An interim agreement for $32 million dollars reached Los Angeles County in a lawsuit filed by relatives of a Lancaster boy from years who died in 2018 after his mother and her boyfriend allegedly subjected him to torture, the lawyers reported Wednesday.
The agreement by the county in relation to the death of Anthony Ávalos was announced last week in court, although the terms were not disclosed .
The family of Anthony Avalos, a 10-year-old Lancaster boy who prosecutors say died of fatal child abuse by his mother and her boyfriend, has reached a tentative $32-million settlement with Los Angeles County.https://t.co/UamSDLpQ8c
— Los Angeles Times (@ latimes) May 11, 2022
Related: Anthony Ávalos: Father of tortured child reaches agreement with Los Angeles in lawsuit for not supervising child abuse
This Wednesday, the family’s attorneys held a press conference to announce the settlement amount, for $32 million dollars, which is still pending approval by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Said agreement leaves to Hathaway -Sycamores Child and Family Services, based in Pasadena, as the sole defendant in the lawsuit filed in July 2019.
The county and several social workers were accused in the lawsuit of not adequately addressing reports of abuse against Anthony and his media siblings.
The lawsuit alleges that Hathaway-Sycamores assigned employee Barbara Dixon to work with the family despite allegedly not reporting the abuse in the case of 8-year-old Palmdale native Gabriel Fernandez, who, like Anthony, died while in the care of his mother and her boyfriend.
In their court papers, Hathaway-Sycamore’s attorneys state that the plaintiffs make no allegations about what Dixon allegedly witnessed or if she suspected any abuse that was not part of what the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) of the county Given I already knew.
A grand jury indicted Heather Maxine Barrón, of 32 years old, and Kareem Ernesto Leiva, from 36 years, in October 2018 on charges of killing the child and abusing two other children in the home.
In May 2021, the District Attorney’s Office announced that it would no longer seek the death penalty against the couple, who now face a possible maximum prison sentence. Life without the possibility of parole if convicted.
Prosecutors allege that Anthony was severely tortured during the last 5 or 6 days before his death by his mother and Leiva .
The alleged abuse included whipping the child with a belt and coiled rope, pouring hot sauce on his face and mouth, holding him by the feet and leaving him c head repeatedly, according to court records.
Since 2013 and until his death in 2018, reports of abuse were filed with DCFS that Anthony and his 6 half-siblings denied food and water, beaten, sexually abused, hung upside down from a ladder, forced to bend over for hours while holding heavy objects, locked in small spaces without access to a bathroom, forced to fight each other and forced to eat from the garbage, according to plaintiffs’ court documents.
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