A North Miami toddler's lifeless body told a tale of torture so harrowing it made a seasoned detective emotional.
Little Ghanson Debrosse, 3, was pronounced dead after being found with indications of severe trauma and sexual abuse at his mother's home early Tuesday morning, according to NBC6.
Police say the boy's mother confessed to it all. Fafane Caze, 21, has been jailed on one count of aggravated child abuse/torture, with additional charges expected.
North Miami Police spokesman Maj. Neal Cuevas said Ghanson's body showed signs of being burned in the past, and according to the Miami Herald other injuries were consistent with whipping by extension cord.
His mother, detectives said, initially claimed the boy had been abused by someone else during a recent trip to Haiti.
"According to investigators, the child had trauma over every inch of its body," Cuevas said. "The mother claims that the child was just recently returned from Haiti, where the child was, and that the abuse occurred in Haiti."
Cuevas said North Miami's chief of police is in contact with the authorities in Haiti, but that Caze confessed to the abuse after hours in custody.
According to documents obtained by the Miami Herald, Caze and her children -- she also has a daughter about to turn five and a one-year-old boy -- were known to the Department of Children and Families thanks to three prior reports in 2010.
Though records from that period were redacted by DCF, they suggest that someone was concerned that Caze — who was about 17 at the time and had two very small children — was being sexually abused by an older man. Notes from that investigation say Caze’s father was living in New York then, and he described Caze as “ungovernable,” adding that she had been troubled “since the age of 14.” Caze’s father told an investigator he sent the girl to Haiti, “but she was able to come back to Florida.”
[Ghanson's father Donald] Debrosse, 41, told an investigator he met Caze as she was walking down 70th Street. He said the young mother was pushing a stroller, and he stopped her and asked whether she was all right. Caze got into Debrosse’s car. He gave her food, and “eventually she just started moving her things into [Debrosse’s] home,” he said.
While the October 2010 report was still under investigation, DCF received a new complaint later that same month. Caze had been arrested, and was being evaluated at Miami’s Juvenile Assessment Center after she and Debrosse had a physical altercation. ...Both parents, the report said, were injured during the fight. And though Caze allegedly tried to “throw the infant at the father,” records say Ghanson was unharmed.
"She's a devil," Debrosse told Local10 after his son's death. "She's not a good mother."
Interim DCF Secretary Esther Jacobo said in a statement that "although we had contact with Ghanson and his family when he was an infant, we received no reports since that time and no one could have predicted this heartbreaking tragedy.”
CBS Miami reports the other children are now in DCF custody.
“Just listening to the investigators and listening to the mother’s explanation almost brought me to tears, just to hear some of the things that this child has suffered,” Cuevas told the station.