By Gabriel Arizon and City News Service
While the family of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro will receive a $20 million settlement from the wrongful death suit against Los Angeles County after his 2019 death, Emily Carranza, a Sylmar resident and children’s advocate said Noah’s death and the abuse of countless other children could have been avoided had social workers from the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) done their job properly.
The settlement was approved on Tuesday, Sept. 30, by the county Board of Supervisors. The suit was filed by relatives of the Palmdale boy, whose death was originally reported as a drowning and later led to the criminal conviction of his parents.
Evangelina Hernandez, Noah’s great-grandmother, filed the wrongful death suit against the county in July 2020 on behalf of his 6-year-old sister and two brothers, ages 5 and 11, criticizing the actions of employees of the DCFS.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger said in a statement after the board’s unanimous vote that Noah’s death prompted changes in the county’s child welfare system, including improvements to the DCFS.
“The death of Noah Cuatro was a heartbreaking tragedy,” Barger said. “While nothing can undo the harm he suffered, today’s $20 million settlement provides some measure of support to his surviving family. Noah’s life was not in vain. His case has reinforced the need for ongoing review of child welfare cases, stronger partnerships with our schools and a stabilized child welfare workforce to better protect children in the Antelope Valley. Noah leaves behind a legacy – he will not be forgotten.”
While Barger said that Noah’s death is sparking changes, those close to the Cuatro family, including Carranza, maintain that his death was preventable had the DCFS done its job from the start.
Carranza is the cousin of Gabriel Fernandez, the 8-year-old boy who was heinously tortured and beaten at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend in 2013 – six years before Noah’s death. His case received national attention, was the subject of an HBO documentary, and was to be the impetus for change in the DCFS. Gabriel’s death was not to be in vain, yet today the same rhetoric is being espoused.
Carranza, with others outraged by the death of Gabriel and the subsequent abuse of children, held numerous news conferences and protests. She formed an organization of other parents and supported prosecutor Jonathon Hatami and his office to convict Gabriel’s mother, Pearl Fernandez and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, to life sentences.
The cases of Gabriel and Noah also bear many similarities to the death of 10-year-old Anthony Avalos, who was abused and killed by his mother and her boyfriend in 2018. In each case, DCFS was notified that the children were being abused, but did not rescue them. Multiple social workers failed to properly respond to reports of abuse.
Carranza points out that no significant changes came about in the DCFS following the deaths of Gabriel and Anthony.
Gabriel and Anthony died under similar circumstances years earlier, with widespread publicity and public hearings to put DCFS on record to account for their failings to make them more accountable.
It’s hoped that a large settlement to Noah’s family will make a difference. Carranza said that Hernandez has received harsh criticism from people accusing her of only wanting money. However, Carranza said that the settlement will be used to care for Noah’s siblings – who have special needs – and “to set these kids up for the future” after their great-grandmother passes.
“There is … no amount of money that will ever take away the absence of Noah, or any child that was murdered at the hands of their own parents,” Carranza said. “It was a senseless death. The judge could have had that baby removed and he didn’t do it fast enough. The social workers could have removed him and not waited for the judge. They could have saved him, just as they could have saved Anthony and Gabriel.”
She recently attended a meeting with the DCFS and parents, where they voiced their concerns about social workers and heard about the changes that are coming. She said that social workers, at least in DCFS’s Lancaster office, are being trained on how to communicate with people when they arrive at someone’s home and not to start with accusations.
While she keeps faith that there will be changes that will save more children, she recognizes it will still be an uphill battle.
“It takes the parents and social workers to have the communication to work together, but at the same time, as parents, we fear for our children, especially after the bad reputation of DCFS,” she said. “So our first instinct is going to be to protect our family, stand guard and get angry, and the social workers are going to react to that energy that we’re giving them.”
In April 2024, Lancaster Superior Court Judge Robert Chu sentenced Jose Maria Cuatro Jr. to 32 years to life in prison, and Ursula Elaine Juarez to 22 years to life for Noah’s July 2019 death. Cuatro pleaded no contest on March 29, 2024, to one count each of first-degree murder and torture, and Juarez pleaded no contest to one count each of second-degree murder and torture.
In an amended complaint brought in 2023, the plaintiffs’ lawyers stated that new information was obtained in February and March of that year, showing that Noah’s siblings also were subjected to abuse and neglect by Jose Cuatro and that county workers breached their mandatory duty to report their “reasonable suspicion” of such conduct.
In late March 2023, the oldest of the siblings told Hernandez that he was often forced by Jose Cuatro to “physically fight and beat up’” Noah, the plaintiffs’ attorneys stated.
The same sibling also told Matthew Hernandez that he and Noah were always hungry, that he saw his parents slapping his surviving brother in the face when he was an infant, that he observed his parents fight a lot and that he was “scared of his dad because he would beat him up” by punching him and hitting him with his belt, the plaintiff’s lawyers stated in their court papers.
The boy said he also saw Jose Cuatro hit Noah and the other two siblings, according to the amended suit.
In February 2023, county social worker Lizbeth Hernandez Aviles testified during a deposition about the alleged abuses of Noah’s siblings, stating that the property manager of the Cuatro apartment told her he heard crying from outside the unit and that there were “concerns over domestic violence” between the parents, according to the amended complaint. Aviles also testified that the Cuatro home had no beds or mattresses in the bedroom where the children slept, only a mattress in the living room, the revised suits stated.
Aviles also testified that the home had a foul odor and that when she entered it was “cluttered and filthy” with trash on the floor and countertops, according to the amended suit, which alleged that Aviles had an obligation to report her suspicions that Noah’s siblings also were being abused.
The case began when Noah’s parents reported a drowning in their family pool in the 1200 block of East Avenue S at around 4 p.m. July 5, 2019. But the boy’s injuries later raised suspicions about how he died and medical staff found the trauma he had suffered inconsistent with drowning.
Noah was taken first to Palmdale Regional Medical Center and then to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where he was pronounced dead July 6, 2019. His death occurred after multiple reports of abuse had already been made to the DCFS, according to the suit.
“Instead of protecting Noah and his siblings, DCFS continued to place the children with their abusive parents, where the children continued to be abused over the course of several years,” the suit alleged.
After Noah’s death, social workers made threats against Evangelina Hernandez “in an attempt to silence her,” the suit alleged. They allegedly told her that if she made any public statements about Noah’s case and/or potential lawsuits, she would lose her request for guardianship of her other three great-grandchildren and would never see them again.
It went as far as a judge placing a gag order on the family, Carranza added. She said that the family deserves the settlement money after the stress put upon them by social workers and the judge, and that the county needs to implement harsher punishments for social workers who threaten families.
“You don’t threaten a family because you made a mistake and let a child die at the hands of their abuser,” Carranza said. “They should lose their jobs and their licenses and never work in the judicial system or with children ever again.”