By: Smythe Carson-Goodall
A warning went unheeded, and as a result, according to reports, a child is dead.
Justyna Zubko-Valva says that she warned authorities about her husband, NYPD police officer Michael Valva, but no one took action. According to published reports, the Long Island mother alleged sexual abuse, starvation, brainwashing, beatings and possible child pornography, and desperately sought help for herself and three sons.
Rather than getting help, however, she was herself arrested, deemed to be mentally ill and largely dismissed. A judge in Nassau County awarded custody of the three boys to their father, who is now suspected of having killed one of them, his eight year old autistic son named Thomas, by leaving him to freeze to death in a garage overnight on January 17th.
Valva and his soon-to-be wife, Angela Pollina, were both charged with the child’s death.
Autism expert Kimberly Berens, who worked with Anthony and Thomas, told the New York Post, “I don’t know if it’s because he’s a cop. I don’t know if it’s because he had powerful friends in powerful places. It made zero sense to me.”
The lack of evidence of child abuse, Berens told the newspaper, “was key to her losing custody, the lies Mike said about her. There were a number of professionals that a judge could have reached out to, to judge our experience with Justyna as a mother. Not one person contacted me, as a professional before Justyna lost custody of her kids.”
Young Thomas Valva’s body temperature “was just 76 degrees when he was rushed to the hospital—after his father claimed the boy had fallen while waiting for the school bus,” reported thedailybeast.com.
“They caused my son to die because they did absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening,” Zubko-Valva said last week. “God only knows the severity of the abuse. They’re going to need long-term therapy with a good specialist.”
County Executive Steve Bellone said in a statement: “As a parent, I am horrified by what happened to this beautiful boy. As County Executive, I want to know if there’s anything else that could have been done under existing law to prevent this from happening. Beyond that, I want to know if anything in this case suggests that changes should be made to existing policy or law.”
According to NBC News, the possible abuse may go even deeper. “Meanwhile, a family advocacy group began calling for discipline or dismissal of the judges the group says were negligent in Thomas Valva’s case. A man who is the father of one of Pollina’s three daughters said he has been trying to warn people for “a long time” about the abuse Pollina would do onto the girls. The three girls lived in the same Center Moriches house as the Valva boys. “I would watch Angela physically abuse her twin girls before the boys were involved, before my daughter was even involved,” Gino Cali said.”
