By Hank Russell
Flanked by members of the Suffolk County police department and teachers and staff members of East Moriches Elementary School, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney held a press conference in Hauppauge on April 4 announcing his office has unsealed the grand jury report finding that the county’s Child Protective Services (CPS) failed to do its due diligence in protecting Thomas Valva.
“The death of a child is always an unspeakable tragedy,” Tierney said. “The grand jury was empaneled to find out what went wrong under CPS, under the prior administration for one reason: to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
On January 17, 2020, Valva died of hypothermia. He was only eight years old. His father, Michael Valva, and stepmother, Angela Pollina, were both sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2022 and 2023, respectively, for second-degree murder and child endangerment. According to reports, Thomas died of hypothermia as a result of sleeping in a cold garage; his body temperature was at 76 degrees.
Tierney thanked the teachers who reported the incidents to the CPS, adding if it weren’t for them, these reports “would have been lost to history.”
According to the report, Thomas and his older brother were forced to sleep in the garage in 19-degree weather without blankets, pillows or mattresses, for over a year. “We learned this wasn’t an [isolated] incident,” Tierney said. “They were starved, beaten and frozen.”
In addition, the children were being sent to school wearing dirty clothes and without being given a bath. They would also have bruising on their faces, bloody noses and ligature marks on their wrists, including other injuries.
The children often ate crumbs off the cafeteria floor and food out of garbage cans because they were not fed at home as punishment. Tierney said that, during the school year, Thomas gained only one pound while his brother lost 20 pounds.
Teachers at East Moriches Elementary School — which Thomas and his brother attended — “consistently sounded the alarm” to CPS “about the children’s treatment.” Tierney also praised the trial team and the detectives for bringing “this profound abuse to light.”
“If there had been no trial,” he said, “there would have been no proof that this [abuse] ever existed.”
Despite eleven separate reports to CPS, nothing was done to help them, Tierney said. “No one can look at these reports and come away without saying, ‘CPS failed these boys.’”
Ten of the eleven reports were determined to be “unfounded” by CPS, which means, according to Tierney, the records can be sealed under New York State law and cannot be viewed by law enforcement, the district attorney’s office or a grand jury. “As a result, it disappears … never to be seen again.”
However, the grand jury was allowed to call teachers and school staff as witnesses, as well as obtain school records of the children and investigative reports from the Suffolk County Homicide Bureau, emails, text messages and surveillance video from the Valva residence.
Other shocking revelations from the reports include a CPS staffer threatening to report one of the teachers for harassing the children’s parents and another teacher confronting a CPS representative about the Valva boys, to which the CPS representative replied, “Unless it’s a broken bone, there is nothing we can do about it.”
“Anyone objectively looking at these facts will have no doubt that, had CPS done its job, Thomas Valva would still be alive today,” Tierney said. “We don’t need an investigation for that.”
Two months after Thomas died, another report was released. The report showed “what we knew all along,” meaning the boys were abused. “This is a case of too little, too late,” Tierney said.
Long Island Life & Politics reached out to CPS and was referred to the county executive’s press office. The press office issued a press release from County Executive Ed Romaine. He said he has already made “significant changes” to CPS and “will be immediately bringing in new leadership.”
“The death of Thomas Valva is an enduring stain on Suffolk County, and the grand jury report unveiled today by District Attorney Tierney underscores the failure of the prior administration’s policies and the leadership of Suffolk CPS to take real action that could have saved a child’s life and protected an untold number of others,” Romaine said in a statement.
Romaine emphasized that the grand jury report “is not an indictment” of the entire department, but rather showcases “[t]he failed performance of a few who were trusted to protect Thomas Valva.”