In recent weeks the Albuquerque community came together to mourn the death of Victoria Martens, a 10-year-old brutally murdered under the watch of her mother.
Some faculty at the University of New Mexico say a faulty system is to blame.
UNM Assistant Research Professor of Psychology Pilar Sanjuan said while she can’t diagnose someone whom she doesn’t know outside of a couple of paragraphs in the news, a person who allegedly tortures a child for pleasure has something so unique and especially wrong with them that there is no name for it in the psychology field.
“Even in other species, it’s rare that mothers harm their own children,” Sanjuan said.
Although drugs were involved according to various news reports, they are not to blame for the atrocity, she said. Instead, anti-social personality disorder, delusion, and a lack of empathy attributed to psychopathy might be to blame.
Sanjuan said this particular case presents a deviation so far from a normal way of thinking that it doesn’t fall under typical cases of child abuse.
“We know from research, there are certain things we can do to change the trajectory of high-risk families,” said Peggy MacLean, clinical psychologist and assistant professor in pediatrics at UNM.
All systems need to be collaborating to prevent these situations from happening, she said. Police officers, first responders, teachers, and social workers should be educated on the red flags of abuse and neglect.
“The only thing that can come close to justice for what this child has experienced, is putting our resources and efforts into making sure this doesn’t happen to one more child,” MacLean said.
An inconsistent system
As an Albuquerque citizen and multiple time foster parent, Stephen Foster said what happened to Martens is something he worries about every day.
Foster said, through his own experience with the Children Youth and Families Department, he assumed the public would end up informed that CYFD was aware of the child abuse in Marten’s home.
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“I guess in this case no one ever called,” he said.
Foster said a child he fostered had 14 different referrals to CYFD until the child was removed from the care of his biological parents.
It took his father and his uncle murdering someone in the front yard of their home - which doubled as a meth lab - for CYFD to take the child into custody, and the child ended up being placed back in that same home later.
Foster fought for legal custody of a different child whose stepfather had been accused of molesting her older sister, but the department ended up placing his foster child back in the home with her stepfather.
Foster said the legal battle for his second foster child coincided with the death of Omaree Varela, a 9-year-old killed by his parents in 2013. He thought Omaree’s death would make CYFD more scrutinizing when determining whether reunification was truly the best course of action in many cases.
Foster said CYFD has a new director who has never been a caseworker, and who doesn’t have the proper experience to run the department.
Leslie Strickler, a pediatrician for the UNMH Child Abuse Response Team, said for every child heard about in the news, there’s much more the public isn’t aware of.
Strickler said there’s not enough funding to support programs that work towards child abuse intervention and prevention. She said her own department is the only specialty clinic for child abuse in the state and that it lacks funding to hire the staff they need to best run the program.
Further, the financial challenges are not limited to her clinic, she said, and CYFD, law enforcement, and all non-profit organizations that provide public health services for families are affected by the current economic crisis.
“We need to look long and hard at how resources are allocated,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a more important resource to invest in than one that benefits our children.”
