The mayor of New Jersey’s Atlantic Metropolis, Marty Small, and his spouse – the native college district superintendent – had been charged on Monday with abusing and assaulting their teenage daughter on a number of events, together with hitting her within the head with a brush and knocking her unconscious.
The Atlantic county prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it filed costs of endangering the welfare of a kid in opposition to each mother and father.
Marty Small additionally was charged with making terroristic threats, aggravated assault and easy assault. La’Quetta Small was moreover charged with three separate counts of easy assault.
The prosecutor’s workplace mentioned in a information launch that “the defendants bodily and emotionally abused their 15/16-year-old-daughter on a number of events” in December 2023 and January 2024.
It mentioned that in a single occasion, Marty Small is alleged to have hit his daughter a number of occasions within the head with a brush, inflicting her to lose consciousness. He is also accused of punching his daughter within the legs a number of occasions, leaving bruises, and threatening to throw her down a staircase and “smack the weave out of her head”, the discharge mentioned.
La’Quetta Small, who’s Atlantic Metropolis’s superintendent of faculties, is accused of punching her daughter a number of occasions within the chest, leaving bruises, and punching her within the mouth throughout a separate argument. La’Quetta Small is also accused of dragging her daughter by the hair and putting her with a belt on her shoulders, leaving marks, in line with the prosecutor’s workplace.
Reached by phone, Small declined to remark. He referred a reporter to his lawyer Ed Jacobs, who emphasised that the fees don’t contain public corruption or any impropriety within the mayor’s discharge of his official duties.
As an alternative, they contain “a non-public household matter, together with the challenges that mayor Small and his spouse have handled elevating a teenage daughter”, Jacobs mentioned.
The lawyer wouldn’t handle the substance of the fees concerning the couple’s interactions with their daughter. However he mentioned she has not been faraway from their house.
“That is an intact household,” Jacobs mentioned. “She’s proper the place she belongs.”
The president and vice-president of the Atlantic Metropolis board of schooling didn’t instantly reply to messages looking for touch upon Monday.
Each Smalls had been issued summonses with the fees in opposition to them.
Small had beforehand held a information convention in metropolis corridor to say {that a} search of his house in late March concerned “a non-public household concern” – not a criminal offense.
Small mentioned on the information convention that he and his spouse have been interacting with state little one welfare authorities and don’t have anything to cover.
“We’re going via household remedy, and that’s what this needs to be, a household matter,” he mentioned.
A spokesperson for the state division of kid safety and permanency mentioned the company can not publicly focus on its instances to guard the privateness of these concerned.
Small’s spouse and two kids attended the information convention with him however didn’t converse, and left earlier than it was accomplished.
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