CPS Didn’t Care That Dad + His New Lady Beat And Scald Daughter Over Shrimp

CPS Didn’t Care That Dad + His New Lady Beat And Scald Daughter Over Shrimp

Somaya Christine Cornell Downing was born on Valentine’s Day in 2008. Her mother, Monica Chena Downing, was 17 years old at the time, and her father, Ronald Dean Greer Jr., was 16. Somaya had a younger baby brother through her mother and a younger sister through her father. She was named after her paternal great-grandmother, Christine Downing, who passed away about six years before Somaya was born. Somaya was a sweet little girl with big brown eyes, round cheeks, and a big heart. She was adored by her grandfather, Christopher Downing, whom she called “Papa.”

Her Papa called her “Little Peanut,” and other family members referred to her as “Minky” and “Bunny.” She could be a little shy, especially when meeting someone for the first time, but she was generally a happy and playful child. Somaya loved watching Dora the Explorer and playing at Chuck E. Cheese. She enjoyed the rides and liked running around the arcade and through the tunnels. She often went to Chuck E. Cheese with her grandfather on their “Papa-Granddaughter dates.” According to her great-aunt Lori, Somaya was the kind of little girl who would say “thank you” after opening her presents on Christmas morning.

For the first few years of her life, Somaya did not see much of her father; she lived with her mother, grandmother, and great-aunt in Victorville, California. Her father, Ronald, had moved on from his relationship with her mother and started dating 16-year-old Bianca Stanch in January 2010. Ronald had been a 4.0 student in high school; however, in 2010, he was arrested for felony burglary and three misdemeanor counts: receiving stolen property, escaping from a police officer, and vandalism. He and Bianca frequently posted on their Facebook pages about weed and alcohol use. Around the same time, Ronald started referring to Bianca as the mother of his child, and she announced she was pregnant.

On February 8, 2011, Ronald pled no contest to the three misdemeanors in exchange for the dismissal of the felony charge. He was sentenced to 120 days in county jail and 36 months of probation. He and Bianca never legally married, but on February 17, they announced they were husband and wife on social media, and Bianca changed her last name to Greer online. Ronald’s mother did not react kindly to the news of the baby or the relationship. In one of his posts about his relationship with Bianca, his mother responded: “Got some reality coming your way. Once a dummy, always a dummy. You can’t even take care of the one you’ve got and you call yourself a man. Like father, like son. Get yourself a new mom; you make the family look bad.”

Ronald’s child with Bianca, also a little girl, was born in October 2011. The pair moved into an apartment of their own in December of that year. Monica believed that Somaya should have a relationship with her father and her new baby sister, so she arranged for Somaya to visit the couple in Ontario, California, which was only 8 to 9 miles away. The visit seemed to go well, and Bianca appeared to care for the little girl. On Somaya’s 4th birthday in February 2012, Bianca posted to Facebook: “Happy birthday to my other daughter Somaya. I love you. You are the big four today. I wish me, your daddy, and your little sis could see you today. I love you, Minky.”

At the time, both Monica and Ronald were working full-time; however, Bianca was staying home with her new baby, so having Somaya stay in Ontario seemed like a good situation. Somaya moved to Ontario in early 2012, and in August, she was enrolled in preschool. Bianca took her school shopping and posted about the trip online. If one were to overlook the weed and alcohol use that both Ronald and Bianca continued to post about, the family seemed happy and well-adjusted.

However, things began changing in the home in mid-2012. Ronald stopped bringing Somaya back to her mother when he said he would. The family moved twice, and no one knew exactly where they were living, not even Ronald’s mother. Somaya started attending preschool in late September 2012. On October 2, she showed up with a black eye. When teachers asked about it, Somaya said Bianca had hit her with a belt. When the teachers asked Bianca, she claimed Somaya had been hit by her little brother. However, Somaya wasn’t even living with her little brother; he lived with Monica in Victorville. Teachers became suspicious and reported the incident to Child and Family Services (CFS) of San Bernardino County.

Unfortunately for Somaya, CFS of San Bernardino was operating in a state of gross negligence. According to an employee whistleblower, many caseworkers had quit. Some left because of cuts to pay and pensions; others left because of a case in which CFS management allegedly turned on one of its social workers after parents threatened to sue. The case was shocking: social workers had allegedly entered a home and found a 9-month-old baby dead, wrapped in a sheet. The baby had been placed under the kitchen table. After seeing what they described as extensive ligature marks, burns, and bruises on the other four children in the home, they asked a judge for an emergency removal to protect the safety of the children who were still alive, and the judge agreed.

