ECBAWM and Co-Counsel Barnum & Reyes File Amended Complaint in New York City Foster Care Abuse Case

  • August 8, 2011

After joining as counsel for S.P. in June 2011, ECBAWM, along with co-counsel Barnum & Reyes, filed an amended complaint detailing extreme and irreparable harm suffered by S.P., a five-year-old child, while she was in the custody of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). ACS took S.P. into its custody in 2001 when she was only nine days old for her own protection. ACS assigned the private foster care agency Graham Windham Services (GWS) to provide S.P.’s day-to-day foster care services. Five years later, after abandoning her in an abusive and filthy foster home, S.P. was tortured in that home by a relative of her foster parent, who chose to punish her for accidentally wetting herself by pouring boiling water over her head, neck, and back. Even after S.P. sustained extensive, disfiguring keloid scars from this extreme abuse, ACS and GWS failed to discover, treat, or remove S.P. from this foster home until over five months later, and only when a doctor not employed by ACS or GWS called 911.