Host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On..) talks with director Brian Knappenberger and journalist Garrett Therolf about “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez”. In this episode, they’ll be talking about the various trials of following Gabriel's death, the responsibilities of the social workers involved, and how a child like Gabriel became the victim of a broken system. There will be discussions of child abuse. Please listen at your own discretion.
Host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On..) talks with director Brian Knappenberger and journalist Garrett Therolf about “The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez”. In this episode, they’ll be talking about the various trials of following Gabriel's death, the responsibilities of the social workers involved, and how a child like Gabriel became the victim of a broken system. There will be discussions of child abuse. Please listen at your own discretion.
Rebecca Lavoie Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And I'll be hosting this week's episode. Here on You Can't Make This Up. We go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. In this episode, I'll be speaking with director Brian Knappenberger and journalist Garrett Therolf to cover their six part docu series, The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. We'll be discussing the entire series. So make sure you've seen all six episodes. A warning will also be discussing extreme child abuse in this episode. So please take care if this affects you.
8 year old Gabriel Fernandez was abused and tortured to death by his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre. Garrett Therolf and director Brian Knappenberger leave no stone unturned to look for what went wrong in the safety net that should have saved Gabriel. I'll be talking with them both about the trials after Gabriel's death, the ongoing case with the social workers responsible for Gabriel and how a child like Gabriel can easily fall through the cracks of a broken system. Now here's my conversation with Brian and Garrett.
EMT (clip): This was the case that has followed me from that night.
Jon Hatami: It’s still hard to believe that two people did all those horrible things to him.
Garrett: Gabriel Fernandez was at the time of his death 8 years old.
Kiara: That was my friend. And it really caught me because it was his parent that took his life.
Rebecca Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for joining me.
Brian Thank you for having us. And Garrett Therolf. Thanks so much for talking with me.
Garett It's great to be here.
Rebecca I really want to just bring one thing right up front here, because when I was reading about this documentary before I started watching it, I was somewhat girding myself for a difficult watch, which I don't want to say it isn't. It definitely is that. But it's also incredibly compelling. Dare I say, kind of bingeable because of the way that you chose to thread this story together. Brian, as the director, can you just talk about how you approached making a series that people would want to watch and binge when it is built around such a difficult story?
Brian Yeah, well, I guess it kind of goes back to how I found out about the story myself. You know, I found out about Garrett’s work. He was working at the investigative reporting studios in Berkeley, formerly with the L.A. Times. And and he was working with a friend of mine, Lowell Bergman. And they basically said, look, you should really look at this story. And we were able to get into the courtroom and we're able to start filming pretty soon after that. Just inside the courtroom, in the trial of Isauro Aguirre. And it was immediately apparent that this was a really, really compelling case, just as the details were coming out in the courtroom. The story of Gabriel pointed to so many other bigger picture issues that as it the mystery started getting kind of deeper and deeper about this. I understood that this was something that would kind of fuel, you know, it would take us some time to figure out and would just be more and more interesting as we did and more and more relevant as we went along.
Rebecca Garrett, how was it that this story jumped out at you and you were able to really report it out? I mean, we see in the documentary that sort of the downsizing or moving of the L.A. Times, there's a lot in it about the importance of reporters doing what you were doing at the time, looking sort of beyond the loglines and the reports that are put out by the, you know, PR lackeys at all these government agencies. Did you know immediately that there was something there when you saw this name on that page?
Garrett I knew that there was probably going to be something there and that it was going to be incredibly difficult to get through by this time. I had been covering child fatalities and, you know, all the other issues that face an agency like the Department of Children & Family Services for a period of time. I knew at this point that a child who had been under the agency's watch died about, you know, two or three times a month, They had a case like this. And I also knew that when a homicide takes place with a child in L.A., about half the time, there's DCFS history, The Department of Children & Family Services. So it wasn’t a complete shot in the dark that there was some DCFS history with this. But I also knew that getting I got a really detailed and specific chronology of what had happened was going to be incredibly difficult. There's so much secrecy surrounding these cases. They have confidentiality laws that were established to preserve children's privacy, which, you know, which I think we can all agree should exist to some degree. But when a child dies, all of those confidentiality rules are enlisted for a new purpose, which is to oftentimes hide what government workers had done in a case. So the, you know, the really essential report, as you saw in the, in the series, was very, very tightly held. The pathway to getting any public records related to this death was gonna be long and arduous and frankly, was going to take so many more months that people's interest in the case would probably have waned by then. And so I just know it was going to be really, really hard to figure out what happened here. What did the caseworker do this day, what happened the next day and building that together, you know, to be honest, caught me by surprise that I was able to do it.
