Back in June, we brought you the story of Lilly Everett (also known as Lilly Baumann), a two-year-old girl from Sunrise, Florida. On May 15, her mother, Megan Everett, skipped town rather than let her spend a week with her dad, Robert Baumann, per a joint custody agreement. Since Lilly was eight months old, her mother has been dating and living with Carlos Lesters, a ?Confederate flag-waving gun enthusiast? who has turned Everett’s head with extreme right-wing views. When Everett took off, she left a note saying Lesters had been a “great dad” to Lilly, but she nonetheless had to leave Florida rather than let a court tell her how to raise her daughter. Everett is facing federal charges of flight across state lines to avoid prosecution, as well as state charges of kidnapping, interference with custody, and concealing a minor contrary to a court order. However, the effort to track her down has moved at a snail’s pace.
Well, earlier this week, Lilly may have gotten her first measure of justice. The person who is probably more responsible for her disappearance than anyone other than Everett and Lesters, Broward County Circuit Judge Steven Feren, lost his bid for a second six-year term. Feren lost to John Patrick Contini, an attorney making his first bid for office, by only 2,839 votes out of 97,885 votes cast. It’s hard not to think that Feren owes his defeat to a devastating article about Lily’s ordeal that appeared earlier this month in New Times Broward-Palm Beach. That article lays out in painstaking detail the evidence that Feren apparently ignored when Baumann came to his court in March seeking full custody of Lilly. He’d actually petitioned for full custody a year earlier, but Florida’s family courts are notoriously slow, and it took until this spring to get a trial date.
In most of this country, it is widely presumed that whenever a couple breaks up, the children belong with the mother. Florida goes further; custody is granted to the mother by default. Yet, Baumann was sure that he’d amassed enough evidence that called for an exception to that rule. His suspicions were first raised when he paid a visit to Lesters’ house in 2012, a month after Everett moved in with him. Not only was the house not babyproofed or carpeted, but Lesters carried a Glock on his person at all times. They grew even louder when Baumann perused Everett and Lesters’ Facebook accounts. Both accounts showed that Lesters and Everett were, to put it mildly, careless about guns and ammunition despite having a toddler in the house. There were guns just sitting on the counter. Lilly was seen playing with boxes of live ammunition. Baumann managed to download most of them before Everett and Lesters deleted their Facebook accounts in May. Many of them can be seen at Bring Lilly Home, a Facebook group that Baumann set up with the help of Everett’s mother Pam and sister Stephanie, who both believe that Lilly belongs with Baumann.
Feren saw all of those pictures, as well as several that are too disturbing to share online. In one of them, Everett and Lesters are cuddling on the couch, and Lesters’ ever-present Glock is within easy reach of Lilly. Stephanie Everett told me on Facebook that in another picture, Lilly is laying in bed with Everett and Lesters–with a gun on the pillow next to Lilly. He also heard Baumann tell him that Lilly was scared of loud noises and didn’t like to be held as much as a normal infant wants to be held. He also heard Everett respond to his questions about the amount of weaponry in the house with Second Amendment absolutist agitprop. And yet, Feren fell down. While he gave Everett and Lesters a severe tongue-lashing about letting Lilly around guns and suggested they get gun locks, he opted to give both Everett and Baumann joint custody. Just over a month later, Everett packed up and left, with Lilly in tow.
To be sure, there’s a lot of fail to go around in this case. For one thing, there are no charges pending against Lesters, even though on paper there’s enough evidence to charge him with child endangerment and maybe aiding and abetting a fugitive. No AMBER Alert has been issued for Lilly. And on, and on. But none of that would have happened had Feren gone outside the box and awarded Baumann full custody of Lilly. Now it looks like he’s paid for that failure with his job.
Anyone who has knowledge about Everett and/or Lily’s whereabouts is urged to call your local police department or FBI branch. You can also call the Sunrise Police Department at 954-746-3600 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC on Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
