Perhaps Suffolk County’s most spectacular ball-drop in recent memory, perhaps tied with the embarrassing 2022 cyber attack, was that of Thomas Valva. Valva, a boy with autism, was forced to sleep in a freezing garage and died of hypothermia. His father and the father’s fiance were co-conspirators in the chronic abuse of the boy, whom teachers had suspected to have been abused eleven times. Thomas was said to have come to school hungry in urine-soaked clothing, sporting suspicious bruises.
These claims were deemed unfounded by Child Protective Services (CPS). The findings of the investigation were shielded from law enforcement, including the county’s top prosecutor, District Attorney Ray Tierney (R). The lack of transparency is considered the top, or even sole, reason that the investigation took as long as it did. Had CPS been more forthright, Valva might still be alive.
It stands to reason that Suffolk County is now looking at overhauling the department. County Executive Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches), apart from seeing the obvious incompetence during the Bellone Administration, has personal skin in the game. His grandson sat next to Valva in elementary school; Romaine emotionally told the press that he had to tell his grandson that Valva would not be coming back.
The County is right to increase transparency, and they should increase it as much as permissible. It’s one problem that CPS completely bungled the case, but it’s another that law enforcement and Suffolk’s top prosecutor couldn’t access the information. It almost makes it seem as if they were intentionally keeping the disturbing secret, perhaps barring an administration that would force accountability.
The County is now stressing better, more stringent training for case workers, as well as more case workers in general. The County is also heralding more than 170 Department of Social Services (DSS) employees who have received specialized training in dealing with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities this year alone. These are both steps in the right direction, but it’s sad that a government agency’s only course of action is to grow simply because of the disaster that was the Steve Bellone (D-West Babylon) Administration.
We’d normally take the default position of shrinking departments, but the opposite is true in this case. This department and the cohort that filled the desks within it made Suffolk County a laughing stock of the country, with the 2022 cyber attack acting only as a squeeze of lemon juice over the paper cut. It’s almost unprecedented just how many “rookie mistakes” were made between these two cases, and we’re thankful we have competent leadership correcting the course, even if they were thrown an unforgivingly dirty bomb.
The Thomas Valva case is one that Suffolk is unlikely to forget, and for good reason. We hope that from the darkest depths of humanity, a new guard can arise and do right by the children who hopefully will never have to face the fate that Thomas Valva did.
