Noah Cuatro

We’re counting down 10 of the biggest stories The Imprint published in 2019. Each day, we’ll connect readers with a few links to our coverage on a big story from this past year.

On November 13, The Imprint reported that in the weeks before the tragic death of Noah Cuatro, a 4-year-old Los Angeles boy, social workers with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) pleaded for his removal.

This summer, a 4-year-old boy named Noah Cuatro was allegedly tortured and killed by his parents in Palmdale, a high desert exurb of Los Angeles County. The tragedy is still sending shockwaves through the county’s $2.9 billion child welfare agency and local government.

Swiftly following The Imprint‘s story this week exposing that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) had not investigated 4,000 allegations of serious child abuse in 2018-19, a top officer with the department said that it has launched a review of those practices.

The first recorded sign of trouble in the brief life of Noah Cuatro came before he was even born. In August 2014, when his mother was nine months pregnant with Noah, she allegedly threw her baby sister, fracturing the 10-month-old’s skull in two places.

On Monday, the tension that has gripped Los Angeles County’s child welfare establishment since the mysterious July death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro spilled out into public view. At a meeting of the county’s Commission for Children and Families, the chiefs of both the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the Office of Child Protection (OCP) grew visibly and audibly frustrated with commissioners’ questions about the Cuatro case.

On Sept. 11, I visited the wood-paneled offices of Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger for a wide-ranging discussion about the state of child welfare in the county and her district.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County’s Office of Child Protection (OCP) released a report absolving the county’s child welfare system of wrongdoing in the suspicious death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro.  The boy died on July 6, a day after his parents had called 911 to say that he had drowned.

On August 30, the Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection (OCP) submitted a potentially explosive report on the mysterious July death of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro to county attorneys. Despite being requested by the county’s powerful Board of Supervisors, the report has yet to be made public, leaving yawning questions unresolved as L.A.’s