YouTube Didn’t Want This NYC Child Welfare Story Discussed—But the Truth Is Too Disturbing to Ignore
Content warning. This video is about a sensitive topic involving loss of life. We’ve removed any graphic content to comply with YouTube’s guidelines. We aim to provide informative, factual journalism on a tragic event in the public interest that does not dismiss its seriousness. All clips are used under the doctrine of fair use for news reporting and analysis.
Julia Batis was born at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York on April 26, 2014 to parents Nvesia Jones and Julius Batist. According to her paternal grandmother, Yolanda Davis, Julisia never gave a problem. She was a perfect child. She had neat handwriting. She loved going to Target and Walmart.
She was an usher at church and loved the bishop. Yolanda added that she was very compassionate. She loved to sing and love shopping. One of her fondest memories was their walks to public school 375. On those mornings, Julia would suddenly take off running, calling out with a laugh, “I’m going to beat you, Grandma.
I’m going to beat you. Don’t cheat.” before bursting into giggles. Much like many young children, Julia adored Disney, and her favorite princesses were Elsa and Anna. One of Yolanda’s neighbors, Jalissa Jacob, remembered how Jissio would be waiting at the door with her beloved Frozen dolls in hand. Jalissia also had a fondness for watching viral Tik Tok dances and trying her best to copy him.
Jalissa remembers this as she can’t really dance, but she got the hang of some of them. Jalissa also recalled that Jissia could be a little shy around strangers or anyone she didn’t feel comfortable with. But when she grew used to someone, her true colors would shine through, and she’d smile and feel happy around them. Some of the people who brought this out of her were her cousins, who she loved being around.
But her favorite person was her grandmother. There was nothing Julia loved more than spending time with Yolanda. When Jalissa took the neighborhood kids to the park, Julia would always prefer to stay behind with her grandmother. Yolanda often emphasized how deeply she cared for Julia, saying, “Whatever she wanted to do that made her day better, I did it.
” Sadly, Julisia’s own mother, Nvasia Jones, never had this kind of relationship with her daughter and was not present for a significant portion of her life. What little time Jacia had with her mother was extremely depressing for her. This is widely noticed by friends and family alike. Jalissa even recalls seeing Julysia acting shy and reserved whenever she was around her mother at parties and functions and claimed it would just be like a stranger.
She’ll be quiet and shut down more so to herself. According to several other reports, Julia became visibly anxious, even angry when the subject of being with her mother was brought up. But this wasn’t the behavior of a rebellious child. Instead, her reactions were fearful and threatened. This was not an overreaction as you will find out later.
What’s even more alarming is that Nvesia had been like this for some time. Records show that in 2013, the year before Julia was born, she had lost custody of four of her other children. Thanks to her involvement with the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS as we’ll refer to them for the rest of the episode. Julisia was immediately taken from her mother and placed with Yolanda at her apartment in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
According to Yolanda, I got the baby from the hospital on May 1st, 2014. She was 5 days old. Initially, Nvesasia was granted custody, but ACS got involved and the court paused the custody order. 2015, however, the appeals court sided with ACS since Nvasia had not taken responsibility or addressed the problems that had caused her children to be removed in the first place.
The judges explained that while she had followed the orders in her case plan, she still showed unpredictable emotional outbursts during visits and that she was easily angered. At first, Nvasia was allowed visitation, but later this was revoked after she refused to give her daughter back to her grandmother. All the while taunting Yolanda to call the police on her.
According to reports, Nasia kicked down doors at a child welfare office looking for a caseworker. Although she hated complying with some of the mandates ordered by the court, records showed that she did occasionally attend her parenting classes. Nvasia’s friend and neighbor Kathy Ferguson once accompanied Nvasia to a therapy session in which she picked a fight with the therapist.
Kathy stated that she loves her kids, but that mind of hers flicks off and on. I cannot imagine living in her household as a kid. A case manager later testified that there had been no real change in her behavior or decided that until she could face and work through the issues that led to her children’s removal, it would not be safe to return the baby to her care.
Because of this, Julia stayed with her grandmother until 2017. Should be noted that Nvasia had a troubled upbringing herself, but she did not break the cycle. Friend Cathy explained that Nasia was raised by her grandmother and faced an unstable childhood. Shortly after becoming a teenager, she ran away from home and ended up living in a duplex with a friend in Brooklyn.
Not long after, she began dating the friend’s uncle who was 25 years older than her. From that relationship, she had a son, the first of six children. Kathy added, “She came from a messed up family and raised her kids in the same type of environment that she grew up in.” When Julysia was just a little over three years old, child welfare officials took her from Yolanda’s care and placed her in foster care.
The agency cited ongoing concerns between her parents. They reported that her father had broken visitation rules by visiting her at Yolanda’s home without supervision and during that time had an argument with Nvasia where he allegedly made violent threats. Now, Nvasia filed several complaints against him, but none of them were proven, and he never faced any criminal charges.
