“Untitled Silhouette” by Janet Gutierrez (acrylic paint on repurposed canvas).
Lili’s 13-year-old sister Janet made this beautiful painting. Janet is an amazing, strong, kind person; it has been wonderful getting to know her and help support her. Janet and her sisters create awesome powerful art, and Janet also makes one-of-a-kind clothing and cosplay accessories.
Janet and her other two sisters Deborah and Ailinn continue to report being severely abused by their mother. Child Protective Services is involved, but does little more than give the mother a “stamp of approval” to further abuse her children.
We visit the children every week, and this is what we see (and what they tell us): they do not get fed, they do not get appropriate nutrition or physical health care, they live in filthy unclean conditions, they are psychologically tortured and bullied by their mother every day, they are isolated within their home and physically prevented from leaving, they are exposed to dangerous people (pedophiles, etc.), they do not get appropriate mental health support, they do not get any academic support, they do not get any emotional or personal support, and so much more. The children also report that their mother brutally bullies and harasses them late at night and early in the morning until they are too traumatized to go to school.
CPS has done nothing to address any of these issues, despite significant evidence from us, the children’s therapist and teachers, and the children themselves. Almost every day the children report more terrible things being done to them. The social workers accept the mother’s inconsistent lies and do not engage in adequate investigation to uncover even simple facts. (For example, she tells them she works as a landscaper, when in fact she doesn’t have a job and sleeps all day.) They even help the mother create excuses for school and doctors to explain why all of her children are missing school for months at a time.
Every day, Lili cries in silence for the torture that is killing her sisters (who are also like her daughters, since Lili’s mother has forced her children to provide all care for each other for many years)– and for her own powerlessness to stop it.
This piece depicts a silhouette with two faces, surrounded by a wonderfully-detailed “stained glass” effect in the background.
UPDATE #1: The children’s therapist filed a complaint to CPS regarding the social workers’ illegal and unprofessional actions. Within days the therapist received a call from CPS, informing her that the children were being removed from her therapy. This was the only response the therapist received regarding her official complaint. The children were then transferred against their will to a new CPS-paid therapist. The same worker is still assigned to the case, and the children report to us that the worker continues to engage in abusive and unprofessional behaviors. The children report that when they told their CPS worker they feel unsafe and want to keep their old therapist, the worker told them they were “being immature,” insulted them, and said she thought they were lying about being abused by their mother.
UPDATE #2: We successfully gained guardianship of the children, and they now live with us! CPS concluded “no evidence of wrongdoing,” but were still forced to take action because they could not deny that the children had not attended school for 7-18 months, lived in filth, had poor hygiene, were rapidly deteriorating with severe mental health struggles, and were continuing to say they were being abused. So the abusive mother got off scot-free, but the children are safely with us.
