A five-year-old is now in the hospital with life threatening injuries. According to Dothan Police, the young child suffered blunt force trauma that caused swelling in the brain, severe enough to require emergency surgery.

The woman charged, 24-year-old Selena Cheyanna Smith of Dothan, is in custody facing an aggravated child abuse charge. She is being held without bond in the Dale County Jail.

But for people in the community, the most devastating part is not just what happened. It is what did not.

Multiple residents say they warned someone. That concerns were reported to Alabama’s Department of Human Resources. That they tried to get help before it reached this point.

And nothing was done.

This is what families across Alabama and throughout the country have been calling out for years. DHR moves swiftly in cases where no physical harm has occurred. Families are investigated over poverty, cluttered homes, untreated anxiety, or a custody disagreement taken out of context. Parents who lead with faith are often misunderstood.

Those who ask questions, assert their rights, or refuse to blindly comply are labeled uncooperative. The agency treats resistance as guilt, and faith as a red flag. Children are removed before a judge is ever involved, before any help is offered, and often without clear legal cause.

But when the five-year-old was truly in danger, when someone called with real concern for their safety, the urgency disappeared.

This case is not just about violence. It is about a refusal to respond.

There is no excuse for a young child to end up in critical condition after multiple warnings were ignored.

The late Senator Nancy Schaefer said it plainly. The system built to protect children had become a bureaucracy, shielded by secrecy, driven by power, and too often failing the very people it claimed to serve.

That warning was more than a decade ago. And now a five-year-old lies in a hospital bed, a reminder that the problem has not gone away.

We may never see the internal memos. We may never read the intake notes or know who made the calls. But the result is unmistakable. A young child is fighting to recover. Community members tried to intervene. And the agency with the authority to stop this stayed silent.

We are sending strength to the five-year-old, to the medical team, and to every voice that tried to speak up.

And we are demanding answers from a system that moves quickly when it should not and disappears when it should step in.