Missing Florida girl’s mother charged with abuse of corpse

In the case of 11-year-old Janiya Thomas, Manatee County authorities discovered shed been missing for a year when they arrived to remove all five children from the home of Keishanna Thomas following a complaint that the woman had abused another child, a 12-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, in a release, the Governor says the $22.9 million will allow for the hiring of more than 270 case managers-which oversee foster care and adoption services.

The reports can’t account for Janiya’s whereabouts around September 2014 after an investigator had last seen the girl four months prior in May.

It took more than a week to confirm the identity of the body because standard autopsy procedures were not adequate.

“When [a previous] case was closed out, all five children were present and all five children were included in that case”, said DCF Secretary Mike Carroll, speaking recently to lawmakers. The sheriff’s office is in charge of child welfare investigations in the area and handled the Thomas case for years. The agency did not immediately return emails seeking comment Tuesday.

“The children have become increasingly fearful of their mother and frequently feel unsafe in their home environment”, an investigator wrote in a report last updated earlier this month. “Anytime something horrific happens to an innocent child, we have to stop and think about what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again”, Scott said in his announcement.

Last year, one of the children said his mother pulled down his trousers and beat him with an electric cord.

Keishanna Thomas remains in jail.

The cause of Janiya’s death has not yet been released.

Janiya, who suffers from a medical condition that prompted her to be home-schooled, is believed to have been missing since the summer of 2014. When asked how long, the child said it was a week or so, with Janiya even eating in the bathroom.

DCF records show that Janiya’s oldest sibling was removed from the home in 2004.