By CHRIS POWELL
Everyone has heard the story about the boy who murdered his parents and then asked the court for leniency because he had become an orphan.
Connecticut now has a case that goes one better.
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The “estate” of Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres — the 11-year-old whose decomposed body was found in a box in New Britain in October and who is alleged to have been fatally abused by her mother, Karla Garcia — is suing the state Department of Children and Families for $100 million in damages. Seventy-five million is for the fatal abuse of Jacqueline and the other $25 million is for abuse against her sister.
Who is Jacqueline’s “estate”?
It’s her father, Victor Torres, who lost custody of Jacqueline in January 2013 soon after her birth because he was in prison. After his release Torres regained joint custody with Jacqueline’s mother in May 2022. But he says he last saw the girl in June 2024, a few months before when police believe she was killed and her body stuffed in the box, which wouldn’t be discovered and opened for a year. Torres didn’t look very hard for her.
If Torres’ lawsuit is to be believed, the state Department of Children and Families owed the girl the care her own father failed to provide, having abandoned the girl. A real father might have insisted on being involved enough in her life to discover her abuse and avert her murder.
Now the $100 million claimed as damages by Jacqueline’s “estate” stands to reward Torres for his indifference and negligence.
The office of state Attorney General William Tong will defend the child welfare department against the lawsuit filed by Jacqueline’s “estate.” If the attorney general could take a break from joining federal lawsuits against the Trump administration, he might ask a state court to remove Torres as next of kin to the child he abandoned and from whose horrible death he now may imagine a spectacular payday.
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From Tong’s bluster about the many federal lawsuits he has joined, people might think that all the neglect of the needy in Connecticut is the Trump administration’s fault.
But last week Connecticut Public Radio’s Sujata Srinivasan and Maysoon Khan reported about state government’s own neglect of hundreds of autistic children and their badly stressed parents.
The reporters found that a program underwritten by federal Medicaid provides respite care for parents of autistic children as well as live-in companions, job coaching, and other services. But state government hasn’t appropriated enough to cover all the 2,400 kids for whom such help has been requested, and the state Social Services Department has only about half the case managers it would need.
So some of the autistic children have been on a waiting list for 10 years.
Part of the problem is that the rates paid by state government to Medicaid providers remain disgracefully low and so people covered by Medicaid often have trouble finding health professionals to serve them. Even if the Social Services Department had all the case managers it would need to handle more services to autistic children, it probably would not be able to find many autism professionals willing to work for Medicaid rates.
Yet nearly every week state government announces millions of dollars in grants for less compelling things.
Last month Governor Lamont said the state would give $121 million to QuantumCT, which he described as “a nonprofit that serves as the statewide coordinating body for advancing quantum technologies and convening industry and early-stage innovators, academia, and the public sector.” The General Assembly should check back in a year to see exactly what that meant and what, if anything, the money accomplished — after seeing if the Social Services Department has gotten around to the autistic kids.
Meanwhile state employee unions are to be given raises of 4.5%, far higher than the raises being given in the private sector.
If these were Trump’s priorities, the people who run Connecticut would be screaming, “How cruel!”
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 