Lost records in the Cuban custody case

Following up on the two posts below, I found this story, which begs the question: Is a record actually "lost" if neither DCF's CWLS attorneys, nor the case manager assigned to the case, nor the CPI initially assigned to the case, nor the Judge's notes, nor the Clerk of Court, have the record? Or, did it never exist?

There should be a court order to the effect of what DCF claims if it is true. At the very least, if there is a disconnect between what court orders said at the time and what and what DCF believed to be the case at the time, it should be reflected in notes, or "chrons" required to be kept by DCF of conversations with parents.

How do we have a dependency 18 months after shelter with no order giving a basis for the dependency, voluntary or otherwise? I'd love to know who represented the Mother back then.

Three days before a controversial trial over the fate of a 4-year-old girl at the center of an international custody dispute, an attorney for the Department of Children & Families dropped a bombshell Friday: They have no records to show that the girl's mother ever agreed to give up custody of the child.

For months, DCF and attorneys for the girl's birth father and foster father have planned for a trial in which the state will seek to prove that Rafael Izquierdo, the girl's Cuban father, is unfit to raise her. The trial is expected to begin Monday.

But at a hastily called emergency hearing Friday morning before Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, DCF attorneys acknowledged they have no documents to prove the girl's mother, Elena Perez, agreed to give up custody.