However, once the parents threatened to sue, members of the administration questioned the actions taken, allegedly saying, “We don’t feel like the home was dirty enough. We don’t feel like the kids were that unsafe.” Did anyone forget that there was a dead baby found underneath the kitchen table with no explanation of how it got there? When the case came to court, managers accused their own CFS social worker of lying, and the case ended in a mistrial. The social worker was eventually fired, which made many caseworkers nervous, causing more to quit. As workers fled the department, the caseloads of those who remained skyrocketed. The average CFS employee was supposed to manage roughly 15 to 17 cases, but during this time, a whistleblower said he was responsible for as many as 300 to 500 children at a time. This was the state of the department when Somaya’s teachers dutifully reported her black eye in October 2012.

Sometime in late November, Bianca’s cousin, 26-year-old Ryan Lorice Stanch, moved into the apartment with Ronald, Bianca, and the children. Ryan was legally blind—he could see, but only right in front of him and only in bright light. He also struggled with lifelong learning disabilities and had a history of run-ins with the law, which had landed him in jail and on probation multiple times. In March 2005, he served 70 days in jail and 36 months of probation for a misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon charge; he was required to take anger management classes and attend a drug rehabilitation program. He racked up additional probation for loitering and sitting or lying in a public way in February 2006.

Ryan may have been homeless at that time because those charges are often used to deter homeless people. Then, in December 2006, he was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, felony willful cruelty to a child, and two other misdemeanors. He pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon, and the other charges were dismissed. This time, he served 36 months in state prison with another 36 months of probation afterward. In 2011, he was in trouble again, this time for misdemeanor battery and felony possession of narcotics. He pled no contest to the narcotics possession and was given additional years of probation. By all accounts, it did not appear that Somaya’s maternal family knew that Ryan had moved in. The family also did not know that there was an open CFS investigation regarding Somaya.

In December 2012, after an initial meeting with Somaya, her social worker was concerned because she saw bruises. She consulted her supervisors, who conducted a risk assessment and concluded that, based on a lack of information, Somaya should remain in her father’s home and social workers should check on her again. This might have happened in a reasonable time frame had the caseworker been working on a reasonable 15 to 17 cases, but she was working on over 90 cases at the time.

On December 27, 2012, San Bernardino deputies received a tip that something bad had happened to Somaya. Acting on that tip, they located Ronald’s vehicle and pulled him over. His youngest daughter was in the car, but Somaya was not. He said Somaya was with her mother, but Monica said Somaya was supposed to be with Ronald. Law enforcement accompanied Ronald to the apartment where Somaya had been living. Deputies searched the house and interviewed both Ronald and Bianca. During this search, they noticed a deadbolt on the hallway side of Somaya’s bedroom door, allowing it to be locked from the outside.

As police continued to interview Ronald, his story changed multiple times, and he made inconsistent statements. He said Somaya was safe with her grandfather, then he changed the story and said she was safe with another family member, then he said she was safe with a friend he met on Instagram. But Somaya was not with any of these individuals, and she was certainly not safe. Bianca also claimed Somaya was safe with her grandfather but then changed her statement to blame her cousin, Ryan. If anything had happened to the little girl, Bianca told deputies, Ryan must have done it. He did have a long criminal history, and he made a plausible suspect.

Eventually, authorities gathered information that led them to search a remote portion of the Mojave Desert south of Baker, near Barstow, California. There, they found Somaya’s body zipped up in a child-sized princess sleeping bag. She was buried in a shallow grave. Police arrested all three adults—Ronald, Bianca, and Ryan—as suspects in Somaya’s death. 18 days later, the CFS worker assigned to Somaya’s case finally attempted to complete her follow-up visit, only to find that she was too late. The medical examiner later determined that Somaya had died on December 15.

Ryan was the first to start talking. He told his sister and her boyfriend what he had witnessed at the apartment. The boyfriend called 911 and alerted authorities; that was the call that let them know something bad had happened and initially led deputies to look for Somaya. After the arrest, Ryan soon pled guilty to his part and agreed to testify about what happened in Somaya’s final days. He said Bianca hated Somaya. He witnessed daily beatings while he lived in the home; Bianca did the beating, but Ronald was there and did not stop her. He also said that both Ronald and Bianca withheld water as a form of punishment. He said they used the deadbolt found on Somaya’s door to lock her in the room. Other witnesses corroborated this claim, saying that on several occasions, the two duct-taped Somaya’s wrists and ankles together to keep her from getting any water to drink during the night. A family friend also testified to being told by Bianca about one occasion where Somaya was able to get to the kitchen in the night; she was so thirsty that she drank the only liquid she could find, which was bleach.

