Sixteen-year-old Nayeli Perez was supposed to be safe. Instead, she was hidden away, starved, and beaten until her body gave out. Found weighing just 78 pounds, with injuries that told the story of months of torment, her death exposes a child welfare system in Texas that failed to see, failed to act, and failed to protect. This is not just the story of one girl, but of a broken system that allowed her to disappear in plain sight.

Massachusetts’ Department of Children and Families has long promised reform after each new tragedy, yet the cycle of failure continues. Children die, suffer neglect, or are torn from safe homes because of an agency that is broken at its core. The recent revelations about abuse inside a state-run group facility are not isolated scandals but symptoms of a nationwide crisis in child protection. From Massachusetts to California, Illinois to Texas, child protective services have left vulnerable children in danger and caused immeasurable harm. This article exposes how secrecy, negligence, and systemic dysfunction have made the system itself a threat to the very children it was created to protect.

A shocking case in Waterbury exposed decades of abuse hidden in plain sight. A man held captive since childhood was discovered after setting fire to his home, forcing attention on failures by Connecticut’s DCF. Teachers and neighbors had raised alarms for years, yet the system erased records and ignored warnings. This tragedy joins a pattern of preventable child deaths and neglect cases that reveal a child protection agency in crisis.