Missing girl's birthday brings no answers

Top DCF administrators have quit, but no one has been charged in Rilya Wilson's case and a reward goes unclaimed.

©Associated Press
September 29, 2002

MIAMI -- Rilya Wilson would have turned 6 today. But the little girl made famous for falling through the mesh of Florida's child protection safety net has been gone so long that she may never have even turned 5.

Top child welfare administrators have quit in Tallahassee and Miami, and a blue-ribbon committee examined the inner workings of the Department of Children and Families. But a $75,000 reward is unclaimed, and no criminal charges have been filed against anyone connected to the girl who vanished.

"The compelling nature of the unknown -- whether she lives or not, where she is, under what circumstances, are there others who may be in similar peril" made Rilya an archetype of vulnerable children, said Jack Levine, president of the advocacy group Center for Florida's Children.

Rilya's caregivers say she was taken by the staff of the DCF in January or February 2001. She was reported missing last April when the state realized visitation records had been falsified for months on end.

Her caregivers, sisters Pamela and Geralyn Graham, attracted immediate scrutiny. Pamela had custody of Rilya. But Geralyn, who has a history of fraud, said she turned the girl over to the DCF visitor. Geralyn said she was Rilya's grandmother until unsealed court records identified someone besides her son as the girl's father.

The sisters were not home when called, but another sister, Bonnie, said they are still pursuing a personal search for Rilya.

"The family's going through a real rough time," she said. "I know that they are trying to put it before the public again because they feel like everybody's forgotten about it."

Miami-Dade County police have an active investigation under way, and prosecutors are pursuing their own effort with no end in sight. One grisly dead end was a DNA test in May that proved a beheaded girl in Kansas City, Mo., wasn't Rilya.

Rilya, an acronym for "remember I love you always," was born to a cocaine addict who lost three daughters to DCF. Once the girl made headlines, the agency began pursuing long overdue adoptions for her sisters. One girl has been adopted, and legal work is nearly complete on the other. The Grahams intend to challenge both adoptions.

Gov. Jeb Bush created a blue-ribbon committee to examine DCF shortcomings with Rilya specifically and the agency in general. A final meeting is set in January.

"The Rilya Wilson case highlighted what the department faces, how it's doing, what it needs to do better," said committee chairman David Lawrence. "The good news, frankly, is that it is clear that there is visible progress on the basics."

The panel blamed Rilya's disappearance on deception by two low-level workers and her caregivers, but it recommended 21 short-term priorities and nine long-term objectives for an agency "engulfed in scandal."

Frustrated child advocates also have banded together. A nonprofit watchdog group called Florida's Children First! announced its formation last week to scrutinize the child welfare system through education, lobbying and lawsuits.

"The circle of interest is widening, and the commitments being made by candidates and officeholders are heightening," Levine said. "This is high-stakes poker, and little Rilya Wilson was the ante."

It turned out that her disappearance while under state supervision wasn't an isolated case.

In July, the state agency acknowledged losing track of 532 children in its care and suffered more embarrassment when a newspaper found 22 of them by checking public records and doing a little legwork.

The latest in a spate of people trying to take Miami children from their parents by passing themselves off as DCF workers came Tuesday when a stranger demanded a 20-day-old child from her mother.

The body of a slain 17-year-old Broward County runaway who fled a DCF building in April was found in an Everglades canal this month.

Even as the subject of sensational news, Rilya is hardly alone. As of Friday, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children counted 521 children who disappeared without a trace or easy explanation.

"It's not unusual to have somebody of this age missing that long," said Ben Ermini, director of the center's missing children's division. "The circumstances of this case are unusual."

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