Nicholas J. Leonardis, of Stathis & Leonardis in Edison, secured a $9.5 million settlement for a young teen who suffered years of sexual assault while under the supervision of the NJ Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS).
The child’s parents both had significant mental health issues, including Schizophrenia and alcohol. Adult Protective Services removed his father from the home to address his mental health issues.
A 19-year-old male neighbor with no experience as a caregiver or child guardian, who was also an unemployed high school dropout, convinced the DYFS case worker to allow him to become the child’s in-home care taker/guardian.
Plaintiff argued that DYFS never performed a proper background check on this 19-year-old guardian prior to allowing him to move into the trailer and become the child’s temporary guardian.
It was later learned that the guardian had a prior history of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct with other children. Despite learning of this history of prior sexual abuse of children, DYFS amazingly continued to allow the guardian to live in the home, exposing the child to further sexual abuse for another 2 years.
After years of litigation, the case settled shortly before the scheduled trial for $9.5 million. Leonardis said, “My expectation was, if a jury heard these sets of facts, that they would be so egregious, every single person on that jury would have said, no, we can’t allow this to happen. And they would have rendered a verdict that, in my mind, would have been very sizable.”
