My opponent knows nothing of compassion.
The State Is Fighting to Block a Torture Survivor’s Day in Court — and Hiding the Report That Could Show DCF Failed Him
For most of his childhood, a Waterbury boy known only as “S” was starved and imprisoned in his own home. Between 1996 and 2005, the Department of Children and Families investigated six separate reports about his welfare — and left him there each time. He was freed only in February 2025, at age 32 and weighing 68 pounds, after he set a fire to escape. His conservator has now asked the State’s permission to sue DCF for what it failed to do. Instead of letting that claim be heard, Attorney General William Tong’s office is fighting to throw the case out — and to keep secret the very after- action report that could reveal how long DCF really stayed involved with that family.
AG TONG AND THE STATE ARE DOING IT AGAIN
▪ Hiding behind a deadline a captive child could never have met. The AG’s office argues the claim is barred because DCF’s last contact was around 2005, so the clock supposedly ran out around 2008. But S was a child — locked inside that house, unable to hire a lawyer or walk into a courthouse. A statute of limitations exists to bar stale claims. It was never meant to reward the State for keeping a victim too imprisoned to complain.
▪ The law already lets the State do the right thing — it is choosing not to. Connecticut law empowers the General Assembly to permit a late claim whenever there are “compelling equitable circumstances” and a “public purpose.” If a child tortured for two decades while the State looked away is not a compelling equitable circumstance, nothing is. The AG could stand down and let this be heard. Instead, his office is spending taxpayer money to slam the courthouse door.
▪ Secrecy by choice, dressed up as “privilege.” The State calls its internal report a “privileged draft.” But Connecticut’s open-records law makes that draft exemption discretionary — the State may withhold; it is never required to — and our confidentiality statute gives the subject of a DCF file a right to his own records. The Claims Commissioner has now directed the department to disclose the review. The only thing keeping this report in the dark is the State’s decision to keep it there.
▪ We have seen this playbook before. This is the same instinct that led the Attorney General’s office to fight for years to seal the video of J’Allen Jones’s death in state custody — footage the ACLU said the State “fought hard to keep hidden,” even after the department’s own investigator found a use-of-force violation. When the State fails someone, its lawyers reach for secrecy and technicalities. That is exactly backwards.
THE PEOPLE’S LAWYER STANDARD
The Attorney General has a duty to defend the State. He does not have a duty to defend it at the expense of the very people the State failed. There is a difference between mounting a defense and using every procedural technicality against the most vulnerable person in the room. My opponent knows nothing of compassion. As Attorney General, I would direct that the after-action report be released to S and his lawyers, decline to hide behind a deadline a captive child could never have met, and let a neutral decision-maker weigh this claim on its merits. The State’s lawyer should not be the last obstacle standing between a torture survivor and the truth.
