Mother arrested in son's death
POLICE FIND EVIDENCE BOY WAS TORTURED
By Karl Fischer
MediaNews

Detectives investigating the death of an 8-year-old boy say his mother probably tortured him for more than a year in a dark dungeon of a bedroom before he swallowed household cleaner last week and died.

Richmond detectives arrested Teresa Moses, 23, on suspicion of murder, torture and child endangerment Friday night after staff at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center called police about the death.

Welts and bruises in various stages of healing covered Raijon Daniels' body. The injuries, officials said, told a long story of abuse: rope marks on his limbs, chemical burns, bed sores.

Moses' 3-year-old daughter is in protective custody and does not appear to have been a victim of abuse, police said.

Reports of Raijon's problems at home had crossed the desks of social workers at Contra Costa's Children & Family Services at least three times since May 2005, records show. In each case, he went home to his mother.

``It's just horrific what this child went through,'' Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said Monday.

The Contra Costa County Coroner's Office has not yet determined what killed Raijon. Regardless, police allege that Moses' actions Friday directly led to an excruciating death.

``It appears he was held hostage in the residence to prevent his escape,'' Richmond homicide detective Eric Smith said Monday. ``This kid was treated worse than a dog.''

Duct tape secured Raijon's sheets and covers to his bed when officers entered the apartment Friday. His window was locked, his door had a lock on the outside. The only other furniture in the room was a small table, where a camera for a baby monitor sat.

Raijon spent much of his time locked in the bedroom, watched through the monitor by his mother, police said.

``He was allowed one bathroom break at night,'' Smith said.

Raijon apparently frequently went to the bathroom on himself and in his room, detective Sgt. Mitch Peixoto said. His mother viewed the behavior as resistance.

``She said whenever she would get back from work, he would defecate on himself. She thought he was doing mind games with her,'' Peixoto said. ``I think he did it because he was scared whenever she came home.''

Pine-scented fumes greeted police at the apartment Friday.

``When I entered the apartment, it literally burned my eyes,'' Richmond police Lt. Enos Johnson said. ``It was horrifying to think that a child lived in that environment.''

Moses told detectives Friday night that she had poured the caustic contents of one container on her son's genitals earlier in the day to discourage him from urinating on himself.

Investigators found vomit and empty containers of cleanser in the bathroom and in Raijon's bedroom. They also found Raijon's dinner: a pile of brown goo, which Moses told police was beans and spaghetti, in a blender and in a cup.

She told police Raijon could not have solid food because he threw it. Soon after 5 p.m., after serving Raijon dinner and locking him in his bedroom, Peixoto said, Moses noticed on the baby monitor that Raijon had sat up and was ``doing a Stevie Wonder,'' in her words. When she went to check on him, she found him frothing at the mouth and unresponsive.

Moses called 911 about 5:15 p.m. Friday.

While police never previously arrested Moses, they encountered Raijon several times since May 2005. Each encounter resulted in a referral to county Children & Family Services.

``Whenever we hear about anything like this, it hurts us to our core,'' said Lynn Yaney, spokeswoman for the agency. ``But because of confidentiality laws, we can't discuss anything about specific cases.''

In March 2005, Moses called Richmond police to report her suspicion that a former family member had molested Raijon. Detectives investigated but found no evidence.

In April and May 2005, Moses sent letters to King Elementary School, which Raijon attended at the time, complaining that he received cafeteria lunches. She wrote in April that Raijon had a special diet and asked that he not get food.

The same month, the West Contra Costa school district contacted Children & Family Services with concerns about Raijon's behavior and diet, police sources said. A social worker investigated by phone but took no action.

In July 2005, a patron of a fast-food restaurant in San Pablo called police because a boy had been playing unattended there for two hours. Records show Raijon told the officer he ran away from home because his babysitter used handcuffs on him.

The officer saw no injuries on Raijon, and he denied that his mother abused him, police said, so the officer took him home to his mother. The officer wrote a report, which he forwarded to Children & Family Services for investigation. A social worker again completed a phone investigation without action, police said.

Raijon again ran away Nov. 23, 2005, records show, by jumping from the window of his second-floor apartment. His mother reported him missing. Police found him walking near Hilltop Mall. Officers brought him home and spoke to Moses, this time recording signs that all was not well.

The family regularly attended church on Sundays, and most neighbors agreed nothing seemed to be amiss, other than they kept to themselves.

``It's a sad story,'' said Ebenezer Amissah, Moses' neighbor across the hall. ``Other than the mother seeming a little weird to me, nothing seemed wrong.''

I hate this. So sad it hurts my heart.

poor child.. ...many kids get little spankings and they are taken away....others are beaten and are abused and no one helps them...it ends up being too late.

how utterly horrible and sad

hm, this story makes my stomach turn.

