The mother of a 14-year-old Florida girl who broadcast her suicide on Facebook Live is accused of taunting her daughter in the moments before her death — and may have even watched the teen kill herself.
Naika Venant used a scarf to hang herself in a Miami Gardens foster home on Jan. 22 and livestreamed it on Facebook. While some viewers pleaded with the teen to rethink her decision, others egged her on over the course of two hours, child welfare officials wrote in a report acknowledging they could have done a better job.
“There were many other individuals urging her to take her own life, calling her vile names and claiming the situation was either ‘fake’ or ‘all an act,’” according to the 20-page report released Monday by the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Among those individuals was someone using the alias “Gina Alexis,” the name used by Venant’s mother, Gina Caze, according to an abuse complaint reported to the state agency on Feb. 9.
The teen spent a total of 28 months in foster care during an eight-year span from 2009 through 2017 and stayed in 14 different foster homes within a 16-month period, according to the report.
Investigators found Venant suffered from maltreatment and poor familial environments, including parental monitoring and transitional living situations.
“In Naika’s case, the above protective factors (strong/influential enough to give the youth hope and something to keep living for) were not consistently present in her life, and it appears that Naika did not possess resilient traits to keep her safe,” the report reads.
The report also raised the role of social media, noting that users can sometimes encourage others to commit or carry out harmful acts, as in Naika’s case. It cited three suicides livestreamed within the past year, most recently in December, when a 12-year-old girl took her life in Georgia.
“Although it is unknown whether these deaths influenced Naika, given the proximity of time between the last reported suicide and Naika’s death, reviewers noted that contagion is suspect,” the report reads.