Results tagged “abuse”

Things aren't looking good for political reporter Dominic Carter at NY1. Carter was put on leave when domestic assault charges were revealed, but now the station appears to be closing the door more firmly. NY1 General Manager Steve Paulus tells the Daily News, "At this point, we have no plans to bring him back. He's got a lot of personal issues to work through."

The list of Rikers Island guards accused of abusing inmates continues to grow longer. Correction Officer Timothy Munroe, 24, of Brooklyn was indicted on charges of assault, falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing, among others, the NY Times reports.

In an indictment unsealed yesterday, Bronx cop Marc Rios, a 12-year-veteran, is accused of assaulting a man outside a Kingsbridge nightclub around 4:20 a.m. on March 30th. Assistant DA James Cudden says the "unprovoked incident" happened after Rios's squad car almost hit clubgoer John Roperto, who had just exited the El Aguila nightclub. Roperto angrily hit the hood of the car, and Rios got out and cracked Roperto in the face with his nightstick—breaking the man's cheekbone and the baton. Rios then drove off, but when his Sergeant informed him about a 911 call to the location, he allegedly quipped, "That must be my bag of shit." Rios faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted; his lawyer tells the Post he acted in self-defense because Roperto, who was "quite likely... highly intoxicated," disobeyed an order to stop and approached Rios with his hands hidden beneath a jacket. Rios's lawyer also points out that Roperto got off easy, because "perhaps an inexperienced officer might've pulled out his gun and shot him."

According to a poster on the Brooklynian message board, around 7 a.m. today, "during the off leash dog hours, a music group was doing a photo shoot in the Long Meadow of Prospect Park. A golden retriever puppy, being naturally curious, wandered over and interrupted their photo shoot. One of the band members grabbed the puppy by its collar and kicked it." While there's no photographic evidence of the vague incident on the board, if this is true, it is our duty to find out who this band, and photographer, are. Anyone know anyone who wears vests and goes four buttons deep unbuttoning their shirt?

Since the crystal clear footage of Ringling Bros. workers beating animals isn't going to be brushed under the circus tent anytime soon—and since the Feds are now investigating—the company has released their second statement. In it, they call the PETA footage "deceptively edited," but unless the animal rights organization got their hands on some of George Lucas's CGI experts, that seems a ridiculous accusation.

It's unsurprising that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been called out in the past for abusing their animals, but it's another thing to see it all on tape. PETA went undercover this year and captured Ringling workers on video beating and whipping elephants. The organization announced their findings today at a press conference (NY1 has footage), calling upon Madison Square Garden to ban the circus, or at least the use of animals in their show.

As is so often the case, a game of dodgeball erupted in violence at a New Rochelle elementary school on Friday when a substitute teacher got into a fight with a third-grader. The teacher, Daniel Sanabria, claims he was acting in self-defense, but police have charged him with third-degree assault and child endangerment. It seems that the incident was sparked after Sanabria (pictured in his mugshot), who was officiating the game, called the unidentified boy "out," and the child disputed the ruling. Sanabria tells the Post, "He wouldn't sit out when I asked him to."

Incase you had already forgotten about the Real Housewives of New York City, the newest one, Kelly Bensimon, is fighting her way to headlines! The NY Post reports that the "6-foot-tall, 40-year-old former model, horse fancier and one-time marathon runner got into a fight last week with her boyfriend, 30-year-old Nick Stefanov, and clocked him, giving him a black eye and opening a blood-gushing gash on his left cheek." Stefanov fled and reported the beating to the 5th Precinct, landing Bensimon with a misdemeanor third-degree assault and a March 31st court date (she's currently denying the charges). The two recently engaged lovebirds now have a restraining order that prevents them from contacting each other, but Stefanov seems to want to get back together with the "housewife" even though she's been physically abusive in the past—he did say, "My injuries are worse than Rihanna's - and Chris Brown was charged with two felonies."

Kings County Hospital Center was founded 175 years ago, but it didn't become truly infamous until last year when that horrible video surfaced, depicting a woman being left for dead on the floor of the ER waiting room for nearly an hour. Now, after a year-long probe, the Justice Department has documented an appalling pattern of sexual and violent assaults at the psychiatric unit. Read no further if you think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is hard to stomach.