Even so, the repeated allegations prevented him from having much time with his daughter. It is important to note that Julisia reportedly loved her father and enjoyed spending time with him. Yolanda acted promptly to try to make things right. In a handwritten request to the agency, Yolanda explained that she had only allowed Julius to see his daughter at her home and pleaded for her granddaughter to be returned.
Later that same year, a judge agreed that the agency had acted improperly, so custody was returned to Yolanda once again in 2018. This time around, her parents were to have supervised visits at an agency office. Around that time, Nvasia wanted her children back, but Julia didn’t seem to share that same feeling.
Or Yolanda, on April 13th, Julia told her that her mom had hit her with a hammer. At 5 years old, she started therapy at a mental health clinic in Crown Heights, where session records show glimpses of her relationship with her mother. According to Yolanda, Julia was terrified of Nvasia. But ACS did not take this into account and continued supervised visits with her.
Yolanda recalled, “When I brought Julysia for these visits, she would go into the corner and she would be crying and I would be crying and I’m saying, “Y’all don’t see this? I mean, does this say something to you guys? This is like a red flag to me.” The case worker’s response, Yolanda said, was, “I know, but she has to see her mom.
” Furthermore, court orders also forced Julia to spend some weekends visiting her mother’s apartment. During one of those visits, in a phone call recorded by Yolanda, Julia asked her grandmother, “Grandma, are you calling the police?” When Yolanda asked for the reason, the girl replied, “Because I don’t want to go with mommy.
” We have a clip of the recording and we will play it for you now. Grandma, are you calling the police? What am I calling the police for? Because I don’t want to go with mommy. Why you don’t want to go with mommy? Oh my god. You’re telling me to call the police? Because I don’t want to go with mommy. So you saying call the police? What is wrong at mommy’s house that you don’t want to go to mommy’s house? In 2019, a social worker wrote that during one session, Julia became upset while coloring, shouting no stop and
appearing anxious. According to this worker, Julia grew extremely nervous whenever her mother was mentioned and often grew angry at her grandmother for bringing up visits with Nvasia. Come, come. Grandma got to do your hair. Why are you crying? Mommy. You don’t want to see mommy? Why? I want to see mommy.
Huh? I want to see mommy. What? You want to see mommy? Why you don’t want to see mommy? Mom, don’t cry. You got to go see mommy. You don’t love mommy. Why you crying like that? We’re just going to visit. Okay. Don’t cry. Why are you crying, pumpkin? You have to see mommy. Okay. Don’t cry.
Why? What happened? I’m sorry. You don’t want to go? Why? [Music] In January of 2020, during a scheduled visit to a clinic, a supervisor observed that Julia sat nervously while waiting for her mother. But once it became clear that Nvasia wasn’t coming, she quickly relaxed and began speaking more openly.
The supervisor wrote that there is quite a bit of trauma each time contact is made with her biological mother. Even with all this history and reports clearly showing that Julysia would not be safe around her mother, in March of 2020, she was sent to live independently with her without any supervision as ruled by ACS.
Yolanda couldn’t fathom the ruling and called ACS right away. She also recorded the phone conversation with a caseworker. This case worker told her that she had reported her concerns to her supervisors, including the fact that Nvesia called her own child a She then said they probably want to close this case. Yolanda countered saying, “You can’t close the case.
The child is scared to death of her.” But nonetheless, ACS stood by its initial decision and let it happen. As fate would have it, March of 2020 launched the world into utter chaos. The pandemic slowed everyday processes, even court rulings for extremely significant cases. Yet, some cases, especially ones involving the safety of a child, should never be neglected, even in a crisis.
Yolanda repeatedly tried to alert ACS, but her efforts were ignored. What was initially meant to be just a weekend visit with Nvasia turned into 90 days, and eventually it seemed it would last forever. Weekend became 90 days. 90 days became you have to do a independent review. Davis says she repeatedly went to ACS and SEO family of services to get her granddaughter back not knowing why she was being allowed to stay with a woman she tells us of young child at the age of 4 years old.
The date was April 13th, 2018. And what my granddaughter said was, “Mom hit me with a hammer.” One neighbor who did not want to be identified says she made calls to child services multiple times. I was here screaming. They came. They spoke to them. I seen her with a black eye on like Thursday or something like that.
So that’s why I called ACS cuz she told me her mother did that to her eyes. ACS and SEO services has failed me. I was trying I was trying to keep this from happening. Yolanda tried her hardest to regain custody of Julysia and let her have a normal life. But due to the pandemic, Yolanda’s voice just fell on deaf ears. According to Julisia’s father, Julius, they didn’t care. They knew.
