Caseworkers who said 8-year-old Thomas Valva wasn’t abused in the months before he froze to death while being punished in a Long Island garage won’t face criminal charges because their mistaken findings actually shield them from prosecution, according to a new report.
A grand jury investigating Child Protective Service agents said it was stymied by state law allowing agency officials to suppress repeated reports of abuse that they deem to be “unfounded.”
“The statute allows these materials to be hidden from public scrutiny, law enforcement and even from a Grand Jury investigating the death of a child,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement.
“This backwards law must be changed. The system we currently have to protect our children is a recipe for disaster,” he added. “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.’”
Tierney’s comments accompanied a 75-page grand jury report that highlighted systematic failures of the current CPS system and recommended changes in statewide and local laws.
Young Thomas died in 2020 after his father, ex-NYPD cop Michael Valva, and his fiancee, Angela Pollina, forced the boy to sleep in an unheated garage and then hosed the child down with freezing water.
Thomas’ body temperature dipped below 76 degrees.
Child Protective Services agents who were tipped off by teachers and school counselors about abuse in the Valva home heeded none of the warnings, dismissing allegations that could have saved the boy’s life, officials said.
Tierney said 11 separate reports were made to CPS before Thomas’ death, with the agency deeming 10 of those cases “unfounded.”
Michael Valva
(Suffolk County Sheriff via AP)/Associated Press Thomas’ father Michael Valva, right, and his fiancee Angela Pollina were both convicted of murder.
Prosecutors said home video surveillance showed Thomas and his older brother Anthony shivering inside the bitterly cold garage two nights before the younger boy’s death, when the temperature dropped to a bone-chilling 19 degrees.
Both boys were autistic.
Thomas’ horrific death was the culmination of years of relentless abuse suffered by the boy and his brother, as detailed during Valva’s murder trial.
Officials described a litany of horrors including accusations that the children were bruised, starved and forced to sleep on dog pads.
Thomas and his 10-year-old brother were both special-needs students who were so badly neglected that their school administrators said they would arrive for class in soiled clothing and dig through the garbage for food.
Both children were subjected to strict corporal punishment, prosecutors said.
“I will beat them until they bleed,” Valva once texted Pollina about the boys, according to a prosecutor. “It is the only thing that works.”
Valva and Pollina were convicted of murder and child endangerment and are serving 25 years to life in prison for Thomas’ death.
