PARKLAND, Wash. — The family of a 2-year-old girl killed by her mother's boyfriend is now suing Washington state and the daycare the young girl attended.
The lawsuit alleges more could have been done by both entities to prevent the girl's death.
Sarai Brooks, 2, was found dead in March of 2022 at her Parkland apartment complex. A DCYF child death review showed the girl died of blunt force trauma to the head and had numerous other injuries on her body.
Her mother's boyfriend, Augustino Seu Maile, was convicted of manslaughter among other charges. Her mother, Jharmaine Baker, was convicted of charges including assault of a child. Maile was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Baker was sentenced to six years.
“This is such a tragedy,” said Ray Dearie, the attorney for the family with Dearie Law Group. “A beautiful little girl, who the state was aware was being abused.”
The lawsuit was filed this month by Sarai’s grandmother against the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families and the Puyallup daycare Sarai attended, Love and Laughter Learning Center.
“The state dropped the ball,” said Dearie. “DCYF completely and inescapably, in my mind, dropped the ball.”
Documents from DCYF show Sarai was found to have been physically abused by her mother's boyfriend back in 2021 and was taken out of her mother's care for about six months. The documents show that a court entered a restraining order, which ordered the boyfriend to have no contact with Sarai.
DCYF documents show Sarai was reunited with her mother around the start of 2022 and died about three months later as a result of abuse.
The lawsuit claims the state should have done more.
“If they would have simply taken her out of the dangerous spot, which is with the biological mom and the boyfriend she was still seeing, Sarai would still be here,” said Dearie.
DCYF documents show during a review of Sarai's death, a committee believed more emphasis was placed on the domestic violence experienced by the mother rather than the physical abuse of the children and the mother’s failure to protect the children from abuse.
In the lawsuit, Sarai's daycare is also accused of failing to help in the months leading up to her death.
“Sarai was showing up with signs of trauma, according to our investigation, those signs of trauma were seen by the by the workers at the daycare facility and reported to the director of the daycare facility,” said Dearie.
But the lawsuit claims the daycare did not report Sarai's injuries to law enforcement or DCYF.
“DCYF, according to our information, clearly dropped the ball in the worst possible way, and then independently, we have a second dropping of the ball by the daycare,” said Dearie. “Both of those organizations should have been talking to each other.”
The daycare, Love and Laughter Learning Center in Puyallup, sent KING 5 a statement that said:
"This is undisputedly a tragedy, but the claims in the lawsuit are entirely false."
Sarai's relatives hope the lawsuit leads to change.
“Obviously we can't bring Sarai back,” said Dearie. “But we can fight for her, and the family wants to fight for her, in her name, to prevent this from ever happening again.”
DCYF told KING 5 they do not comment on pending litigation.
In DCYF’s child death review of Sarai's case, the committee did state that "despite identifying opportunities for improvement in the system, the DCYF field staff did what they could with the available resources."