They knew what danger she was in because I was letting them know, too. And they see a lot of things for themselves as workers. But they brushed it under the rug. They didn’t care to do nothing about it. Although the order seems sudden, court records indicate that the move had been planned for some time following ACS’s general approach of reuniting children with their parents whenever it is considered safe enough to do so.
In Julysia’s case, this started as a trial discharge where she was temporarily placed in Nvasia’s home under supervision to see how things would go. After several months, that arrangement was made permanent and Julia was later officially returned to her mother’s custody in June of 2021. However, several reports make it clear that Julysia was still not safe in her mother’s care.
Despite Yolanda and others reporting their concerns and fighting to revoke the order, nothing changed. Nevertheless, around April of 2020, Julisia began adjusting to life in her mother’s apartment on the 10th floor of a building in the Mitchell Houses apartment complex in the Bronx. Neighbors there remembered her as a shy girl who loved unicorns and Minnie Mouse.
One of the phone calls recorded by Yolanda regarding her granddaughter’s case. Julysia can be heard talking about her three older brothers. She said they keep fighting and even beat up a younger sibling. They make him bleed, she said. When Yolona asked, “What do they do?” Julicia simply replied, “Something bad.” The following summer, neighbors often saw Julia moving around on her own, riding the elevator alone, and running errands to the bodega by herself.
They also heard Nvasia shouting almost constantly from inside the apartment. Michael Roberts, a neighbor who contacted child welfare and the police, said, “I’d hear her yelling at the kids all the time. She would curse at them. She was frustrated for no reason, always angry. It made no sense to walk out of your house and be that angry.
” Another neighbor, Mina Cruz, reportedly contacted ACS on July 8th and 12th of 2021 after seeing Jalisia walking through the streets alone on errands. It’s unknown whether the authorities followed up on these neighbors reports, but from what is known, they didn’t take any meaningful action. Yolanda requested visitation rights, and a hearing was set for later that fall.
On July 31st, she received a series of troubling texts from Jalissia’s phone that left her uncertain about who was actually sending them. The text read, “Grandma, it’s me, Julia. I’m leaving today. My mom is letting me live with her brother.” When Yolanda asked where, she responded, “Texas, I’m not coming back.
” Just a week later, on August 6th, Jasmine Jones, who was the girlfriend of neighbor Michael Jones, told him she had seen Julisia with a swollen black eye. When she asked the girl what had happened, Julia said her mother had caused it. Jasmine also called ACS to report it. And 2 days later, on August 8th, Michael also saw Julia in the elevator wearing sunglasses accompanied by her mother.
By now, the report should have been enough for ACS to revoke Nvasia’s custody rights, but that never happened. On Tuesday, August 10th, neighbors reported being woken up to the sound of Nvasia screaming. This time, not in anger, but in panic. According to 51-year-old Janine Ravo, who lived down the hall, she knocked on the door.
She was yelling, “Help! Help! My daughter stopped breathing.” Janine then ran into the apartment and found Julysia being held by her older brother on the floor. She was unclothed and appeared to be limp. According to Janine, Nvasia explained that Julysia had wet her clothes. She kept saying a bunch of unrelated things.
She also said that Julysia had woken her up crying, complaining of stomach pain, and then claimed that her daughter had fallen and hit her head on a table. Nvasia then called 911 at around 8:06 a.m. and handed the phone to Janine. The dispatcher instructed Janine to place her hand on Julia’s stomach. When asked whether or not Janine’s hand moved, she replied, “No.
” The mother explained that the child hit her head on the table. “Do you believe that?” “No.” Jisia was then immediately taken to Lincoln Hospital, but sadly she had already succumbed to her injuries. City medical examiner confirmed that the cause of her death was blunt force abdominal trauma.
Julia’s tragic death was ruled a homicide. But just as she was neglected by the authorities, her case remained hanging even after her death. According to reports, Julius was furious that nobody had been charged. He reported that the detectives just kept telling him, “Just wait. We’re working on this.
” A year later, on June 29th, 2022, Nvasia Jones and her son Paul Fine Jr. were arrested and charged with multiple crimes including seconddegree murder, manslaughter, and endangering the welfare of a child. Paul Fine Jr. also faced charges of essay. For almost a year, a Bronx mom accused of beating her daughter to death. Was a free woman until tonight.
Julius Batist has waited for this moment for more than 10 months. Hopefully, justice be served. That’s all I want for my daughter and that’s all I ask. The father of seven-year-old Jalissa Batis stood outside of the 40th precinct in the Bronx, ready to make eye contact with the mother of his daughter accused of murdering her on the morning of August 10th of last year.
Law enforcement sources told News4 that when police showed up to the family’s apartment in M Haven, they found Jalissa unconscious and covered in bruises. Police say 36-year-old Navasia Jones did not act alone. Her 18-year-old son, Paul Fine, is accused of murdering and sexually abusing the little girl, too. I’m excited about him being arrested, too.