Bronx Assistant DA James Goward says "scores" of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island were victimized by a gang of prisoners following orders from a pair of corrupt jail guards. One inmate,18-year-old Christopher Robinson, wound up dead last October, and an indictment unsealed in January named guard Michael McKie as "the architect of a criminal enterprise that recruited and trained inmates to inflict violence. They turned jail into almost a nightmare environment."

The Staten Island's DA's office gave some very grim details about the final hours of 10-year-old Jaquan Sekulski's life, after his mother was arraigned on manslaughter charges. Melissa Sekulski was arrested after the boy's unconscious body was found in their apartment Friday night. The prosecutor, who noted the apartment was infested with cockroaches and had no food, said, "The defendant has been physically abusing the victim for years, by her own admission... She thrashed him with a belt and belt buckle and a burned him with the buckle." The boy's headed was smashed against the wall repeatedly on Friday night, but a neighbor, who came to help when he heard the mother's cries and saw fluid coming from Jaquan's nose, told the News, "His mother told me he was having trouble breathing and he wanted to lay down on the floor... I was thinking, poor woman - I was really feeling sorry for her." The News also heard from an inmate, who claimed Sekulski "was telling a lot of people that the kid got out of hand and she just lost it." The S.I. D.A.'s office said the child died of "battered child syndrome."

On Saturday, a Merrick woman and her boyfriend, a personal trainer, were charged with assaulting her 6-year-old son. Newsday reports that Nassau police knocked on their door and called, but no one answered, so "emergency services officers broke down the door and found the boy crying in a bedroom, with cuts and bruises on his leg, buttocks and groin area." It's believed he was beaten with a weight-lighting belt. Jessica Muniz, 29, is being held on $50,000 bond and Anthony Badalamenti, 31, (pictured) who gained some fame after helping a man lose 186 for The Biggest loser, is being held on $100,000 bond. Their landlord was the one who called; he said he had heard the boy crying for a month, but when he heard screams on Friday, "The child was pleading for mercy. I said, 'That's it, I can't take it anymore.'"

The discovery of a dead 11-year-old girl in a Brooklyn apartment led to the girl's mother to admit to killing her, according to police. WABC 7 reports that Florenzia Vazquez told police she beat daughter Alejandra "with a mop handle so hard, it broke in two." Vazquez is being held at the 75th precinct.

The Brooklyn DA's office played a videotaped interview with the mother on trial of killing her abused daughter, saying the video implicated her in the death. Nixzaliz Santiago spoke to police and prosecutors after her 7-year-old daughter Nixzmary Brown was found dead in January 2006, saying that she didn't "call for help because Nixzmary"--who was brutally beaten by Santiago's husband--was "moaning, breathing." Prosecutors, who say that Santiago's inaction led to the child's death, pointed to how one moment she's crying, the next she's composed, suggesting Santiago was acting when she eventually called 911. The jury may start deliberating next week.

Yesterday, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Patricia DiMango stopped the Nixzmary Brown murder trial to question a juror. A letter suggested the 35-year-old male schoolteacher indicated he could not be fair during jury selection by raising his hand, but "the judge and the lawyers did not notice," according to the Daily News. However, the juror said he could be fair in the emotional trial, where Nixzaliz Santiago is accused of murdering her 7-year-old daughter. Earlier this week, the AP looked at how the trial " raised the question of whether mothers should be held to a higher standard than fathers at a time when traditional gender roles in the home are changing." The Brooklyn DA's point is that Santiago left Nixzmary to die after her husband administered a brutal beating.

Prosecutor Ama Dwimoh told jurors what 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown's final words were, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" "after being beaten, battered, broken and thrown naked onto a cold wooden floor." Brown's mother Nixzaliz Santiago is on trial for the girl's murder, as the Brooklyn DA's office contends Santiago did nothing to prevent her husband Cesar Rodriguez from delivering a fatal beating in January 2006. Dwimoh added, "She left her to die. Nixzaliz Santiago simply did not care."

Jurors were warned by prosecutors that the trial would be "emotional" as jury selection began in for a second trial related to 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown's death. This time, the child's mother Nixzaliz Santiago faces murder charges.