Ryan said that Ronald and Bianca also withheld food. On either the 13th or 14th of December—he couldn’t remember which exactly—Bianca made shrimp for dinner. Somaya didn’t want to eat shrimp, so she was sent to bed hungry. Ryan never saw her offered food again. She remained hungry until she died on the night of the 15th. On December 14, he said, Bianca beat Somaya and forced her to stand in a corner for 8 hours straight. On December 15, he said, Bianca used a belt and an electrical cord to beat Somaya all over her body. She then heated a pot of water to boiling and dumped it over her back. After these events, Ryan said, Somaya seemed like she had no energy and seemed very sleepy. That evening, Ronald and Bianca locked her in her bedroom and went out to dinner. When they returned from dinner, they found her dead. All three admitted to taking her body to the desert and burying her in a shallow grave.

December was cold in the high desert, so her body was well-preserved even though she had been there for 11 or 12 days. Medical examiners could still easily see the injuries all over Somaya’s body, from her ankles to the top of her head, including defensive wounds on her hands. There were 10 to 20 U-shaped injuries found all over her body; these injuries were consistent with being beaten with an electrical cord held looped in the hand. There were also straight injuries caused by something like a belt. Both types of injuries were found on her back, chest, legs, thighs, arms, and face. The examiner concluded those injuries were likely inflicted between 2 and 24 hours of her death. There was a significant blunt force injury to her forehead; it split the skin but didn’t fracture her skull. There was a large burn that started from the top of her shoulders and extended onto her back, made by boiling water, which split the flesh, causing slippage of the skin. There were also splash marks from the scalding water on her chest.

Somaya was also severely malnourished. In June 2012, she had been in the 50th percentile for weight, but at the time of her death, her weight had decreased dramatically, and her autopsy showed that she was in the fifth percentile. Her body showed no evidence of medical attention or any treatment of her wounds; she just had to sit and suffer while her body tried to heal. After telling law enforcement several different versions of what happened that night, both Ronald and Bianca blamed Ryan for her death. There were so many injuries on her body that they likely suspected she died from the beating she endured, and their story blamed those injuries on Ryan.

But dehydration was the real cause of Somaya’s death. Medical examiners were convinced that she would have been able to survive her horrible injuries if only Ronald and Bianca had given her enough water to stay alive. The experts believed she was either given absolutely no water for 24 to 48 hours before her death, or too little water for an extended period of days, or some combination of both. Additional evidence provided by witnesses indicated the deprivation of water was ongoing and had started before Ryan ever lived at the apartment.

Death by dehydration is a cruel and painful way to die. In early stages, the body suffers extreme thirst, and it starts pulling water from less essential parts in order to keep blood pressure high enough to sustain life. First, the kidneys reabsorb water that would have been used to make urine. Dehydration also causes muscle cramps and headaches as water is pulled from cells. This pain increases the longer the body goes without water. As the dehydration progresses, blood thickens in the body. This is when blood pressure starts to drop. When blood flow slows down, organs get less oxygen, and eventually, vital organs such as the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver begin to fail. Continued lack of water causes death.

On January 2, 2013, a dozen of Somaya’s family members watched as Ronald, now 21 years old, and Bianca, now 19, were arraigned on charges of felony homicide with a special circumstance of intentional infliction of torture, felony torture, and felony cruelty to a child willfully causing death. Then, her family members were forced to wait and wait and wait. Bianca and Ronald switched lawyers multiple times and filed motion after motion, dragging the trial out for years. In October 2013, Ronald filed a number of motions, including one asking to be allowed to carry a Bible into court; his motion was denied. Ryan pled guilty to cruelty to a child on November 4, 2014, and agreed to act as the state’s witness against Ronald and Bianca. Their case was held over several times in 2015 and 2016, mostly at the request of their defense. In 2017, the mental health of Ryan was questioned, and an expert evaluation was required in order to demonstrate he was competent to testify. He was found competent in December 2017, but there were more motions, and the case was held over several more times, mostly at the request of the defense. Overall, the trial was rescheduled more than 20 times in over 8 years. Then, the pandemic shut down courthouses across the country, and the trial was delayed yet again.

