Warnings Ignored, a Child Lost: How a 6-Year-Old Boy Was Failed Before His Murder

September 27, 2016

• The Case of Zymere Perkins, 6
• Suspects Rysheim Smith and Geraldine Perkins

New York City, NY – New York City has finally received some closure in a child abuse case so horrific, it has been called one of the worst the city has ever seen. This case like so many others we feature shows the inadequacies of government agencies in place to protect abuse, the lack of attention from the community that were supposed to be the village raising this child and blatant negligence from the woman that was supposed to protect her child.

“The death of Zymere Perkins was an unthinkable tragedy that sent shockwaves through the city and inspired a reckoning with how our social services system works to protect New York’s most vulnerable,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said after the verdict. “Zymere was an innocent and helpless 6-year-old boy who suffered unconscionable, ongoing violence at the hands of Rysheim Smith, 49. Now, a Manhattan jury has rightly held the defendant accountable for this horrific murder.”

Little Zymere died after a long pattern of abuse at the hands of Smith, prosecutors alleged. According to the criminal complaint against Smith, the Harlem apartment where Zymere lived was a vile, disgusting place infested with cockroaches and had no electricity for over a year.  Perkins said Smith siphoned power from elsewhere with an extension cord. It also had mold, rust, mildew and rotting food in the fridge, according to prosecutors.

The six-year-old victim’s mother, defendant’s girlfriend, testified to defendant’s abuse of the child, which included severe beatings, starvation, and sleep deprivation as forms of punishment, over a period of more than a year and to the final beating that ultimately led to the victim’s death. This testimony was corroborated by a witness who had seen defendant hit the victim, witnesses who had observed the victim’s injuries and his fear of defendant, and a witness who was privy to incriminating statements made by defendant. Medical expert testimony also established that the victim died from the cumulative effects of the acute and chronic injuries and neglect.

Zymere died Sept. 26, 2016 after what prosecutors say was months of abuse by his mother, Geraldine Perkins, 29 and Rysheim Smith, 49. The day he died, Smith allegedly beat him with a broomstick and hung his unconscious body by his shirt over the back of the bathroom door.

According to a criminal complaint, Zymere’s mother reported seeing Smith punch her son in the ribs and stomach multiple times and lift him by his neck and held the boy’s head under water in the freezing shower. Essentially waterboarding the boy.

Perkins testified that Smith became enraged because her son had defecated in a bucket. Smith beat tiny Zymere, then hung him from the bathroom door in their apartment by his tank top and yelled at her to “watch TV and read the bible,” she said.

Investigation later revealed, Geraldine Perkins did nothing to stop the horrifying attackShe said she told her boyfriend to take the boy down and she put him in bed. . Instead, in one final act of cruelty, Smith threw Zymere against a wall and the little boy crumpled to the ground where he lay while Smith went out to get food.  Perkins admitted on the stand that hours later, she brought Zymere’s lifeless body to the hospital, but only after she read a bible, put on her wig and spending time to doing her makeup.

Zymere’s death was ruled a homicide by the city medical examiner. An investigation further determined that the child died from fatal child abuse syndrome, which means he showed evidence of acute and chronic abuse and neglect.

A damning state report after Zymere’s death revealed several instances where individuals who cared about the little boy had called the Administration for Children’s Services, starting when he was just a baby.

A tipster told the child abuse hotline Smith allegedly had hit Zymere at least 20 times at a June 2015 picnic while Geraldine Perkins neglected to interfere.

“He picked up Zymere, held him by the arm and began to beat him with a stick like he was a little ­piñata,” Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell said during opening arguments at the trial on Dec. 2, 2019. “Tellingly, he did not call out to his mother because he knew his mother was not going to protect him.”

The child welfare agency closed their investigation to the incident after 60 days, having failed to find sufficient evidence to determine what had happened.

Around the same time, Perkins said, Smith punched Zymere again, this time in the jaw and knocked a tooth out. Smith was angry, she said, because Zymere had gotten in trouble at school after asking to see another boy’s penis, a sign in Smith’s mind of homosexuality, which he said he abhorred.

“‘Mommy, I want to go home,’” Perkins recalled Zymere begging her. But, she said: “I’d just ignore it because I was in love with Rysheim and I felt in some way he must be right.”

Another time, Zymere Perkins limped into his kindergarten class one day in April 2016, his legs so badly beaten he could barely walk, the latest in a series of injuries his teacher had seen.

Not for the first time, the school contacted the city’s child welfare agency. Later, a social worker gently coaxed the story from the boy: His mother and her boyfriend had hurt him repeatedly.

Just five months later, his short life came to an end after yet another and final brutal beating.