Brian It's probably worth noting here that part of this is the result of a fairly courageous whistleblower as well, which a lot of stories have that people who are concerned on the inside that come forward at risk to themselves. And this is a case of that as well.
Garrett I can't thank the sources enough. I mean, they went to such extraordinary lengths to get this story out and others over the years. And at very significant personal and professional risk.
Rebecca The documentary opens, in this case, with a hard look at this board of commissioners. I'd love to hear your take on why you think you know these entities in this sort of way government is run and dollars are allocated and decisions are made. Can you just talk a little bit about reporting on that institution?
Garrett Sure. So, I mean, I think Los Angeles County government is one of the least understood government entities in the country and also one of the most important. It's a county government that, you know, serves 10 million people. These members of the board of supervisors are responsible for the, you know, essentially the safety net. You know, there, there's only five elected officials who govern this, over 30 billion dollar enterprise. And I would I dare to say that, you know, I think if you asked people on the street who their supervisor was, it would take a long time to find someone who knew. They're known as like the Five Kings and Queens of Los Angeles. But people don't really have a very clear understanding of what they do. They typically, you know, it's been a long time since any of them went on to further elected office after they were associated with the board, partly because there have been so many problems with the safety net in L.A. I mean, we've had just incredible breakdowns in the public hospitals, which are governed by these supervisors. We've had tremendous problems, clearly in the Department of Children and Family Services. And it's the type of thing that it's so important that it works right. But it's not the kind of thing where you get a lot of news coming out of them because, you know, the meetings are incredibly long. They're boring. They start out with a bunch of awards that they're giving to county employees and all the really important stuff like, you know, the child fatalities that are taking place or the fact that someone died on the floor of the public hospital and nobody was caring for that person. Those things typically are not put on the agenda. And, you know, the important decision making happens behind closed doors.
Rebecca Garrett, It was really heartbreaking to me that it seems like Gabriel had a chance. I mean, his life, you know, began his, his mom didn't want to raise him. So he was living with his uncle and then with his grandparents. And it seemed like he was doing okay. But then larger forces sort of combined to change his circumstances. Can you just talk about what some of those forces were like, how did these forces combine that he ended up living there?
Garrett Well, I think it's because the authorities took a sort of hands off attitude for so long. I mean, you know, originally he was living with his grandparents informally because Pearl was off doing other things. And then according to court testimony, she wanted the welfare money that would come from having another child in the house. And when she went to retrieve Gabriel, Gabriel's grandparents called the police, said that she was an unsafe person and that they wanted the police to intervene and to take Gabriel away or at least to enshrine his informal situation at their home in a more official way. But what they ran into is what so many people ran into over and over again, which is really the only entity that can remove a mother's parental rights and can petition the court to do that is Child Protective Services. And the police decided not to call CPS into the picture at that point. Later when CPS was called, they took a fairly hands off attitude, as you see in the series. And, you know, I think that this plays out similarly to, you know, how many family situations play out. You know, someone... A child goes to live with a relative, then comes back. And, you know, all of this is done pretty unofficially without a lot of government intervention.
Rebecca One of the most moving interviews in the documentary is... Actually I sort of pair them together. You have Kiara, Gabriel’s schoolfriend, who talks about, you know, being his friend. She documents on film all the things that she saw change in him in the last few weeks and months of his life. You also have his teacher, incredibly moving interviews about the suffering that he saw this little boy going through.
Jennifer Garcia (clip) The first incident, they became aware that something wasn’t normal. Just start asking me a couple questions. Is normal for your mom to hit you with a belt? I’m like, Well, yeah. You know, some parents do that. And then he said, you know, but is it, is it normal to bleed?
Rebecca I'm just I mean, it's it's really interesting to me to think about framing this huge story around this truly horrific case. How important was it to you that the audience understand who Gabriel Fernandez was beyond his being a victim of torture?
Brian It was really important to hear the voice of the teacher and what she had seen and what she had thought and what she had tried to do. And, and one of the most heartbreaking interviews that we did, I think, was Kiara and asked her a few questions and let her tell us what she thought and what she went through and what she was. and what she saw.
Kiara (clip) He was nice to other people, especially students and in class. But that's until he started to being absent. And he was telling like the students in his class that his mom's boyfriend was hitting on him. And that's when you just started being kind of a little bit mean because what was going on.
