Wasn't public school supposed to save them?

Some critics of homeschooling like to argue that parents who teach their own children should somehow be regulated, in part to make sure they are not using homeschooling as an excuse to abuse their children away from the public eye.

That argument would be solid if it wasn't so absurd. Read on, and you'll see what I mean.

A Florida couple is in the news following allegations of child abuse of twin 10-year-olds adopted in 2009. The children first lived with the Jorge and Carmen Barahona as foster children. Nubia Barahona was found dead in her father's truck on Valentine's Day. Her brother Victor was in the front seat still alive but severely burned over much of his body by a caustic substance.

According to police reports, Nubia and Victor were routinely tied up and kept in a bathroom. Both were beaten from time to time, and food was withheld.

Both children attended public school where teachers at various times reported the girl was hoarding food or had admitted her mother beat her or that both children appeared unkempt.

Those reports fell on deaf ears. They could not be substantiated enough to warrant removing the kids from their home.

According to the 2/28/11 edition of the Miami-Herald, Christine Lopez-Acevedo, a former attorney for the Guardian ad-litem Program, recited mostly by memory from official child welfare records: Nubia telling a teacher she was going to be beaten with footwear; Nubia locking herself in a bathroom and crying hysterically at the thought of her mother being called to the school; Nubia promising to behave better if a principal promised never again to call her mother.

The records were readily available in 2009 when a Miami judge approved the adoption of Nubia and her twin brother Victor by foster parents Jorge and Carmen Barahona.

The story continues further down:

At the second meeting of a panel charged with determining how numerous efforts to save Nubia fell so tragically short, speakers said the girl demonstrated a distinct fear of her then-foster mother as far back as kindergarten.

At a 2007 court hearing recounted by Lopez-Acevedo, Nubia’s Royal Palm Elementary kindergarten teacher described the day Nubia wet her pants at school. Thinking it no big deal, the teacher told Nubia she would call Carmen Barahona to have her bring a change of clothes.

“Mama is going to hit me with a chancleta [a type of sandal] on the bottom of my feet,’’ the teacher testified. Nubia then locked herself in a bathroom and cried hysterically, said Lopez-Acevedo, who wept herself when relating the episode.

The principal at another school, Blue Lakes Elementary, also testified that Nubia was fearful of Carmen – so fearful that she once promised she would never fall asleep in class again if the school would refrain from calling home to complain about her. The principal said a colleague from the twins’ previous school suggested “something was not right’’ with the twins, and that school workers should keep an eye on them, Lopez-Acevedo said.

They did. All told, three times between 2006 and 2010, Blue Lakes Elementary employees called the state’s child-abuse hotline with concerns that Nubia had been brought to school dirty, foul-smelling and unkempt. And that Nubia hoarded food and complained constantly that she was hungry.

Yet none of this information was provided to Vanessa Archer, the psychologist charged with evaluating the Barahonas’ fitness to adopt the twins, who had been in their care as foster children. The result: what foster care administrators have called a “glowing’’ evaluation of the couple, which smoothed the way for the Barahonas to adopt.

“There was alarming information from the school,’’ said Roberto Martinez, a former U.S. attorney for Southern Florida who is part of the three-member panel determining what went wrong.

SCHOOL OFFICIALS DID THEIR JOB BUT THEIR CONCERNS NEVER MADE IT TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES.

Now do you see why the abuse argument of the anti-homeschooling crowd is at best laughable and at worst a full and complete dismissal of logic?

People who want to abuse children are going to do it, no matter how tightly or loosely they are regulated. The Barahonas were regularly visited by child welfare workers, they were reported numerous times by school officials, and they STILL got to adopt Nubia and Victor. They STILL managed to carry out systemic and horrific abuse.

Going to public school did not save Nubia or Victor Barahona.

The next time some windbag pushes for regulation of homeschoolers on the grounds that parents who teach their own children are more likely to be secretly abusive, the story of Nubia and Victor Barahona ought to be placed front and center as refutation.

This is the second 'blog post I've written on this subject in the past year or so. The other story involved Chandler Grafner of Colorado who also attended public school and who was also reported by his teachers after they witnessed suspicious behaviors and remarks consistent with a child who was being abused. As in the Barahona case, help came too late and Chandler Grafner died from starvation. He was just seven years old.