Follow Up File: Florida Killings Have SC Connection

A Florida social worker who finds himself at the heart of a national tragedy has a South Carolina connection – one that could conceivably come back to haunt him as the investigation into a brutal mass murder in Naples continues.

Yves Benoit – who served as the “child welfare” case manager for the five murdered children of confessed killer Mesac Damas – is also responsible for overseeing two children with South Carolina connections.  Sadly, these children were similarly placed in harm’s way by Florida’s competence-challenged Department of Children and Families.

Four-year-old Ashleigh and two-year-old Aiden Rodriguez, whose siblings already live with a Beaufort, S.C. couple, should have been placed with this same South Carolina family years ago – but a “relative search” prescribed by Florida law was botched and the children were inexplicably returned to the custody of their mother, a mentally-disturbed exotic dancer and “escort” with a history of alcoholism, drug abuse, violent behavior and a rap sheet a mile long.

FITS profiled the plight of the Rodriguez children in this July feature story.

It is Benoit’s connection to this South Carolina case that produced a particularly chilling comment – especially in light of what happened to 32-year-old Guerline Damas and her five children (Michzach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and Morgan, 11 months).  All six family members reportedly had their throats slit on the evening of September 17  by Mesac Damas, who then boarded a “getaway flight” to Haiti.

Damas has since been extradited back to Florida, and has confessed to murdering his family.

So what’s the “chilling comment?”

“God will take care of (the Rodriguez) children,” Benoit told Beaufort, S.C. parents Christina and Jason Wilson, who have been involved in a costly, protracted battle with the Florida Department of Children and Families and the state’s court system over custody of the two children, whose siblings Emily and Kady are already living under their custody in South Carolina.

Really?

“God will take care of these children?”

Of course, Benoit’s (mis)handling of the Rodriguez case is not at all dissimilar to the evasiveness demonstrated by the Department of Children and Families, which told the Wilsons to “write a press release” about the fact that Florida botched its required relative search and put these children back in the custody of their mother, who within months attempted to illegally flee the state.

“The only difference between the Damas children and the Rodriguez children is that the Rodriguez children are still alive,” Christina Wilson told FITS.

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