Brian So that that part was really, really important just to understand who Gabriel Fernandez was. This 8 year old boy in the high desert north of Los Angeles and during his life, his voice was ignored. You know, there are only a handful of people that saw and heard and thought about who he was as a person. I would put the security guard into that category, the person that tried to raise the alarm at a sort of welfare office that Pearl Fernandez had gone to with with the rest of the kids, too. But there were so many chances to intervene and that weren't taken. And so putting him central to the story into the series, I think was critical.
Rebecca Gabriel had two other siblings, Ezekial and Virginia. But why do you think Pearl and Isauro focused on Gabriel for the abuse.
Brian So we talked to a couple of experts in the field that describe what they call a sort of scapegoat process in which oftentimes the kind of the younger or the kind of child is perceived as weaker in some way, it often becomes a focus of abuse. And and so we try to unpack that a little bit in the in the series as well.
Garrett And just to expand on that a little bit more that I've looked at a lot of child fatality cases and a pattern you often see is that the abuse is focused on one of the children disproportionately. And it's oftentimes the child who was separated from the caregiver for the longest period of time. And it's also the child who expresses a little bit of rejection following reunification. And we know in Gabriel's case, he fell into both of those categories. The siblings had remained with Pearl for much greater portion of their lives. And when Gabriel was reunified with Pearl, after she took him back from the grandparents, he said that he wanted to go back to his grandparents. And that is oftentimes a risk factor because the parents don't have a way of dealing with that rejection and they sometimes lash out in a way that can be abusive.
Rebecca You know, I imagine that as you were making this film and even Garrett, as you're writing your stories for the Times, I mean, there is always this temptation, and we saw it play out in some of the rhetoric in court, to take people like Isauro and Pearl and just say monsters. Right? Like unmitigated evil. And it’s also, I think, difficult to overcome that temptation to just tell a two dimensional story about the abuser. And you really, I think, in this documentary make a very good faith attempt, through some of the witness testimony we see at trial and then some of the exploration you do about Pearl's own life, to not excuse but sort of flesh out fuller portraits of these adults. Brian, can you talk about that a little bit and if you found that challenging?
Brian Yeah. First of all, thank you for noticing that. We did spend a lot of time trying to understand Isauro Aguirre and Pearl Fernandez and taking everything we could find in court records or there was an interview with a therapist at one point. And this question of evil which came up in the courtroom. You know, “there's evil in this courtroom and it's sitting right over there.” And this notion of good and evil, or, that some people are just kind of born evil. Did you know that was something that kind of emerged as something we wanted to look at and think about that a little bit. And you're right. Not excusing it, but understanding where Pearl came from, what the challenges that she faced and the difficulties that she was going through at the time was really, really important, I think, to get a full picture of this. Same with Isauro Aguirre. Some of Isauro Aguirre's family wouldn't talk to us, so we tried to include what was presented in the court that fleshed out his personality, his life. Who he was as a person. We would try to present as much of that material as we could. So there is this question about where does such a horrific act come from, what causes people to to do something like this. And we didn't think it was simple. One line that we have at the very end of the piece is the question, you know, where does it come from? And we have people speculating that, yeah, I mean, there are times in which evil is, you know... there is evil in individuals. But oftentimes it's the result of a system that is broken and the outcome is evil, but not necessarily the individual components of that system.
Psychiatrist (clip) And you do see evil when your child abuse doctrine. You also see anger and frustration and poverty and what am I going to do? And I'm going to hit my kid because I'm frustrated. But I believe the ultimate evil in this world is knowing what's wrong, seeing what's wrong and looking away.
Rebecca Now, it didn't seem like Isauro Aguirre had been arrested or tried for any crimes like this before he met Pearl, and it seemed like some in the documentary were intimating that it was the dynamic of the relationship with Pearl that was part of the recipe of him committing this crime. Is that what your reporting showed to Garrett that he was, you know, for lack of a better word, ‘clean’ before this? Or was there more to the story there that we didn't see in the film?
Garrett I was never able to find any instances of past history of violence or any criminal history to Isauro. It seemed like the record for Pearl was darker much earlier and more and much more pronounced. And, you know, obviously, Isauro had established a clean enough record to be able to work with the elderly in a retirement home. And he was also able to pass licensing tests to become a security guard in California. So for all intents and purposes, he had a, he had a clean record before he met Pearl.
