How Could You? Hall of Shame-Nakia Venant case-Child Death UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Miami Gardens, Florida, 14-year-old foster child, Nakia Venant “broadcast to a social media platform from her Miami area foster home as she hanged herself in the bathroom.”

“The Florida Department of Children and Families offered few details Tuesday about the weekend death-by-suicide of Nakia Venant, whom police found hanging from the door frame in the bathroom.

One of the girl’s friends told the Miami Herald she saw some of Venant’s two-hour livestream on Sunday and called Miami-Dade police, who responded to her house.

She then gave them a wrong address in Miami, reported the Miami Herald. When police showed up there, residents gave them the address of Venant’s foster home in the suburb of Miami Gardens.

Officers found the 14-year-old hanging from a scarf fashioned into a noose around her neck and tried to resuscitate her, but without success.

Venant was then rushed to Jackson North Hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead.

According to a brief incident report released by the DCF to the Herald, Venant tied her scarf to a ‘shower glass door frame’ for the purpose of killing herself just after 3am Sunday.

The girl’s foster parents were asleep in their bed at the time of the incident, the paper reported.

Child social services and Miami Gardens police are now investigating the circumstances of the girl’s suicide.

It is believed Nakia used Facebook Live to broadcast her suicide, although it has not been confirmed as of Wednesday morning.

Venant’s livestreamed death comes just three weeks after another girl, 12-year-old Katelyn Nicole Davis, of Georgia, broadcast her own self-inflicted hanging on Facebook, claiming she had been sexually abused by a relative.

Nakia Venant was a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was enrolled in the seventh grade at Young Women’s Preparatory Academy. She is survived by a younger brother.

As news of Nakia’s death spread online, dozens of people took to her Facebook page, under the user name ‘HotHead Nikee,’ to express their condolences and pay tribute to her all-too-brief life.

Among the mourners was a woman who characterized herself as Venant’s mother and shed light on the girl’s turbulent childhood.

‘I was showing you tough love when u misbehaved,’ she wrote, claiming that Nakia had gone to jail twice, got expelled from two or three schools, had sex, smoked marijuana and drank alcohol.

‘You wasn’t supposed to even have access to Internet as part of your case,’ she went on to say of Nakia. ‘The system has failed us……’

Based on her social media history, Nakia was a prolific Facebook user.

One of her last status updates appeared on her page on the eve of her suicide. Chillingly, the message read: ‘Need Plans For Tmr #CommentsSuggestions’ ”

Tragedy as a SECOND girl, 14, livestreams her own suicide on Facebook from the bathroom of her foster home – just three weeks after a 12-year-old also killed herself on camera

[Daily Mail 1/25/17 by AP and  SNEJANA FARBEROV]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:”A 14-year-old foster child who hanged herself in a shower stall and broadcast it on Facebook suffered years of sexual abuse, was beaten and rejected by her mother and bounced between more than 14 foster homes, according to a 20-page report released by the Florida Department of Children & Families.

The report released late Monday concluded that while state welfare authorities could have done a better job, Naika Venant’s relationship with her mother Gina Alexis played a significant role in her death.

“Despite everything that had occurred between Naika and her mother, Naika longed to be home,” said the report, written by members of a Critical Incident Rapid Response Team that was deployed by agency Secretary Mike Carroll after the child’s death in January. “Naika often told her therapist that she greatly missed her mother and really wanted to go back home.”

The report detailed the abuse. When Naika was 4, the agency was called to her mother’s home after the girl was left unattended by a male babysitter, with no food or running water. Alexis enrolled the girl in day care and moved to another home.

The next year, the report said, Naika went to the emergency room with an undisclosed chronic health condition. The child welfare agency was contacted when Alexis “called Naika a liar and a faker.”

Naika used a scarf to hang herself in a Miami Gardens foster home on Jan. 22 and livestreamed it on Facebook.

In 2009, the report says Alexis beat Naika with a belt after the girl was sexually aggressive with another child. She was removed from her mother’s home. Caseworkers sought to learn where the 6-year-old girl had learned about sex. She told therapists she slept in the room with her mother’s boyfriends and watched “sex movies.”

The next year, after she was returned to her mother, DCF received a report that the girl was sexually abused while in foster care. The other child vehemently denied it, saying Naika was the aggressive one.

According to the report, Naika ran away in 2014, telling investigators she was afraid her mother would beat her. Alexis refused to take Naika back, threatening to beat the then 11-year-old child if she was left there. Two months later, a Miami judge — over the objection of caseworkers and a court-ordered lay guardian — returned Naika to her mother.

In April 2016, Alexis returned Naika to the state, saying she’d had it with her “behavior.”

Last November professionals recommended that Naika live in a “specialized therapeutic foster home.” But no bed was available.

In the report, the DCF team faulted the mental health professionals who worked with Naika for treating the symptoms of her trauma and abuse “rather than addressing the trauma itself” and for failing to address the toxicity of the girl’s relationship with her mother.

Alexis’ attorney Howard Talenfeld disputed the findings, telling the Miami Herald the report relies on inaccurate information and “is an apparent whitewash of the systemic failures.””

Child welfare agency: Girl who killed herself suffered abuse  [Gainesville.com 3/14/17 by AP]