Two senior Administration for Children’s Services workers are suing the city claiming they were scapegoated and demoted in the agency’s rush to blame employees for the death of little Zymere Perkins.
Susan Starker and Lee Gordon say they had unblemished records and a combined 50 years experience at the child welfare agency until news broke that 6-year-old Perkins was beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend in September, even though the family had been on the agency’s radar for years.
Starker, 59, of Brooklyn was a $130,000-a-year managing attorney at ACS. Gordon, 45, of Manhattan, was a $110,000-a-year assistant director.
They insist in court papers that they “had absolutely nothing to do with any decisions made regarding Zymere Perkins.”
Yet they were demoted when they couldn’t immediately provide answers to supervisors in the wake of the tragedy because they were observing Rosh Hashanah, their Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.
They are identified as “a director and an assistant director within our general counsel’s office” but not named in an October 12, 2016 press release about Perkins’ death. The announcement said that four ACS staffers were being suspended without pay for failing “to follow up about gaps in case practice.”
Starker and Gordon claim they are also implicated– but again not singled out– in a state probe. The December 2016 report says “supervisors of the staff who worked directly on the Perkins case…dropped the ball in the tragic case of 6-year-old Zymere Perkins.”
Finally a Nov. 21, 2016 email from ACS General Counsel Joseph Cardieri to outgoing ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrion, says that their demotions were based “on their egregious failure to follow up appropriately” on abuse allegations.
They are suing for reinstatement with full back pay. Their pay was slashed by 20 percent and they were stripped of managerial titles.
City reps did not immediately return requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Rich Calder
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