Rebecca And he was likedI mean, we saw that in the testimony in the sentencing phase. Like the people who knew him from his work at the nursing home, like, really liked him. And they said he was a good and kind and patient person.
Brian Yeah. The people that did talk to us, this is Brian, about Isauro did describe him in very kind of affectionate terms. You know, it is probably important to note, too, that that was from an, you know, an early part of his life that there had been. We didn't find people in the few years before this before the incident. A lot of those people didn't talk to us or we couldn't find them, that sort of thing. But it does seem like there was some affection for him as he worked in the, in the various jobs he had.
Rebecca Brian, you mentioned earlier that you started making this film before the case had been completely adjudicated, which honestly surprises me. I mean, it doesn't surprise me in terms of the fact that, like, I can see the access, the courtroom footage, it seems very contemporaneous with what was going on. But what surprises me about hearing that is the access you got to all of the key characters to help tell this story. Episode 1 opens in such a moving way with this nurse who tells us about the evening that Gabriel Fernandez was brought into the emergency room and the documentation of his injuries. You also have Jonathan Hatami, the prosecutor in this case, on record. You have all of these key people who are actively involved in the case in myriad ways. How did that work? Did you, did you talk to them after the Aguirre Court case. Like, how did that all come together?
Brian We talked to a lot of them while it was going on. And then and then, of course, some some after the fact. You know, Gabriel's story really touched a lot of people. And it sticks with people. Some of the first responders that were involved in trying to save Gabriel. I mean, imagine what they go through on a day to day basis over 20 years. And they all said this was the most moving case that they've ever been involved with. And it and it and it's not closed yet. I think once people understood what we were doing in the story, we wanted to tell, you know, they wanted to to to talk about this. They needed to talk about it in some ways. And I found that very, very powerful.
Rebecca One of the ways that this story advances really in a lot of the drama and the way that you tell the story in the documentary, Brian, is through that coverage of the trial, Isauro's trial. Now, there are some really interesting legal machinations that take place. Originally, Pearl and Isauro were supposed to be sitting there together, being tried by two separate juries. That didn't happen. So he ended up having his own individual trial. And you had unbelievably, at least to me. I mean, where I live, there's a period of time during which jurors are not allowed to speak to the media after they've served. But you have incredible access to a number of jurors that sat in on that trial, including a holdout juror who in both phases of the trial had to be turned, like had to have his mind changed. Do you know what it was that ended up changing Juror Number 7’s mind? Ultimately, both in the guilty to first degree or second degree phase? And in the penalty phase of the trial?
Brian I found him the holdout juror, really fascinating because he was very analytical guy. He was you know, he, I think had training as an engineer. He told me a story. I don't think I... We cut it out of the series. But he told us the story when he had first emigrated to the United States, that he was during the Nixon impeachment hearings and that he was moved, that even the President was, you know, bound by the law.Which I found really interesting. He just thought, look, this guy, he did this a horrific thing, but he deserves us in a careful way, looking over every single detail to make sure that that's exactly right. And eventually the rest of the jurors convinced him to go that direction. In the second penalty phase, He was also hold out on that, the lone holdout on whether or not to give Isauro the death penalty. And I think he had a kind of analytical approach to that as well that, too, to put him life in prison was not as practical as giving him the death penalty.
Rebecca I think one of the things that makes this case stand out and one of the reasons why it became part of a national conversation was the arrest of the four employees of DCFS who sort of swirled around Gabriel's case. I found myself feeling conflicted about their specific culpability. Especially when you compare it to the culpability of other people, other mandatory reporters, other people who had contact with Pearl when Gabriel was living with her. I'm wondering, Garrett, I'm not going to ask you to take a side on where you land on this. But it is complicated, right, to think about the fact that these four people who were in a system that you reported out is broken, are being prosecuted specifically in connection to this crime.
Garrett Oh, it's one of them. I think it's one of the hardest questions in the whole case. I mean, I think everybody who who looks at this case oscillates between having empathy and sympathy for each of them, but also recognizes that they had a legal duty to this child. They were really the only way that he was gonna be able to get out of that dangerous situation. And so, this is the type of question where very smart, reasonable, empathetic people can come down on both sides.
Rebecca You know, during some of your interviews, I heard some of these caseworkers talking about certain cases as being linear, you know, cut and dry, not thinking it was particularly complicated and, you know, could be handled just through regular procedure. But as the viewer, I mean, I think that you're sort of interspersed reminders of what exactly it is we're talking about; we're talking about a boy who was tortured and beaten to death. It is hard to balance the sort of logistical roteness of that office talk with what is actually happening in people's homes. You know what, you know what I mean by that?
