What happened to Rilya?

What happened to Rilya?

By Palm Beach Post Editorial

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Years ago, one part of Florida's government badly failed Rilya Wilson.
How badly isn't yet known, but another part of Florida's government
thinks the failure was fatal.

Last week, the state charged Geralyn Graham with first-degree murder
in Rilya's death. Miami-Dade County Prosecutors believe that Graham —
often referred to as Rilya's "caregiver" — killed the girl in December
2000. At the time, Rilya was 4 years old. The Department of Children
and Families, which placed Rilya in the foster home, didn't notice
that she was missing until April 2002. During the time DCF was
supposed to be verifying her well-being, according to a housemate,
Graham tied Rilya to the bed and kept the child in a dog cage. More
from Opinion • Sound off in the blog • Columnists • Editorials/Letters
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Rilya never has been found. The state's chief witness against Graham
has a long criminal history and says Graham confessed to her last year
while both were in a South Florida detention center. With such a
witness and without a body, the state's case will be hard to prove.

Yet it's good to know that someone in state government still is
thinking about Rilya's case. In the flurry of criticism and
revelations after her disappearance became known, DCF admitted that it
had lost track of hundreds of children, and workers were fired or
resigned. After the usual attempts to put all the blame on underlings,
DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney quit in August 2002. DCF hardly has
become a healthy agency. Judge Kearney's replacement, Jerry Regier —
who also tried the blame-the-underlings route — resigned in August
2004 amid revelations that DCF regularly handed out contracts to
insiders' friends.

It is sad enough that the state may have enabled Rilya's death by
losing track of her. It is sadder still that the state hasn't done
more to fix the system that lost track of her.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion...edit_0320.html

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