If you love documentaries and true crime then you should check out this documentary on Netflix. It will have you emotionally invested in Gabriel’s story of how his peers failed to save his life from his mom. It’s such a crazy story that you’ll want to binge watch all the episodes.
An eight year old boy named Gabriel Fernández who lived with his mom and her boyfriend, was neglected and abused constantly with no intervention from child protection services or cops, even though they knew what was going on. This unfortunately led to him being beaten to death.
After watching this documentary many students were really affected emotionally by what Gabriel went through. Senior Kaylani Almonte says, “I was literally sick to my stomach and couldn’t finish all of it because the story was so tragic, all the details about his death was super disturbing.”
Gabriel’s story was so sad it physically affected Senior Angel Davis she says, “It brought tears to my eyes” that’s how tragic the documentary actually was.
The child welfare system failed Gabriel Fernádez. A lot of students could recognize the horrendous failures they made when working on his case. Junior Maya Roberts says, “I think they should’ve cared more about the child’s well being than not taking Gabriel away from his mom.”
The child welfare system did absolutely nothing to help protect Gabriel from his parents, which gave the public a bad perception of child welfare services. Because of this, people will not trust them anymore. Senior Kaylani Almonte says, “Everyone saw that CPS did nothing and now have this view of them that they can’t call CPS because they wont do anything.”
The way that this could have been easily prevented to save Gabriel’s life is really heartbreaking. Junior Maya Roberts says, “It made me really upset that something so awful happened when it could’ve been prevented on so many occasions.”
This documentary really got Patriots thinking that Gabriel could have been saved and this tragic story didn’t have to end the way it did, “CPS could have done something,” said Senior Kaylani Almonte, they could have done anything but instead they chose to ignore it which caused this case to end horrifically.