Brian Yeah, I think so. This is Brian again. I think that's one of the reasons why we really we really couch the story from the perspective of Gabriel and to try to get him into this as much as possible. This is a real person that lived in the high desert north of Los Angeles and that came in contact with all of these different agencies. And somehow, his case and his story just pointed at all the fissures and all the problems in this system right now. So I think I understand what you mean, that the policy discussion, you know, that's going on and the discussion about, you know, funding and the culpability in all of that stuff is sometimes a little disconnected from the actual human cost on the ground. And I think that's why we wanted Gabriel's presence in this series from the first episode to the last.
Garrett And I think, and this is Garrett, I think the human story of the caseworkers' is so interesting. I mean, these are people who.. They're in a position that lends itself to some of the most extraordinary types of compassion fatigue. I mean, they're, you know, every day their business is child abuse. And they have so many children needing their attention. They have so many mandated tasks to carry out. And they're also carrying it out in a department that, you know, let's be real is not performing at a very high level. It was just a couple years before Gabriel died that the department did one of its rare studies, taking a close look at how these cases were actually going. And they found that, you know, in only two-thirds of the cases did they ever interview the child alone who was the alleged victim of abuse. They also did incredibly shallow investigations. On average, fewer than two witnesses were interviewed for each particular call to the child abuse hotline, saying that that a kid was in danger. So when you when you're looking around the office and seeing everybody else doing investigations and a quality of work that isn't very good, you know, you know, you can't help but imagine that that brings you down as well.
Brian And you know, the interview that we have with Gregory Merritt, who was the supervisor here, who was facing... could have been facing up to 10 years in prison. You know, I think that when we look at his story, I hope we don't blink at the failures that were here. I hope we don't ever shy away from the clear problems that happened in the case of Gabriel. But I also think that when you hear him talk and hear him, his version and tell his story, you know, I think he may have some sympathy for that.
Brian Knappenberger (clip) You're saying that you're ultimately responsible for 250 to 300?
Gregory Merritt I think the most children I had at any one time was about 280 children.
Brian How difficult is it to keep track of that many cases?
Gregory You can’t. That's why you have social workers keeping track of that many cases. And you don't know every case that you ought to. Only because of the fact that there's so many. And my workload was so immense.
Brian You know, when you hear his story directly, you'll have some sympathy for it. Again, not that he wasn't at fault or that there weren't problems here. There clearly were. And then the separate question is, where do those problems go into actual criminality? And so, so we ask all of that. But I do think that the complexity of good and evil applies here, too.
Rebecca Well, I think one of the most beautifully constructed parts of the documentary is Episode 5 opens with, you know, we hear that investigator from the D.A.'s office calling Pat Clements and how she's immediately so angry and defensive at being asked about this case.
Pat Clements (clip) What are you calling me about?
DA’s Office I would like to speak with you regarding your prior employment by LA county?
Pat Why?
DA’s Office I have just a few procedural questions
Pat Are you, are you going to charge me with something?
Rebecca And then that's contrasted with a working social worker who we ride along with out on a basically a well-child visit. There's been a report of domestic violence where a foster child is staying. And we get to walk into that apartment with her, watch her open all the cabinets, watch her make sure there's food in the fridge.
Social worker (clip) OK, so what I need to do now is the welfare check. So I need to just check out the house in the in the the refrigerator of your home and sort that for it for food. So I'm going to open this if you mind. OK.
Rebecca You know, we hear her commenting on what she's looking for. She's looking for signs of health and thriving and, you know, baby fat and we see, you know, her turn on all the faucets in the house and it just seems like somebody's doing their job well versus hearing this phone with somebody who basically doesn’t want to talk about even the systemic failure that led to this little boy’s death. How did you get to go on that ride along? I mean, I found myself wondering that as a viewer like that seems like it would be incredibly difficult to get that kind of access, Brian.
Brian It was very difficult, actually. The most difficult part was getting any kind of access to DFS or the Board of Supervisors. I think it's probably important to note that they declined to talk to us, or anybody from the Board of Supervisors, which was really frustrating. Because of how big this case was with Gabriel. And that while we were filming this, there were also a series of rapid series of of other deaths in the same area with very similar circumstances. And their refusal to talk to us was was pretty. It was was the that was the the biggest hurdle we had, really. And but in this limited way, we talked to them for, I think a year and a half or so. Eventually they said we could go out and go on a ride along. And, you know, it's important to note that, I mean, Garrett just said this, but this is a very difficult job. And these people are amazing for dedicating the time and energy that they put into this. They certainly don't do it for the money. And so, you know, if done well, this is a really, really critical function. So I did want to put those things close to each others to understand and to contrast, you know, the various people that are engaged in this.
