Zymere Perkins’ sickening death exposes NYC’s unforgivable child welfare failures

Zymere Perkins, a sweet, adorable child nicknamed “ZP,” was deprived of food and sleep🍃, thrust into icy showers, and relentlessly beaten with belts and sticks by his mother a🐼nd her boyfriend.

Terrified of hi𝓰s punishments, Zymere begged his teacher, “‘Ms. Gutierrez, tell mommy that today I behaved good,’’ she recalled.

Six-year-old Zymere finally died in agony on Sept. 26, 2016, in the family’s filthy, roach-infested Harlem apartment. When the malnourished child defecated in the living room, the boyfriend, Rysheim Smith, beat him “lik𝓰e a pinata” with a broom handle, and dumped him under a cold shower while his mom, Geraldine Perkins, passively looked on.

Smith then bludgeoned Zymere with a shower curtain 🦋rod, cutting the boy’s head,ꦚ and hung him in wet clothes on a bathroom door hook “where he took his last breath,” a prosecutor said this month in Smith’s Manhattan Supreme Court murder trial.

“This child had more rib fract𒊎ures then he had ribs,” said Assistant District Attorꦆney Kerry O’Connell.

Zymere’s shocking death shone a harsh light on the cit♍y’s child-welfare agency.

As the horrific revelations of Zymere’s torturous life emerge in the ongoing trial of his alleged killer, the details👍 of how the Administration for Children’s Services failed to protect him and othe𓄧r children have come back into focus.

The child’s slaying became a catalyst for a much-needed oveඣrhaul of ACS after the city itse🅺lf and the state Office of Family and Children’s Services filed scathing reports on Dec. 13, 2016.

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ACS launched five probes into alleged abuse of Zymere while he was alive, and founded three of them, bu🅺t never removed him from his unsafe home:

• June 21, 2010: The day Zymere was born, the hospital reported that Perkins tested positive for marijuana, but he tested negative. ACS closed the case.
• June 30, 2015: Smith caught Zymere at a friend’s apartment drawing on the wall with a crayon and beat him with a belt. The boy’s screams were so loud they were heard on the sidewalk. Zymere told ACS Smith put him naked in cold showers and beat him with a belt. ACS took no action other than offering Perkins parental services, which she refused.
• Aug. 28, 2015: Perkins and Smith went out to dinner, leaving Zymere to wander alone. A neighbor found him and called the police. Three days later, Perkins and Smith got into a physical fight with the Good Samaritan in front of Zymere. Perkins admitted that Smith punished Zymere with cold showers, and Zymere again said Smith beat him with a belt. Despite a case worker noticing troubling injuries on Zymere, including missing teeth, ACS found “inadequate guardianship,” but did nothing.
• Feb. 2, 2016: Zymere’s school, PS 192, reported suspicious injuries over four months, including a possible broken jaw, scratches near his eye and a knocked-out tooth. Perkins blamed each injury on a fall. ACS failed to investigate. “Mr. Smith’s history, combined with the number of physical abuse allegations involving Zymere, should have led caseworkers to probe more deeply about potential domestic violence and corporal punishment,” the city report said.
• April 18, 2016: School staff again reported suspicious bruises and scratches on both of Zymere’s legs. ACS and the NYPD’s Instant Response Team investigated. While being Interviewed at the Manhattan Child Advocacy Center, only “faint redness” was observed on his legs. A safety assessment stated “the child was not in immediate danger of harm.”
• Then-ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrion broke into tears at a City Council hearing on Oct. 31, 2016 where she took blame for the agency failing Zymere.

Just over a month later, 3-year-old Jaden Jordan was fatally beaten in his Brooklyn home by his mother’s boyfriend. He was kille𒐪d three days after ACS workers h♑ad the wrong address and went to the apartment next door.

Carrion submitted her resignation, a day before the state report faulted ACS in the homicides of Zymere, Jaden and Michael Guzman, 5, of Queens, who died of an overdose of his epilepsy medicine given by his mother. ACS had investigated the Guzman family 13 times from October 2008♛ and January 2016, but never removed “Mikey” or his five siblings.

Mayor Bill de Blasio named David Hansell, a former city Health Department official, in February 2017 to replace Carrionꦍ and clean up the agency. Under Carrion’s four-year reign, 58 children with ACS files died.

In an interview Friday, Hansell told The ꦍPos⛎t he has made the slashing of worker caseloads a “top priority.”

“I have to say child protective specialists have s🔯ome of the most difficult jobs, in some ways more difficult than mine,” he said, “So anything we can do ❀to relieve that stress and really help them to focus on the work they have to do only contributes to higher-quality investigations.”

On Sept. 24, 2016 — two days before Zymere was killed – the average ACS worker handled 9.2 cases, records show. That number steadily rose to a high of 14.🔴8 in May 2017, exceeding the state’s acceptable maximum level of averaging 12 cases per worker.

As of September this year, the caseload average had dropped to 7.6 – the agency’s lowest in𓆉 six years.

“I think it’s critical that child protective specialists have the ability to give significant attention to every case and every single investigation that they a൩re responsible for,” Hansell said.

Hansell hired more than 1,100 new caseworkers over the past two years, the agency said. The༺ agency has also lowered the high turnover rate, which dropped by 30 percent the past two years, officials said.

Hansell said ACS has expanded training, provided Zipcars for staff to get to high-risk emergencies faster, and g🥃iven staff mobile tablets to quickly access case information in the field.

City Hall insiders say Hansell is a “technologist” driven by hard evidence – including beefing up ACS’s🎉 data-collecting ChildStat safety program, while Carrión mostly relied on written reports by underlings.

Anthony Wells, president of Social Services Employees Union Local 371, which represents the caseworkers, said lower caseloads has lessened the stress, but the job remains less ♓than appealing.

“Who’d want a job where if something happens you can be on the front page of every paper … and vilified everywher🍒e?”♎ he asked.

Hansell said the trial has reinforced the agency’s resolve not to let down its♑ guard.

“Obviously, the Perkins case was a horrible tragedy, and I think what is emerging in the trial is confirming that. I think from our perspective we have done such exhaustive analysis of the case and what happened — and we have learned so much from it — and we have made so many changes in our practices▨ as a result of it.

“Certainly it is reinfor🌳cing our commitment to do everything we can to make sure tragedies like that don’t happen again,” Hansell said.