Abusive Mother Ordered to Serve 25 Years to Life

The expected penalty came at the end of a short, low-key hearing. Maria Barajas, a 31-year-old woman with a history of child abuse, was ordered Wednesday morning to serve 25 years to life in prison for shaking and fatally beating her 19-month-old daughter.

The lengthy term was the only option the law allowed and beyond that, it was a fitting sentence, Superior Court Judge Katheryne Stoltz said.

“If she were out of custody, she would continue to have children and she would continue to beat them,” Stoltz said, as Barajas bowed her head and cried. “This is probably the way she herself was raised and this is probably the only way she’s able to interact with her children.”

Marisela’s death last year was more than a family tragedy. It was a case that raised questions about child-welfare laws that make family reunification a priority.

Both the public defender who represented Barajas and one of the Los Angeles police detectives who arrested her have criticized the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services’ handling of the case.

Social workers had twice taken Barajas’ children away after complaints of abuse. Marisela was only 9 days old when child-welfare workers put her in a foster home.

In the spring of 1997, after 1 1/2 years of counseling and parenting classes, Marisela and a 5-year-old brother were returned to their parents for a two-month trial.

In June, Barajas fatally shook and slammed her daughter in frustration after the little girl knocked over a fan, tore up a video and repeatedly stuck her hand in the toilet. Barajas had told authorities that the girl died after falling down the stairs, but a jury rejected that claim.

“It could have been prevented,” Deputy Public Defender Rose Reglos said.

As she listened to social workers testify during the trial, “I just kept shaking my head because these children should not have gone back. They should not have gone back,” Reglos said. “They gave them pamphlets [on parenting issues]. Maria can hardly write her name. How do they know she learned?”

DCFS spokesman Schuyler Sprowles defended his department’s actions, saying an internal investigation determined the social workers did “very good work” in the Barajas case. The death, he said, was “unforeseeable.”

“What happened here was a tragedy; there’s no other way to put it. But it shouldn’t serve to undermine an entire child-reunification process,” he said. Barajas alone is responsible for the girl’s death, he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Korn agreed: “While she may not be able to help herself, she certainly is a criminal and I think it’s better that she not be around her children for a long time.” He added that it was important not to lose sight that the case was about a girl who died too young.

Miriam Laporta, the foster mother who cared for Marisela as a toddler, said she also blamed the social worker. She said she had told authorities that something was wrong, that the girl seemed strange and overly tired whenever she returned from visiting her parents.

If nothing else, she wondered why she had to return Marisela before her older siblings, who were in other foster homes. The older ones, because they could speak and defend themselves, should have gone first, she said.

The social worker “swore to me that they were ready,” she said.

In the weeks after Marisela was returned home, Laporta said she and her grown daughter visited the girl. During the last visit at Barajas’ home, she said the girl would not stop crying.

“The most terrible thing,” Laporta said, “is thinking that with those tears she was trying to tell us something, because she couldn’t yet speak.”

Barajas’ seven living children were put in foster homes after Marisela’s death. Her husband, a cook whom authorities say was never accused of abuse, is fighting to get them back.