Oh my God this is one of the worst things I have ever read. Terrible.

about what i'd expect from Spisa....

what a tragic story.

This happened earlier this week. It's disgusting. I can't believe they are making it out as a suicide. First I heard of it being called that.

There's a nice, mentally healthy, christian gay couple just waiting to meet that 3 year old...

superspaceboy said:

acutally yeah I don't know if an 8 year old would think like that death=escape

why did they not take him away before?

ZombieKitten said:

they are investigating how this case was not recognized or flagged.

You have to understand if he really understood that it was suicide. sounds like sensationalism.

SpisaRibb said:

That's utterly inexcusable! If they knew what was going on, why on earth was that poor child allowed to go home with his mom and face even more abuse? He should have been turned over to a child services place or something, rather than to have to continue putting up with what he did. I can understand why he took his own life (even though it was very tragic and something should have been done to prevent it from happening). He just couldn't take the pain that his own mother was inflicting on him anymore. That mother needs to be locked up in jail for the rest of her life, seriously! She's a monster.

This is so disgusting! I can't imagine the terror that poor little boy went through. That woman is mentally ill.

I would've taken care of him.

I don't understand things like this. This is somewhat local news here and we've been talking about it for several days. There's no excuse. The child must have given off some signs.

M

Reading this article broke my heart...how incredibly sad

no words

this is so sad. how a mother can do that to her own child poor poor kid

Just shoot her!

suzysue said:

quite obviously there is something seriously wrong with her mind, she needs to be hospitalised.

ZombieKitten said:

i know its mean but i don't care if she's mental, that bitch needs her ass whooped and treated just how she did him

brownsugar said:

They will strap her to her bed and feed her mush and keep her in solitary confinement in an institution (probably that's only how it is in the movies )

I know it would feel good to get revenge on her, but the only thing I can think of as a mother, is how can you do that to your child without being pathological in some way?

I only read that story above, so I don't know anything else about it, but I think the child's behaviour was well outside of normal - a kid running away at such an early age should really be investigated - a little kid doesn't run away from a safe and loving home (I might expect that for a teenager it would fall into more common troubled teen behaviour, but not a child under 8).

I wonder if he didn't drink that stuff to make himself sick so he could go to the hospital just to get out of there? What a horrible way to die, I am sure it was very painful

ZombieKitten said:

it just makes me so sad when people do things like that to kids. what makes it so bad is that there are many kids out there going through the same thing. i wish there was a way to just rescue them all from the bad guy

brownsugar said:

I think the people that need to be worked on sadly, are the human services/child protection people - if they can't do their job due to whatever, lack of funding etc, then we are not doing enough to protect our children. There must be 1000's of neglected kids whose parents are alcoholics and drug addicts, and they KNOW the kids are out there!
As long as there is no licence required to having kids all sorts wackos are gonna be having them

ZombieKitten said:

... or perhaps she just forced it down his throat? ... if she was capable of pouring it on his genitals earlier in the day, she was capable of anything.

For some reason the word "suicide" made the article more upsetting to me. The content is still as bad as the headline suggests but the thought that a young child would be treated so bad that he would want to take his own life is unbelievably hard to grasp.

I wonder if it was really suicide or, as Zombie suggests (and I think more likely) a desperate cry for help. But I think I'm most inclined to believe, from reading the article, that it was murder. Horrendous woman.

Reincarnate said:

gosh I don't even want to entertain that thought

I just don't think a young child would see death as the better/easier option than living. I think all kids live in hope that things might be better the next day. That is why I am so suspicious of this.

psychodelicide said:omfg: That's utterly inexcusable! If they knew what was going on, why on earth was that poor child allowed to go home with his mom and face even more abuse? He should have been turned over to a child services place or something, rather than to have to continue putting up with what he did. [/quote]


I met someone who was a social worker here in Britain once. He told me about some of the awful cases he had to deal with but said they didn't always take the child into care until it was a last resort. When I asked why, he said it could often be more traumatic for the child and, in the case of children who had been sexually abused, was not always a solution - i understood that he meant that once the child was sexually aware it was a barrier that had already been crossed in the child's development and would affect the way in which they saw the world so that taking a child into care would not necessarily stop the emotional damage. Also, children can sometimes be attached to their abuser so taking them into care causes more trauma to them.

I wasn't sure then, and I'm not sure now, that I agree with this method of dealing with abused children. We tend to believe that our children are protected by social services and other local and governmental departments but sometimes all that happens is that the family's monitored more closely.

ZombieKitten said:

Yes, I agree. It's too awful to think that a young child would think that way too.

brownsugar said: