Four Feet Under: Hidden stories of child abuse

There is story on MYSA.com regarding the problem of child abuse and children's deaths here in San Antonio the past several years. Danny is on the board of our local children's home who takes in abused children from ages 2-18. There are currently about 90 living on campus. I know our local CPS is overloaded and we need to find a way to help and work all the cases and get these little ones out before it is too late.

The morticians did their best with the tiny lifeless infant. Two hours they spent trying to mask baby David's injuries. They disguised the chunk missing from his leg with plastic and special cream. They covered his bruised face with makeup. Only five months earlier, David had been brought into the world to replace another child, one the mother lost to Child Protective Services because of a drug habit. He weighed 11 pounds when he was beaten to death in December 2005. Somebody bludgeoned his head and smashed his jaw. Someone bit his thigh and bruised his arm. A list of his injuries filled two pages of the medical examiner's report and informed the mortician's notes. "Baby in bad shape," the undertaker wrote.
When they buried David 4 feet under, a common depth for a child's grave, on the Friday before Christmas, his mother wasn't there. Devon Arlene Vega, who was 25 then and had a cocaine habit, was locked in the Bexar County Jail, accused of beating David to death less than two weeks after CPS had begun investigating her for a second time on allegations of neglect. **Last month, at the age of 26, she pleaded guilty to murdering David and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In San Antonio (Bexar County), the deadliest 12-month period was the state fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2005. Eighteen children died. That's a child every three weeks. And from Sept 2005 - Aug 31....we have lost 14 children to abuse.

Who will stand and be a champion for abused

and neglected children?