ABANDONED TO HER FATE

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Especially, it can be assumed, when a child dies slowly, by torture. In September, Awilda removed Elisa from the Montessori school and enrolled her in Manhattan's Public School 26. The Daily News reports that on arrival, she seemed a fairly happy girl, one who shared make-believe bus trips with other children during lunch hour. But she soon folded up into herself. The school's principal and social worker, noting that she was often bruised and had trouble walking, reported the matter directly to a deputy director of CWA's Manhattan field division, in what would be CWA's fourth notification. School district spokesman Andrew Lachman says the official allegedly replied that the case was "not reportable" owing to insufficient evidence. School staff then visited the Lopez apartment. To their surprise, Awilda "was very happy to see them," says Lachman, and there were no signs of abuse.

O'Connor, however, was regretting his recommendation to the judge. He received a series of hysterical phone calls from Awilda complaining that Elisa was soiling herself and drinking from the toilet and had cut off her hair. Finally she asked O'Connor to take Elisa away. Convinced the girl's symptoms had existed prior to her contact with Awilda but were now driving her mother over the edge, he rushed to the apartment. "You could smell urine and see she had defecated everywhere," he says. "Her toys were thrown around. There were feces smeared on the refrigerator."

O'Connor claims he called Elisa's CWA caseworker, who told him he was "too busy" to come by. Moreover, O'Connor says the caseworker never responded to this fifth appeal to CWA, despite repeated subsequent calls. O'Connor took the Lopezes to a city hospital for psychiatric counseling, and Awilda seemed to calm down somewhat. To O'Connor's dismay, however, she repeatedly avoided signing a release that would allow him to send his observations to the city agency. By last July she had dropped out of touch entirely.

There was a reason for that. "Drugs, drugs, drugs--that's all she was interested in," says neighbor Doris Sepulveda, who watched the Lopezes trying to sell a child's tricycle outside their building. Another neighbor, Eric Latorre, recalls seeing the whole family out at 2 a.m. as Awilda sought crack. Awilda had reportedly come to believe that Elisa, whom she called a mongoloid and filthy little whore, had been put under a spell by her father--a spell that had to be beaten out of the child. Neighbors, some of whom say they called the authorities, later told the press of muffled moaning and Elisa's voice pleading, "Mommy, Mommy, please stop! No more! No more! I'm sorry!" Law-enforcement authorities have provided a reason for those cries: they say Elisa was repeatedly sexually assaulted with a toothbrush and a hairbrush. When her screams became too loud, Awilda turned up the radio.