a brother born while Perez was in custody are all in state care.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/18/2737252/mother-pleads-guilty-in-de-soto.html#ixzz1H3yXkt1O