Rebecca Can you talk a little bit about how the privatization of some of these services changes the landscape? This is a story we hear a lot around, you know, the privatization of prisons around the country. But I don't think people think a lot about the privatization of the delivery of services, essential services, like child welfare services.
Garrett Yeah. I mean, government agencies all over the place are involved in what they call private-public partnerships, where some of the things that I think the public believes are being carried out by government employees, like the processing of people who need their welfare benefits, like the processing of people who need food stamps and other services. It turns out that these things are actually carried out by companies like the one you see in the series, which is called Maximus. It's a, you know, multi-billion dollar all over the world. You know, from every place from Saudi Arabia to the U.K. to right here in the United States
Rebecca With like such a dystopian name too, right? You couldn't make up a worse like more dystopian sounding name for, you know, for a company that's whose decisions affect people in such a personal way, you know?
Garrett Yeah. Doesn't exactly, exactly exude, you know, something that's designed for the public good. And, you know, as you see in their own documents, that there's a very high priority placed on profit making.
Daniel Hatcher (clip) In this assessment report that Maximus carried out on behalf of Maryland regarding foster children, how the state can obtain resources from foster children. The assessment report refers to foster children as a revenue generating mechanism.
Rebecca I'm curious, Garrett, you know, you were the one for whom this name, Gabriel Fernandez, jumped off the page, and, you know, it really started the ball rolling on what became a story of tremendous national importance. But it's also an incredible tragedy. And I'm wondering, what of this story are you still carrying with you as you continue your work? I know that you're working on different projects and you're at Berkeley now. You still carrying this with you?
Garrett Yeah. I mean, you can't you can't let go of this. I mean, the, you know, unfortunately, as you see at the end of the series, the fatalities have continued. I'm continuing to look at some of the major reasons why they're continuing to happen.
And I had really made it a priority to try and look at child welfare from a number of different angles, you know there's a lot more going on than child fatalities. So, you know, it's really important to also be understanding of the situations where children are too quickly removed from their parents. And, you know, that happens in Los Angeles as well. Just because in this instance they didn't act nearly quickly enough doesn't mean that the same agency isn't moving way too zealously in another case, just a short distance away. You know, these are systems that way too often go unseen in Los Angeles. And, you know, in big cities across the country. One out of seven children are reported to the child abuse hotline by age 5. And Los Angeles’s child protective services agency is almost as big as the LAPD. I mean, think about how many stories and and news reports you've seen about an agency like the LAPD. But I would argue the Child Protective Services has, you know, it's touching this enormous section of our community and we're deploying thousands and thousands of caseworkers every single day. And we just don't see what they're doing enough. Way too much of this happens in secrecy
And this is a, this is one of the biggies of my entire career. I mean, that I will, you know, to to treat this topic seriously, it requires years and years of work. You know, we're continuing to see very significant breakdowns in CPS agencies across the country. We all know that fatalities are occurring at a much higher rate than they should be. And figuring out why and being able to tell with granular detail what's taking place takes a lot of time. And once you realize that you're able to do it in cases like this one, you do feel a certain responsibility not to walk away.
Rebecca Do you feel the same, Brian?
Brian Yeah, absolutely. And I would extend that to all of our crew and all of our production team that worked on this. Yeah. This wasn’t the typical project in by, in any way. I think it stuck with everybody really powerful, really emotionally intense. It's something about Gabriel’s story just provoke the deepest, the deepest of interest and connection in people right off the bat.
Rebecca Well, Brian, I'll tell you, as a viewer, that's exactly how I'm hooking away from this film. The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez is fascinating, incredibly compelling, gutting. And I will carry it with me for a long time. Brian and Garrett, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about this film.
Brian Thank you very much.
Garrett I really appreciate it.
Rebecca And that's it for this week's episode. Next month, we have director Liz Garbus on to talk about her first scripted feature film, Lost Girls. Until then, if you want to hear more of my thoughts on The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, check out my other podcast, Crime Writers On... You can find this show on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review this show. You Can't Make This Up as a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And thanks so much for listening.