3 Child-Endangerers Convicted

The phone awakened Officer Chris Boyle around midnight. His supervisor, Sgt. Cherelle Carr, was calling with a sad story: an 11-month-old baby had overdosed and stopped breathing in an Exchange Street basement apartment. 

Boyle was accustomed to receiving such calls in his three years serving on New Haven police’s ​“special victims unit” (SVU), which handles child endangerment, domestic violence and sex crimes cases. He knew he had to get dressed immediately and head out to talk to the people involved as soon as possible.

Ambulance crew medics had saved the girl’s life by resuscitating her with Narcan. Doctors at the hospital were monitoring her and keeping her safe. Boyle’s job: Figure out the facts as soon as possible, assemble evidence, marshal it through the court system in hopes of obtaining a guilty verdict for the person responsible and preventing more harm.

Months later a court sentenced the girl’s mother to prison.

It was one of three sentencings that have occurred or are scheduled to take place in recent weeks involving child-endangerment cases painstakingly assembled by New Haven SVU investigators. The others involved a man who had sexually abused a 5‑year-old girl enrolled in his wife’s home daycare; and a man who repeatedly engaged young girls in online sexual activity and downloaded child pornography.

Unlike, say, the department’s recent string of homicide arrests, these cases didn’t rise to the level of prompting press conferences. They occur more commonly than murders. They also involve painful, private details involving young victims. The ten-member SVU investigates around 250 such cases a year; they often can hinge on convincing a jury to take the word of a young, vulnerable person against that of an adult, so it can prove difficult to make charges stick against abusers and negligent adults.

When convictions do stick, as in these three cases, they protect the ​“special” victims and prevent potential future harm to others, said SVU supervisor Carr.

“No one goes through the trauma these people go through” for the rest of their lives, Carr said. ​“It’s a true calling” for the officers who agree to take on the work.

In many cases the work to solve these cases is less dramatic than the scenes in TV series. It involves steady, focused gathering and stewardship of evidence, as seen in the three newly completed incidents. And an ability to compartmentalize the emotions of seeing horrific harm done to victims who in some cases are of a similar age to your own kids.

Navigating a “Gut Punch”

It took just a few hours after Chris Boyle’s midnight phone-call awakening in the early hours of April 18 for the full story to emerge of how the 11-month-old girl had OD’d.

After visiting the Exchange Street home where the girl and her mother lived with her grandfather and stopping at police HQ, Boyle, the father of two young children, and partner (now-retired) Detective John Folch headed to Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. They found the girl dressed in just a diaper. She was in a bed looking cheerful.

After checking on the girl, Boyle needed to chat with the mother, who was also there. Which required some mental preparation. Boyle had no idea whether it would turn out that the mother played a role in the overdose. He knew that state children protective authorities would be taking the daughter into custody.

He also did a quick records check. He discovered that the mom, who had a history of drug-related arrests, had an outstanding arrest warrant. Boyle aimed to obtain information without subjecting the mother to more pain after her daughter had almost just died.

“You have to approach her delicately,” Boyle recalled thinking, in a conversation Tuesday at police headquarters. ​“We have to take her away from her 11 month old. We have to arrest her. If mom’s not responsible, it’s a gut punch. You want to be kind about it.”

“An explanation goes a long way” in these cases, he said.

He explained the situation to the mother, that she’d be taken to police headquarters and detained and questioned. He assured her that authorities would make sure her daughter was safe.

In the third-floor detective wing at 1 Union Ave., the mother waived her right to have an attorney present. She told part of the story at first. She denied using drugs.

Boyle informed her that a test had shown fentanyl and cocaine in her daughter’s blood.

At that point the mother said she had recently relapsed after moving to her father’s house with her daughter. This particular evening, a red straw she had previously cut to snort fentanyl ​“probably” fell out of her jacket while she was in a bedroom with the baby, she said, according to a subsequent police report. She saw the baby put the straw in her mouth. The mom had retrieved the straw. The pair watched cartoons on mom’s phone. Mom gave the daughter a bottle and put her in bed. Around 11:30 p.m. she went to check on the girls’ diaper and found her daughter lying with her face in the blanket — and saw that the daughter had stopped breathing.

From there the case became routine. The mother was detained on outstanding charges as well as new ones related to the overdose.

Boyle spent days assembling evidence: Tests of the straw and of the girl’s urine, report write-ups, follow-up interviews with doctors. Checking with state child protection workers, who found a relative to care for the girl. Meeting with the state’s attorney’s office, preparing an arrest warrant, following up after the judge signed it.

In December the mom pleaded guilty to a felony charge of risk of injury to a minor. Two days before Christmas she received a six year-prison sentence to be suspended after 30 months followed by three years of probation.

Boyle took satisfaction in the outcome.

“I truly don’t think she purposely gave her 11 month old fentanyl,” he said. But ​“in cases like these, when they’re so young, they can’t speak for themselves. It’s good to get them justice” and protection in the future.

In A Child’s Words

Detective James Paxton felt that way about the 5‑year-old girl in the daycare abuse case. She did tell her story, but she still needed the help of adults to be believed, to receive protection, to have consequences result for the perpetrator.

Paxton began investigating the case in 2023 based on a call from the state Department of Children and Families (DCF). A therapist had contacted DCF about the girl’s story.

