Tori’s Story

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Vyctorya Tori Sandoval was a beautiful, bright and perfect
little 2 year-old girl who died tragically on Easter Sunday
morning, April 24, 2011.

She had been in foster care for 18 months–her entire life–
and was living with the Sedgewicks, a loving foster-to-adopt
family when she was returned to her biological parents on
September 1st, 2010.

Foster care is supposed to be a temporary solution for
children as young as Tori and she had been in care for
many months beyond the allowable legal timelines afforded
parents seeking to reunify with their children. Tori’s parents
had abandoned all efforts to reunify with her, dropped out
of sight and had a newborn when social services found
them in a homeless shelter. In light of the parent’s history
of domestic violence, child neglect, and abandonment,
Tori’s foster-to-adopt parents, foster family agency staff,
friends and family members were stunned by the LADCFS’s
(Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services)
decision to give them yet another chance to reunify with
Tori and they begged DCFS social workers, supervisors, and
Tori’s lawyer to re-examine this decision to return her, but
to no avail.

On September 1st, 2010, when the juvenile court
commissioner ordered that Tori be sent back to her
biological parents no one in the courtroom presented the
obvious risks and dangers, no one spoke up for Tori. Tori
had NO VOICE in that courtroom.

Tragically, on Easter morning, 8 months after being returned
to her biological parents, Vyctorya Sandoval was pronounced
dead at 3:30 am at Loma Linda Hospital. Healing bruises
covered her body, a rib was fractured and blood tests
suggested she died thirsty and hungry.

Medical staff had tried to revive her since the previous
evening at 9:15 pm when she was found in an apartment in
Pomona with no heartbeat.