Because of all the delays, District Attorney Jason Anderson pushed to make this one of the first trials conducted once the court reopened on July 8, 2020, with social distancing and face masks in place. Ronald and Bianca were tried together. At the trial, Ronald testified that he had a severe drug habit, regularly using large amounts of coke, weed, and alcohol. He claimed that because of his addiction, he knew nothing about what was happening with Somaya, but blood drawn on the day he was arrested was tested for drugs and produced results inconsistent with his claims. Ronald also claimed he was completely surprised by Somaya’s injuries, saying he had never seen them before, not even when he buried her. He also admitted that at a certain time each day, he would stop Somaya from having water to avoid bed-wetting. On October 6, 2020, both Ronald and Bianca were found guilty of first-degree homicide, guilty of torturing Somaya, and guilty of cruelty to a child with a special allegation of causing death. On March 12, 2021, Bianca and Ronald were sentenced to 32 years to life in prison for the death of 4-year-old Somaya. Somaya’s family was relieved, believing that the trial was finally over and glad that she finally got justice.

Somaya’s case was one of several featured in the 2015 Fox 11 special report, The Children Are Dying. As a result of the special report, a grand jury was convened to investigate San Bernardino CFS, but the results were upsetting to the anonymous whistleblowers. “Terrible things that happened to these children were continuing to happen, but I don’t think that they were able to rise above the corruption. To say that our sources are disappointed would be an understatement; they are furious with the San Bernardino County grand jury. I would have liked to think that they would have made changes to prevent other children from dying. How many other kids have to die?”

The grand jury did find that there were serious problems, but the report didn’t mention the children who were left in dangerous homes, and there was no mention of Somaya. The grand jury cited problems with documentation, communication, high employee turnover rates, too many cases per social worker, and a lack of training, but nothing much changed in response to the report. Even after the report was issued, caseworkers still had up to 90 cases instead of the recommended 15 to 17. Even now, 10 years later, many of the same problems still exist.

In May 2023, the nonprofit group A Better Childhood filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that San Bernardino CFS failed to protect those under its care and at times placed them in danger. According to their suit, in 2022, caseworkers still had up to 70 to 90 cases. The nonprofit group seeks court intervention to mandate lower caseloads and require the agency to create procedures to keep children safe. County officials did not respond to the allegations but released a statement that CFS hired 115 social services practitioners in the 2021-22 fiscal year and 67 more in this fiscal year to help reduce caseloads. It is not enough, but it is good to know that there are still people working to hold San Bernardino CFS accountable to make the county safer for vulnerable children like Somaya who live there.

Somaya was buried on January 9, 2013, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Her headstone reads: “Mommy’s bundle of love. Forever missed, loved, and never forgotten.” More than anything, her family wanted people to know that Somaya was greatly loved and not abandoned. In December 2012, Somaya’s family created a memorial Facebook page dedicated to the little girl. Her mother, aunt, great-aunt, grandfather, and grandmother all posted to the page. Her grandmother posted at least once a month, openly grieving the little girl, raging against CFS, counting down the time since Somaya’s death, and noting delay after delay in the court proceedings.

Somaya’s grandmother remembered her especially on the holidays—Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, 4th of July—and always on Valentine’s Day, Somaya’s birthday. She wrote to Somaya as if she were talking to her, often discussing the decorations and presents she planned to bring to Somaya’s grave and the candle she would light for her. This memorial page serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the pain her family suffered and is a testament to just how much they loved her. The first post was made in December 2012, soon after Somaya’s body was found; posts continued every month until March 2021, when Ronald and Bianca were sentenced.

On February 14, 2015, her grandma wrote, “You would have been seven today, but you are forever 4 years old.” She told Somaya she would be bringing balloons to set off into the sky so they would reach her in heaven. On the same day, the family posted an image of a birthday card. The poem on the card seems to capture the feelings expressed on Somaya’s memorial site. It read:

“Today is full of memories, happiness, and tears, Of birthday celebrations we’ve shared throughout the years. And though I’ll always miss you, the endless joy you brought, Warms my heart with gratitude and fills my every thought. Wherever you are resting, I hope that you can see, How precious and uplifting your memory is to me. I feel that you are with me in everything I do, So I’ll celebrate your birthday, but I’ll spend it missing you.”