A county leader joined the calls for accountability and reform following the death of a 2-year-old who prosecutors said was raped and murdered by his 17-year-old foster brother in Santa Clara County.<\/p>\n
Baby Jaxon was first placed in foster care with his aunt and her family after his mother\u2019s death last year.<\/p>\n
In early April, he was found unresponsive in his crib at the foster family home. Days later, they arrested his 17-year-old foster brother, ultimately charging him with child molestation, and murder.<\/p>\n
The foster mom, Bridget Michelle Martinez, was also initially arrested, but has since been released.<\/p>\n
Following the incident, county leaders laid out the next steps to prevent another tragedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren should not be dying under the care and custody of the system that exists to protect them,\u201d Supervisor Sylvia Arenas said. \u201cI will be asking an independent entity to take on an episodic review of DFCS\u2019 case files to make sure we\u2019re correctly supporting our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
The county has been under what’s called a state corrective action plan since the last death of a foster care child, Baby Phoenix.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Arenas asked the state to extend that oversight, which was scheduled to expire in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe change starts now. We must look at our systems differently, prioritize child safety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At her Seniors and Family Committee meeting, Arenas called for audit of the foster care system\u2019s policies and procedures especially after finding out the foster mother had a prior conviction for felony child endangerment – a conviction that others point out should have disqualified the suspect’s family from fostering any child.<\/p>\n
Ten county employees connected to the Jaxon case, including managers and supervisors, have been placed on leave while an investigation is underway.<\/p>\n
Jaxon\u2019s maternal family in Arizona applauded the county\u2019s response so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad they\u2019re taking action and I hope that all workers that were working his case and supervisors, I hope they lose their job because these children\u2019s lives were taken because of their poor decisions,\u201d his aunt said.<\/p>\n
The county executive also spoke publicly for the first time about the death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened to Jaxon Juarez is nothing short of horrific,\u201d he said. \u201cChild welfare, most fundamentally, is an obligation for our whole community, and we will be investigating and looking at every aspect, at every facet of what we do as a county organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A county leader joined the calls for accountability and reform following the death of a 2-year-old who prosecutors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-283024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}