Episode Notes — Zymere Perkins: The Full Case File

Zymere Perkins was six years old when he died in a Harlem apartment in September 2016, after months of escalating abuse by his mother's boyfriend, Rysheim Smith, with his mother, Geraldine Perkins, also complicit. New York City's ACS had investigated five separate reports involving Zymere in the year before his death, including a school report of a broken jaw and knocked-out tooth, and the state later found the agency's casework "grossly incomplete." The case triggered the resignation of ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrión, the firing of three caseworkers, an independent monitor imposed by the state, and fifteen citywide reforms.

Background: Geraldine Perkins was raised by her grandmother and had recently finished high school when Zymere was born; by 2015 she and Zymere w ...