After a jury found her stepfather guilty of manslaughter, the Brooklyn DA's office is readying for a second trial in the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. This time, her mother Nixzaliz Santiago will be in court, and the Daily News reports reports prosecutors may suggest Santiago was "jealous because she believed her husband having sex with the 7-year-old" and therefore allowed her daughter to be tortured. A prosecutor said, "Motive is always relevant. If she believed her husband was doing that ... whether the allegations are true or not, it goes to her state of mind." Stepfather Cesar Rodriguez's defense had been that Santiago directly caused the child's death.

A Queens mother is filing a $6 million suit after a school aide restrained her five-year-old daughter, a special-ed kindergartner, by binding her to a cafeteria bench with her own sweater. Marissa Chunisingh discovered the treatment that her daughter Christyn was receiving in school when the girl began tying up one of her dolls with a scarf because she was “being bad.” Someone also reported to Chunisingh that Christyn, who is in special-ed for a speech disability, was “strapped down after she was found locked in a classroom by herself - screaming at the top of her lungs.” No one from the school or the city has responded to Chunisingh’s allegations, which are currently under investigation.

Yesterday, a funeral was held for three-year-old Kyle Smith, who died under the care and apparent abuse of family friends. Family members, friends and neighbors shed tears and voiced regrets over the child's death.

After a 3-year-old boy died, battered and sexually abused by his caretakers, fingers have pointed at his abusers, his parents, his neighbors and the Administration of Children's Services. Now lawmakers hope to new law can stop similar tragedies.

Family members mourning the death of a 3-year-old child at the hands of a family friend who was caring for him are speaking out, including the child's mother.

Never mind the kids who are being murdered by violent parents or drugged to death by foster mothers, the Administration for Children's Services is busy checking up on the home environments of kids who skip gym class too many times, even though that's not technically a violation worthy of an ACS home visit.

The jury deciding the fate of Cesar Rodriguez, accused of brutally killing his stepdaughter, had completed its third day of deliberations without a verdict yesterday, but this morning they have announced they have a decision. The AP reports they have found Rodriguez guilty of first-degree manslaughter; he will face up to 28 years in prison.

Police say Barbara Sheehan confessed to killing her retired cop husband in their Howard Beach home, saying, "I shot him. I shot him. I think he's dead." Sheehan, charged with second-degree murder, pleaded not guilty and was held without bail.

The producer of Pan's Labyrinth, the Oscar-winning film that partially delves into the world of abuse, may in fact have done some abusing of her own. A lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday against Frida Torresblanco. Her nanny, Angelica Hernandez, claims she was treated like a virtual slave.

Remember that cruel(la) couple from Long Island that enslaved two Indonesian women who worked in their mansion? After their million dollar bail plan was announced back in June we hadn't heard much about these two. Today, however, silence was broken after Varsha Mahender Sabhnani and her hubby Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani's trial has ended...and the latest is not good news for them!

It’s not Tracy Letts’s fault that his play, August: Osage County, has been breathlessly overhyped by the critics, from the Times’s Charles Isherwood on down. It’s also not his fault that compared to many other Broadway spectacles the play stands out as a polestar of humor and intelligence. Still, it’s difficult to disassociate the play from the deafening buzz; August: Osage County is being heralded as an Important Theatrical Event, when it’s really just a well-crafted new play that happens to stand out among Broadway’s other lowbrow pygmies. (Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll is well acted but as affectless as it is thought-provoking; the current revival of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming is absolutely magnificent but, obviously, not the New American Drama critics lust after.)

The morning started with rumors of names mentioned in Senator George Mitchell's report to Major League Baseball, but not until this afternoon were any rumors substantiated. Stating in his report that “there is much about the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in baseball that I did not learn,” Mitchell proceeded to lay waste to the careers of many notable players, perhaps none more so than Roger Clemens. In the report Brian McNamee, Roger Clemens’...

A middle-aged man held several workers hostage at Sen. Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office in the town of Rochester yesterday, before surrendering to police. The alleged bomb he had taped to his chest turned out to be simply a number of road flares. Leeland Eisenberg's motivation for seizing Clinton's field office is unclear, but he appears to be a disturbed individual. The New York Times declined to speculate on Eisenberg's purpose ("[Police] would not discuss...