Initially, Perkins lied and said she never saw her boyfriend hurt Zymere before the brutal attack last month, except for a spanking “here and there.”  She claimed no knowledge of Zymere’s injured ribs that city officials said had been broken and had fused back together. And the bruises that his body were covered in were the result of him being “a little boy” who falls down while playing, she said. But her lies soon fell apart as evidence mounted against her.

For five days, Perkins described to the jury, with little emotion or remorse, how she had become blindly infatuated with Smith and never tried to stop him as he brutalized and starved Zymere during their 16-month relationship. She told jurors she thought the beatings would make her son a good man.

Throughout the trial, Smith’s family remained supportive. Smith’s adult children said they could not believe their father could do the things he was charged with.

Rysheim Smith, II and said the man who raised him could never have harmed a child. This upstanding citizen was in May 2017 charged with possession of heroin and cocaine with the intent to distribute.

“I want everyone to know my father is a good man. He treats this kids right, and I just wish that the truth will come out,” the younger Smith said. “He’s not the type to do anything like this”.

Equally disturbing, Smith’s stepdaughter also came to his defense. “That’s not him. That would never be my stepfather at all,” said Smith’s stepdaughter, Thiara Fortune, “and right now I’m shaking, because it’s not him, and I don’t know why they’re portraying to be a monster. He’s not. He loved kids.” Fortune, not without her share of run-ins with law enforcement, was charged in September 2013 with second-degree assault, interfering with an officer and breach of peace. She was charged with punching a woman in the face for “disrespecting her”.

Zymere’s life was never easy. His mother was ill equipped to handle the responsibility of raising a child. He should have been removed from her custody at birth. Zymere was born the same month his mother graduated from high school. She had tested positive for marijuana at his birth and soon came under the scrutiny of the child welfare agency. But of course, nothing was done to protect the child from further neglect.

A short time later, Perkins’s grandmother, who had raised her, kicked her out of the apartment, accusing the young woman of sleeping with her husband.

Homeless, the mother and child shuttled from one city shelter to another. Sometimes, Perkins exchanged sexual favors for money to support them, she told the jury.

Then in May 2015, while walking back to Hamilton Place, a shelter for battered women in Harlem, a man who was standing on the sidewalk asked for her number. At first she declined, but she later agreed to go out with him. He was twice her age and college educated, and he often brought her flowers, she said.

“It was magical,” she told the jury. “He was like my Prince Charming.” Soon she and Zymere moved into a Harlem apartment where he was squatting, further showing evidence that she was unfit to be a mother. This apartment was disgusting and her son would have been safer at the shelter.

Zymere missed 36 days of class between September and November 2015, frequently because of injuries he got at home, prosecutors said. This should have been a red flag to school administrators, but Zymere continued to slip through the cracks.

On February 2, 2016, ACS received a report made to the SCR from a staff member at Zymere’s school stating that Zymere had a series of suspicious injuries, including, she alleged, a “fractured jaw” four months earlier in October 2015, scratches near his eye a few weeks earlier, and a knocked-out tooth the previous week. The report said Perkins attributed all three injuries to falls, but she had not provided a doctor’s note and had made threats to transfer Zymere out of the school. And still nothing was done to remove this child and place him into foster care.

Perkins said Smith subjected her son to brutal discipline. Zymere was regularly forced to skip meals, take cold showers, hold a plank position for prolonged periods and stand upright all night without sleep, his mother testified.

Preliminary autopsy results proved Zymere was malnourished, though his mother lied that he was always eating but was genetically “skinny” like her and his biological dad, who she lost contact with when Zymere was born.

At the time of his death, Zymere had more than 30 rib fractures and weighed just 35 pounds, the average size of a 4-year-old boy, Dr. Susan Ely, a city medical examiner, testified during the trial.

“He had in his case multiple bruises and scrapes on the outside of his body and a laceration,” Ely said. “They ranged from his head, his face, his trunk, his arms and legs.”

Perkins and Smith were both charged with endangering the welfare of a child and were being held in Rikers.

But despite prosecutors acknowledging that Perkins was just as responsible for Zymere’s death, they gave the mom a cushy plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Smith.

Geraldine Perkins testified against Smith at the trial, after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Smith’s lawyers claimed Perkins was responsible for her child’s death.

After two days of deliberations, the jury found Rysheim Smith, guilty of second-degree murder, first-and second-degree manslaughter and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child for his role in the horrific death Zymere Perkins in September 2016. He was ultimately sentenced to 25 years to life.

Perkins pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2017 and will receive a lenient stint of two to six years in prison. Sadly, with time served, she could walk free at her own sentencing.

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services came under scrutiny after the agency failed to follow up on allegations of abuse.

Six ACS workers were disciplined, and the state appointed an independent monitor to investigate the agency.