We stopped by the Bronx apartment where Jalissa was last seen alive. It’s where her father continues to maintain a memorial for his daughter. You know, just did what daddy supposed to do. Complete with birthday balloons and a poster that reads, “Happy heavenly 8th birthday, Jalissa.” I’m going to live with this for the rest of my life.
But it’s somewhat of closure with knowing they in the process of going where they going, what they deserve. You know, for now, Batist is focused on being the best father he can be to the other child. He shares with Jones, three-year-old, he don’t never got to worry about going through none of that or nobody ever hurt him or doing nothing to him again.
And as far as uh her son, her uh Delissia’s half brother, who is also accused of murder, his own defense attorney, just hearing everything that the prosecutor was saying about the medical examiner’s findings, the attorney for the half brother apologized to Galissia’s family, just hearing those difficult difficult description of the extent of the bruising that was found on this little seven-year-old’s body.
During the investigation, Nvasia’s eldest son told police that he had struck his halfsister in the face eight times. Authorities later determined, however, that these blows were not the ones that caused her death. I’m not never going to get a chance to see my daughter again. She’s a great daughter, the best daughter in the world.
You know, super powerful, super smart. Julicia’s halfb brotherther, 18-year-old Paul Fine Jr. is charged with murder and excuse. Prosecutors say he repeatedly beat Julisia over two days last August, punching her in the face and stomach so brutally her internal organs began to bleed. Prosecutors also say fine Jr. sexually the child as she was dying.
They also alleged Julisia’s mother, 36-year-old Nvisia Jones, was in the apartment while Julysia was being she is also charged with murder. This is a revolting, disturbing case of brutality and callousness. Julisa Batty’s death was horrific and her seven years on earth were a lifetime of pain, abuse, neglect, and cruelty.
Your business prosecutors say Fine Jr. confessed to ACS at one point that he did it because Julia threw up and had stolen snacks. The Bronx DA says Jones and Fine made other false claims. They said that the child fell against various items in the apartment or on the floor. All of those statements were inconsistent with the fatal and non-fatal injuries on Jalisa’s body. Jalisa lied dying for three hours.
Julia’s paternal grandmother says she repeatedly tried to get custody of Julia over the years. She says she told case workers that her granddaughter was being abused at the mother’s apartment in the Mitchell houses, but they never listened to what I told them. I got my granddaughter to finally say something to them.
My granddaughter said that she did not want to ever go back there. She’s my everything still. I think about her every day. She always with me. So I I use her as my strength to keep going through life. In the Bronx, Eileen La Palmer, Pix 11 News. The legal proceedings concluded on March 14th, 2025.
And tragically, Julisia did not receive full justice as Paul Fine Jr. had all charges against him dropped after his mother took full responsibility for the assault. Paul retracted his initial statements of hitting Julia eight times, saying he reported that just to protect his mother. Nvasia, on the other hand, accepted a plea deal with the Bronx District Attorney’s office, confessing that she alone assaulted Julia and caused her death.
As part of her plea agreement, Nvasia received a poultry 15-year prison sentence. However, Bronx Supreme Court Justice Joseph McCormack upgraded her sentence to 17 years in prison and 5 years postrelease supervision due to her refusal to come to court hearings for sentencing outburst during her last court date in which she minimized her guilt and violating the conditions of the plea.
After the sentencing, Yolanda stated, “I’m numb. I’m really numb to the whole situation. It’s really, really sad. I’m not happy he’s out.” According to her, Paul should have stayed behind bars. As for Nvasia, she should have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. Julicia’s father, Julius, also shared similar remarks.
He stated, “It does make me angry because she’s getting away with murder and she’s getting her son back. I don’t get my daughter back.” A memorial was held on August 15th, 2021. Her grandmother, Yolanda, who had cared for Julia for most of her life, was initially denied the opportunity to claim her granddaughter’s body.
During the ceremony, which was recorded on Facebook Live, she shared, “She died at a young age. She loved all deeply. We know that now she’s in a better place. God took her back home because I did all I could.” A GoFundMe campaign was started for Julysia, raising 4,251 of its $5,000 goal. In part, Yolanda shared the following.
Julysia, nicknamed Lisia, was a very happy child during the duration that I had custody of her for 5 years and 11 months. Oftentimes, she would stay to herself and engage in her toys and play with her four cousins that were like older brothers. She had an enjoyable childhood with lots of love, happiness, and I would give anything to have her back with us.
Later, on November 1st, 2021, a funeral and wake took place at John’s funeral home in Brooklyn. According to family members, Nvasia was also allowed to mourn at this event for one hour. Julisia was buried in a white casket wearing a white dress that she had picked out for a wedding that she had attended. Her father, Julius, said he planned to tell his then two-year-old son, “Everything I loved about her, her name and face will be the light of my life.
Every step I take, she will never be forgotten.
