Trapped in the Child Protective System

by Tanya Brannan

On March 31, 1995, Georgina Warmouth with the YWCA battered women's shelter filed a child abuse report with Child Protective Services. The report outlined Avelino's physical and sexual abuse of all three children, as well as Teresa's fear of what Avelino would do to her family if he learned she had reported the abuse.

Per standard policy when the report of child abuse was filed, a copy was also forwarded to the Sonoma County sheriff's department for criminal investigation. In his final investigative report, Sheriff's Detective Lorenzo Duenas outlined clear evidence that the abuse had occurred, complete with three corroborating witnesses for every charge. Clearly, there was enough there to arrest Avelino Macias and file multiple charges of felony child abuse against him. But there was no arrest.

By the time the investigation was completed, Teresa had left the women's shelter and returned home, after learning that Avelino was back in Mexico. Free at last of the violence and abuse, Teresa was preparing to flee with her children and start a new life. Instead, she was to be literally held in place with the agonizing separation from her children and continual forced contact with Avelino until the day he tracked her down and shot her to death.

When Det. Duenas called Teresa to discuss the results of his investigation, there was no mention of arresting Avelino -- only the threat that if Teresa allowed Avelino back into the home the children would be removed from her custody for her failure to protect them. Not long after that warning, Avelino returned from Mexico and immediately broke into Teresa's house. Knowing of the CPS investigation, he threatened Teresa that if she reported his presence to the sheriff she would lose her kids. Thus extorted, Teresa remained silent.

Within weeks, a CPS worker called Duenas to report Avelino was back and in June, 1995, the Macias children just didn't come home from school one day. Only after a number of frantic phone calls did Teresa learn that her three children, ages 5, 11 and 12, had been picked up by the sheriff's department and taken to the Valley of the Moon Children's Center. They were later put into foster care.

Thus began Teresa's torturous odyssey through the CPS system to which she had turned for help. Over the next nine months she would be driven to distraction by CPS's conflicting demands. On the one hand they had taken her kids because she hadn't protected them from Avelino. On the other, she was forced into joint counseling sessions with Avelino with the state-mandated goal of re-unifying the family. As she struggled to comply with CPS's ever-growing and contradictory demands, Teresa began to despair.

In addition to thwarting Teresa's escape from Avelino (as she surely wouldn't leave without her kids), the conduct of the plethora of social workers and counselors who then held ultimate power over her family may well have contributed to Teresa's murder.

For anyone who's ever had the illusion that a counselor's pledge of confidentiality is unbreakable, the Macias case provides a rude awakening. Again and again information Teresa gave to CPS was passed on to Avelino, including the fact that she was filing for divorce. To Avelino, already enraged at losing his stranglehold of control over Teresa, this was like waving a red flag before a charging bull.

And of course there was the incident just weeks before Teresa's murder when CPS worker Suni Levi had Santa Rosa police release the already hand-cuffed Avelino so the couple could attend a psych appointment.

But there was one more blow that certainly contributed to Avelino's complete disintegration not long before the murder. According to family friend Marty Cabello, Avelino received a bill from the County of Sonoma requiring him to pay the children's foster care expenses. With no hope of ever paying the bill, amounting to "thousands of dollars," according to Cabello, Avelino went even deeper into the dark place he inhabited until that final bloody moment when he ended Teresa's life and his own.

(While Avelino's bill is not accessible, we do have a copy of a similar bill sent to Teresa two months after her death. Citing past due and current charges for foster care expenses for just one of the three children, the bill totals $1,053.50.)

But even after the double-homicide, CPS maintained a powerful hold over the Macias family. Teresa's mother Sara and her sister, Ana Rosa Rubio, logically thought that with the violent death of both parents, Teresa's children would be immediately released into the consoling arms of their loving extended family.

Instead, CPS held on to the children for five full months after the murder until the September, 1996 hearing. In a sudden shifting of gears, Judge Arnie Rosenfield signed the order releasing the children to the custody of their grandmother, Sara Hernandez.

Why would CPS not release the children, you might ask? While there is no written documentation of their reasoning, two effects of the embargo are clear.

First, as long as the children were in CPS custody, Teresa's family was extremely hesitant to talk to the press about the daily revelations of the county's misconduct in the case, fearing retaliation.

And secondly, whoever controlled the children controlled any possibility of a lawsuit, as technically the County of Sonoma was the children's legal guardian. With a statutory limitation of six months on filing tort claims in California, had the kids not been liberated at that final CPS review, the next scheduled review date would have been at the end of the year -- well after the deadline for filing a claim.