Naika Venant Facebook viral video.
Before Foster Child Naika Venant's Suicide on Facebook Live, Florida Failed to Help Her.
.webp)
Florida Failed to Help Her
Still dressed in her school uniform, Naika Venant went live on Facebook at 6:12 p.m. November 10, 2016. Earlier that day, the 13-year-old foster child from Miami had stolen a phone from her caseworker. Now, as an audience of three watched her video feed, she clumsily navigated the iPhone's camera,...
They said I walked in front of cars. And I ain't go to jail — they Baker Acted me," she clarified. "They put me in the crazy house for the people who want to kill theyselves. Like, why would I want to kill myself? Explain me this."
During her eighth-grade year, Naika spent hours documenting her life on Facebook Live. With her tough exterior and class-clown quips, it was easy for her to dismiss concerns that she was depressed or suicidal. But already in her short life, Naika had expressed thoughts of self-harm on at least five occasions and been hospitalized three times under the Baker Act, a state law that allows officials to detain anyone threatening to hurt themselves.
From the age of 6, she had been in and out of Florida's foster-care system after the state received a report that her mother had whipped her with a belt more than 30 times. Since then, records show Naika had been sexually abused, psychologically evaluated, hospitalized for sickle cell anemia, diagnosed with anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorders, medicated with Adderall and Zoloft, arrested for criminal mischief, and expelled from her charter school.
The trauma she experienced and the behavioral problems she exhibited were well known to the child-welfare agencies responsible for her care. But despite being under the watchful eye of dozens of doctors, therapists, foster parents, and caseworkers, Naika received no meaningful intervention. Instead, the system continued to lead her down a dangerous path, shuffling the teen to more than a dozen foster homes in the last eight months of 2016. It was in one of those homes that she entered the bathroom, logged into Facebook, and hanged herself while filming her final live-stream.
Naika Venant Facebook viral video.
Before Foster Child Naika Venant's Suicide on Facebook Live, Florida Failed to Help Her.