Everything about Rilya Wilson’s death was horrific. She entered the Florida foster system a bright-eyed toddler, and disappeared when she was about 4 years old. And it took the state Department of Children and Families—responsible for vulnerable children like Rilya—two years to realize she was gone.
A witness in an ensuing criminal case said the girl’s caretakers locked her in a dog cage, beat her with switches, and tied her to her bed at night. Authorities never found her body. And an uncontroversial conclusion emerged: that these horrors destroyed Rilya because of the failure of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Jeb Bush was the governor during Rilya’s disappearance and death. Now that he’s campaigning to be president, he talks often about the importance of taking care of society’s most vulnerable.
In his announcement video, he said that his core beliefs “start with the premise that the most vulnerable in our society should be in the front of the line, not the back.”
[For more of this story, written by Betsey Woodruff, go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...a-lost-500-kids.html]
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