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The 71-page report, made public Thursday, April 4, found that Suffolk County CPS received at least 10 reports of abuse or neglect from Thomas Valva’s teachers in the two years leading up to his January 2020 death inside the garage of his Center Moriches home.
Valva died of hypothermia after he and his 10-year-old brother Anthony were forced to sleep in the unheated garage during below-freezing temperatures, according to prosecutors.
Their father, Michael Valva, and his then-fiancé Angela Pollina were convicted of “depraved indifference” murder and are each serving 25 years to life in prison.
According to the report, teachers at East Moriches Elementary School first grew concerned in January 2018 when Valva and his brother began complaining they were hungry to staff. The boys told staff that they were not given breakfast as punishment.
“Staff… were concerned as the children were losing a significant amount of weight,” reads the report.
School employees brought their concerns to Mr. Valva and Pollina, but the issue continued throughout the school year.
In the spring of 2018, the boys’ teachers emailed a Suffolk County CPS caseworker. By the fall, the children were appearing thin and were wearing pull-up diapers, despite having used the toilet the previous year.
School staff contacted CPS again after the boys were seen eating crumbs of food that other kids dropped on the floor or eating food out of the garbage. Despite their report, “staff… did not receive any response or feedback from CPS” after an initial interview, the report found.
By January 2019, Valva and his brother were still showing signs of hunger and were coming to school with suspicious bruises. Staff made a second report of suspected abuse and lack of food with CPS.
In all, the agency received at least 10 reports of abuse or neglect regarding Valva and his siblings, yet caseworkers determined the reports were “unfounded.” As such, the grand jury looking into the agency’s handling of the case was barred from reviewing relevant investigative records under state confidentiality laws.
“This has severely hampered this grand jury’s ability to investigate whether CPS caseworkers and other personnel engaged in willful misconduct or gross negligence in their investigation of those reports,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney.
The grand jury report further states that “after (Valva’s) death, CPS employees could have obviated the injustice in this case by migrating the ten unfounded reports and underlying investigative material into the subsequent indicated report relating to (his) tragic death, which would have made those reports and material accessible to this Grand Jury.
“The failure of CPS to do so can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to shield their own inaction from public scrutiny. Thus, the laws and rules must be changed to prevent such future injustices," the report says.
In a statement following the report’s release, Tierney called on Albany to fix the “backwards law.”
“The system we currently have to protect our children is a recipe for disaster. It is unconscionable that even in a case such as this, no one, not even a District Attorney, Superior Court Judge, or state advisory board can obtain prior reports that CPS has arbitrarily and erroneously deemed ‘UNFOUNDED,’” he said.
“The 75-page Grand Jury Report released today highlights the systematic failures of the current Child Protective Services system and recommends local, as well as state-wide, common-sense changes to ensure that incompetence and apathy are not protected, and a tragedy like the death of Thomas Valva does not happen again.”
Click here to view the full grand jury report.
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