The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday on a proposed $450,000 settlement with a father whose 2-year-old son was killed by the boy’s mother’s boyfriend two weeks after a county social worker had visited the mother’s Lomita apartment.
The lawsuit filed by Robert Dominguez, of Glendora, alleges the county Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for his son’s death because a social worker closed the suspected child abuse case even though the boy had a bruise on his forehead the day of the social worker’s visit.
The county Claims Board recommended that the proposed settlement go to the supervisors for approval.
Dominguez’s attorney, Andrew Ritholz, said he believes his client should get a higher settlement, but the boy’s father wants to end the matter.
“My client wanted to take the money,” Ritholz said.
Gabriel Dominguez was killed in March 2011 by Daniel Vega, who was sentenced to 56 years to life in prison in 2012.
“Your conduct was as vicious, sadistic, as depraved, as cruel and as inhuman as anything I have ever seen in my life,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Steven Van Sicklen told Vega at his sentencing in a Torrance courtroom.
The lawsuit alleges a social worker lied on various reports regarding Gabriel’s case. About two weeks before the boy was killed, the social worker said he visited the home and reported there was no physical evidence of child abuse, according to Ritholz.
Ritholz said photographs taken the same day of the visit showed Gabriel had black eyes and a bruise on his forehead.
The boy’s mother, Marisa Mendoza later testified the social worker did not see Gabriel the day of the visit.
The social worker found the suspected child abuse allegations unfounded. Gabriel was killed three days later.
“The social worker’s mandated intervention with the abuse was needed and intended to break the chain of abuse,” Ritholz wrote in a court filing. “However, he did not perform his job as required, even lying about what he saw and heard, so that intervention never arrived.”
The county’s corrective action plan said “appropriate personnel actions” have taken place. A DCFS spokesman declined comment citing the pending settlement.
Ritholz said the social worker still works for DCFS, but was transferred out of the emergency response section.
The county said the mother allowed her violent boyfriend to live in the home with her three children and was “not truthful when the social worker questioned her about the living arrangements.”
Ritholz said Dominguez has an outstanding lawsuit filed against the Los Angeles Unified School District because, at the request of the social worker, Mendoza had taken Gabriel to Eschelman Elementary School where the school nurse had examined the boy, but the nurse did not report any evidence of child abuse or neglect to DCFS, according to court documents.
