A four year old child is missing from a foster home for fifteen months. No one reports her missing. No one from Social Services notices she is missing. The foster "person" receives and continues to cash and spend the welfare checks sent each month for her care. Little Rilya Wilson has not be seen and is presumed dead at the hands of her foster "person".
This is a true story. By the time you reach the conclusion, you'll wish it were fiction. You'll wish it were not true in the case of the little girl named Rilya Wilson and you'll wish it were not true for all the other children adrift in the foster care system down in Florida. Hello Governor Jeb Bush. I think the proverbial buck stops right in the middle of your desk...
"What can I do?"
"I have no idea. I'm not smart enough to be Governor but you're supposed to be."
"What did you do?" I ask the social workers.
"What could we do?"
"I don't know, I'm not trained to be a social worker."
I acknowledge that it's a quagmire of a situation. But when one of you simply forgets a little girl is no longer where she should be, raise hell. If that doesn't work - call in the journalists. Do something. Anything to try to find her.
Overworked, of course and I know most of you do your best. But if you didn't visit all children you were supposed to check on - tell somebody.
As far as anyone now knows, Rilya Wilson disappeared at the age of four years from the foster home she was placed in. Ironically, her mother named her Rilya as an acronym for "Remember I Love You Always."
Before she succumbed to a life of crack use, I'm sure she meant that. How does a little pre-school girl disappear down in Florida? Does she wander off in a department store? Is there suspicion of a kidnapping? What is the usual procedure for a parent or caretaker to follow when this frightening situation occurs?
Go to a store security guard for help. They can announce that a child is missing over the pa system. Describe her and what she's wearing. Ask other shoppers to look around for her. Security surveillance cameras can be checked to see if she walked out of the store with a stranger. They should immediately watch the entrance to make sure she stays inside the store if she isn't already gone. In a short time call the police.
Anyone who watches TV can describe the procedure they follow. Interview parents and other relatives and caretakers. Put the child's picture on TV. Allow the parent to be taped and shown on TV describing the child as well as showing her picture to the general public.
If Rilya disappeared from her foster home, what reason can the caretaker give for taking no action to find her. There is no apparent reason - except - she already knew where the child was. Is that why the foster mother didn't take any steps to find the little girl - she knew exactly where Rilya Wilson was - because she was the one who put her there. For the next fifteen months the foster mother received and cashed the checks sent by the State of Florida to pay for Rilya's care.
The whole story of Rilya is a tangled web of happenings. Born to a mother who gave her the unusual name which stood for "Remember I'll Love You Always."
Unfortunately crack cocaine got in the way of motherly love and good intentions. Rilya ended up in the foster care system. Understandable that the mother was a helpless crack addict who couldn't even care for herself. One has to wonder though how any trained social worker in Florida or anywhere else could have placed the child where she did. Who in authority left her in the care of a woman with the history that Geralyn Graham has?
After Rilya disappeared in 2001 the foster care system was scrutinized and astonishingly it was determined that another 652 children were not where they were supposed to be. The state alleged that most of those missing were runaways and the rest MAY have been taken by their biological families. With the spotlight on the situation, state officials traced the paths of most of the children. In December of 2002 it was proudly announced that they reduced the number of "missing children" to "about 100." But when the attention of the press returned to other matters, the number quickly multiplied to an even higher number of missing kids than there were before all the attention from the newspapers.
Governor Bush may we ask what you are doing about this. What do you require of the Department of Children and Family Services? Once again Rilya Wilson, whose body has never been found, became a blip on the screen of public concern. Her absence had not been noticed for fifteen months and it's not surprising that she once again slipped into obscurity.
Fortunately there has been some retribution. Geralyn Graham her "caretaker" was charged with murder when she couldn't explain where the child was or why she didn't know where she was for fifteen months. The charges against her included three counts of aggravated child abuse, kidnapping and murder. A grand jury convened and it was determined that Rilya was suffocated or beaten to death in December of 2000.
