Who else is at fault in Thomas Valva's death?

Thomas Valva’s nightmare ended only when the boy died with a body temperature of 76 degrees, after being made to stay in a freezing Center Moriches garage for 19 hours and sleep on its concrete floor.

A Suffolk County jury on Friday convicted Michael Valva of second-degree murder in the January 2020 death of his son. Now what’s needed is an intensive investigation and a public reckoning of how the system allowed the abuse of the 8-year-old boy and his older brother, both of whom had autism, to continue.

The trial made it heartbreakingly clear that teachers, police officers, extended family members, family friends, judges, and Child Protective Services workers saw ample evidence that the two boys were malnourished and abused. They came to school painfully thin, smelling of urine and feces. They rummaged through garbage for food and ate crumbs off the floor. They told adults they slept in that freezing garage, which had no bathroom.

The situation was so heartbreaking that teachers came together to “flood” a CPS hotline with reports of the boys’ abuse. Nothing changed.

The crime was so egregious that Valva’s legal team conceded he was guilty of child endangerment, and asked the jury to convict the 43-year-old former NYPD officer of criminally negligent homicide instead of murder. But Valva’s actions so clearly reached the “depraved indifference” standard of the murder conviction that the jury deliberated for just seven hours before returning a verdict carrying a sentence of 25 years to life. Valva’s former fiancee, Angela Pollina, in whose home the Valvas lived, is to be tried next year. 

In March 2020, then-District Attorney Tim Sini announced he would empanel a special grand jury to investigate the system’s response to Thomas Valva’s abuse and death. Sini now says COVID-19 and the original scheduling of Pollina and Michael Valva’s trials for 2021 stalled it.

That special grand jury investigation must happen now. It must determine how the abuse was allowed to continue, why CPS did so little, how Valva’s status as a cop affected his interactions with CPS and Suffolk officers, and why the frequent, terrified complaints of the boys’ mother, who has sued the county for $200 million, were ignored.

It also should assess whether rule changes for Suffolk’s CPS made in response to Thomas' death — including reducing caseloads, getting a supervisor involved anytime a case reaches three allegations, and increased training on responding to cases involving children with special needs — are helping, and what else is needed. And a county legislative panel that has been denied information on the case, in seeming contradiction of the law, must renew its push for the information and make its own assessment.

Three years later, it’s still not clear why Thomas Valva’s plight had to end in death. That means it’s still not certain that it won’t happen again.