Left (top to bottom): Michael Valva and Angela Pollina (Suffolk County Sheriff's Office). Right: Justyna Zubko-Valva with her sons, including Thomas Valva (GoFundMe).
The mother of a New York boy who died at the hands of his father and his fiancee has indicated that she would accept a settlement over a civil trial.
Justyna Zubko-Valva, the mother of 8-year-old Thomas "Tommy" Valva, who froze to death in January 2020 after being forced to sleep in his father's garage, appeared to be willing to settle her wrongful death claim against Suffolk County for $9 million. Zubko-Valva originally sued the county for $200 million, claiming that Suffolk County Child Protective Services (CPS) failed to protect Tommy after she made repeated claims of abuse. Online court records stated that the civil case was scheduled to go to trial in September.
The civil suit was filed before Michael Valva, Tommy's father, and his then-fiancee Angela Pollina were both found guilty of second-degree murder in connection with Tommy's death. Both are serving sentences of 25 years to life.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Zubko-Valva's original lawsuit claimed that CPS and the school that all three of her sons attended ignored her repeated claims of abuse by Valva and Pollina to the agency. Instead, CPS started investigating Zubko-Valva for abuse after Valva claimed she was hitting the children and poisoning them with a toxic "brown medicine."
Newsday reported that all the claims made against Zubko-Valva were unsubstantiated. In a 75-page letter she wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr in July 2019, she even foreshadowed her son's death, writing that Valva and Pollina "commit the most horrifying and inhuman form of child abuse" against her sons and "lock[ed] them in freezing cold garage in a winter time."
Tommy and his brother Anthony, who both had autism, were punished on the night of Jan. 17, 2020, by Valva and Pollina, who hosed the boys down with water before forcing them to sleep in the unheated garage as the outdoor temperature dropped below 20 degrees. Tommy froze to death during the night.
U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman wrote in a 2022 court filing allowing Zubko-Valva's lawsuit to move forward, "Forcing Tommy and [his brother] Anthony to sleep in subfreezing temperatures on a cold, cement slab in the garage was so common in Mr. Valva and Ms. Pollina's household that they referred to the garage as the 'kid's room.'"
CPS later dismissed the claims against Zubko-Valva after she presented evidence to the contrary, including transcripts of the father brainwashing the children to repeat phrases like "I don't love mommy," "mommy is mean," and "I don't want to stay with mommy." Despite the lack of evidence, Korman wrote, CPS "repeatedly ignored a desperate mother's plea for help, despite having significant evidence of Mr. Valva and Ms. Pollina's abuse, and then pursued a neglect petition against Mrs. Valva to cover up for, and distract from, their failures."
According to the court filing, the boys' teachers eventually alerted CPS that the boys appeared to have "lost a noticeable amount of weight" while in their father's custody and looked "emaciated." Tommy's teacher told CPS that she saw him "eat crumbs off the floor and out of the garbage" and came to school in a "wet pull-up." CPS closed its investigation into the Valva boys on Jan. 8, 2020, 10 days before Tommy died and Valva and Pollina were arrested.
Zubko-Valva reportedly disagreed with her attorneys and did not comply with the court's instructions when offered a $9 million settlement. Now, it appears she has had a change of heart as she faces the foreclosure of her home.
Her current attorney wrote in a court filing that "the parties have come to an agreement on a general release, stipulation of discontinuance, and proposed order" regarding that $9 million settlement amount. According to the filing, which was reviewed by Law&Crime, $7.42 million will come from Suffolk County and $1.3 million will come from Legal Aid of Suffolk County, with the remaining amount to be paid by a local school district and area attorney.
U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan, who took the case over from Korman in February, has yet to rule on the motion. The federal docket did not immediately indicate an upcoming hearing date.
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