The girl didn’t tell her story at first. At one point her mother noticed injury to her daughter’s vagina, which the girl reported was hurting. The mother asked her if anything bad had happened. ​“I should not be telling you everything,” the girl said at one point. 

Finally the girl told her grandmother that the husband of the operator of her home-daycare facility (which she had attended since three months old) had touched her private parts during a birthday party there. The man’s wife had been in the shower at the time. The grandmother informed a therapist, who informed DCF.

The girl’s mom took her to the hospital to be checked out, and Paxton was called in on the case.

He contacted the Yale Child Abuse Clinic to set up an interview with the girl. A social worker experienced in such interviews spoke with the girl in one room; Paxton sat in an adjoining room watching it on video.

It took place in a room at the clinic. Speaking in Spanish, the girl offered an account consistent with her previous ones, including about the man using his hand to penetrate her. That was key, Paxton said: Often young children don’t have the words to describe sexual abuse. As a result, many cases don’t produce enough evidence to prevail at a trial. The girl had provided material for this case to proceed.

Meanwhile, the state Office of Early Childhood shut down the center, whose operators withdrew their license.

Paxton sought out the couple at the daycare center. They eventually declined, through their attorney, to engage in an interview.

Paxton conducted interviews with the girl’s mother and grandmother, with the therapist who had reported the case to DCF. He wrote up the clinic interview, assembled other reports, and applied for an arrest warrant. It was granted, and the man was arrested. 

The man pleaded not guilty. A trial ensued. It lasted a week. Paxton testified. So did the girl. In the end, the jury found the man, who’s 64, guilty of felony illegal sexual contact and child sex-related charges. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 31, almost two years after the original offense. 

The third recent case involved a 22-year-old man who had already been arrested twice for obtaining child pornography and engaging girls as young as 8 in sexual activity over the internet.

Detective Leonardo Soto knew the man. He had already arrested him once: While on probation for a sex case, the man had violated a court order not to have a cell phone. He wiped the phone by the time Soto obtained it though, so no evidence remained to convict of charges beyond the probation violation.

At that time, the man admitted to his probation officer that he found it hard to stop himself from obtaining child pornography on sites like Discord and Telegram. He said he’d been ​“struggling with this attraction” for years, according to a report Soto eventually wrote: He said he wanted to stop ​“lying and pretending I don’t have this horrible addiction … and get rid of this sick thinking in the fucking head.”

But, released on probation again, he didn’t stop. He violated another probation from owning a phone and accessing the internet. 

His probation officer called Soto this past April to report that the man had a new unsanctioned phone. The officer discovered it next to a bed on a visit to his New Haven halfway house apartment and seized it — before the man could wipe it clean.

“I thought to myself: ​‘I have him now,’” Soto recalled in a conversation this week.

He picked up the phone, obtained a state search and seizure warrant for the phone. He brought it to a police lab to be checked. The review found 23 downloaded videos, and negotiations with a child porn seller on Telegram, of kids — some approximately 10 years old, 8 years old — being raped. 

There were also conversations on Snapchat. On June 6 Soto obtained a warrant to search that account. It led him to a 16-year-old girl who had had online interactions with the man, who was apparently seeking to meet up with her.

It took a couple visits for Soto to interview the girl and her mother. The girl identified the 22-year-old man from a screenshot from a FaceTime call in which she had also participated when she was 15. Soto also was able to tie the man’s screen name on the FaceTime call (“Killakamlol”) to the man.

The girl informed Soto she had met the 22 year old on a site called Wizz, where he claimed he was ​“16 or 17” and started chatting with her.

Soto obtained a warrant to arrest the man on three child pornography charges. The man pleaded guilty on Jan. 3; sentencing is scheduled for March 28.

Runs & Hugs

In this case, the charges were federal, not state. Though a New Haven detective, Soto is assigned to federal Homeland Security Task Force.

He has worked on the task force for a decade, an SVU investigator for a total of 11. That makes him the longest-serving member of a unit that can wear investigators down fast because of the emotional impact of the work. It’s tough to recruit officers in general to serve on the unit for the same reason, according to Sgt. Carr and Assistant Chief David Zannelli, who oversees the detective division (of which SVU is a part).

“They’re doing God’s work,” Zannelli said of the SVU cops.

Soto, in fact, decided he wanted to serve on SVU his first day in the police academy back in 2008. (Click here to read about a prior case he helped solve involving a man who was raping prostitutes in New Haven.) Paxton decided to aim for the unit one night on patrol in the Hill after responding to an ​“an egregious sex assault” case involving a young child. ​“This is why I came to New Haven: I want to help people,” he said.

Boyle, Paxton and Soto spoke of how they have learned to decompress from the job and stay focused. Boyle tries to take a run every day; he said he clocks 40 to 50 miles per week. It helps him keep his mind clear and stress level down not just to stay focused on investigations but to ​“be a good husband and father,” he said. Paxton works out at the gym and makes a point to socialize with ​“non-cop” friends as well as pals from the force. Soto has practiced Taekwando since he was a kid, and continues to de-stress. ​“I’m a big cigar guy” as well, he said.

He and his colleagues will sometimes ​“vent” to process details of particularly disturbing cases. He doesn’t bring those cases home to his family. He does sometimes bring home a request: ​“I had a rough day. I need a hug.”