City Botched Abuse Investigations of Harlem 6-Year-Old Zymere Perkins: Report

HARLEM, NY — A state report issued Tuesday found that workers for the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) failed to protect Harlem 6-year-old Zymere Perkins on numerous occasions before the child was beaten to death by his mother's live-in boyfriend Sept. 26. Just days after Perkins' death his mother, Geraldine Perkins, and her live-in boyfriend Rysheim Smith were arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

The scathing report from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) found that the ACS did not conduct thorough investigations into alleged abuse of Perkins, did not follow regulatory standards and failed to intervene when it could have protected Perkins. The OCFS report analyzed five ACS investigations into Perkins' family — three indicated and two unfounded — that occurred between June 2010 and April 2016.

"The level of casework activity for all cases was insufficient and was particularly lacking given the family circumstances."

The OCFS report mandated the ACS hire an external monitor by January 2017 to conduct a "comprehensive evaluation" of ACS programs.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released a statement saying the report "uncovered a troubling series of lapses and missed opportunities in ACS’s failed effort to protect Zymere Perkins."

"Procedures were not followed, common sense was not exercised, and due diligence was lacking up and down the chain of command responsible for Zymere. I will not accept excuses for this failure and I will not accept the notion that every single one of these tragedies cannot be prevented. The buck stops with me."

Following the release of the OCFS report the ACS released the findings of its own internal investigation. The ACS internal report announced that three staff directly tied to Perkins' case have been fired, two staff suspended without pay and four staff demoted for the failures during investigations into the abuse of Perkins.

The ACS report identified several failures by child protective specialists and supervisors to thoroughly investigate the welfare of Perkins in the two years prior to his death. The report claimed that specialists' investigations fell well short of protocol and supervisors failed to assess casework and make recommendations to intervene on behalf of the child.

The report indicated that two investigations into Perkins' welfare that occurred in 2016 were botched.

In April — just months before Perkins' death — the ACS investigated allegations of physical injuries and inadequate guardianship. Despite conflicting information given by Zymere Perkins and his mother, the ACS did not fully investigate the allegations and ruled they were unfounded. The case was closed just 23 days after it was opened.

In a February 2016 investigation the ACS received two allegations from Perkins' school which claimed he suffered suspicious physical injuries. During the investigation ACS found that Perkins missed 24 days of school and was often regularly late, but failed to amend the investigation to include educational neglect, according to the report

Zymere Perkins was pronounced dead Sept. 26 after his mother rushed him to Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital. On the day of Perkins' death Rysheim Smith, his mother's boyfriend, allegedly hit the boy with his hands and with a wooden broom stick, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. The mother, Geraldine Perkins, told police that Smith had hung the boy from thee back of their apartment's bathroom door by his shirt and had seen his body "go limp. Smith became angry when Perkins defecated in the living room of Smith's apartment on West 135th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive, according to the DA's office.

After Smith left the apartment, Geraldine Perkins took her unconscious son down from the door and put him on his bed. When she returned to wake him and the child would not respond, she rushed him to the hospital, according to a criminal complaint from the DA's office.

An autopsy revealed that Perkins had suffered linear bruises on his torso, bruises and finger marks on his neck, and other injuries to his head and body, according to a criminal complaint. Zymere Perkins was also suffering from previously broken ribs, according to the autopsy.

The city and state reports into ACS failures in the case of Zymere Perkins were release one day after the resignation of ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrión. Carrión said Monday that her resignation was not due to the recent deaths of Perkins, or Brooklyn 3-year-old Jaden Jordan, but for her "well-being."

Screenshot of Oct. 5 press conference via mayor's office