La'Quetta and Marty Small appear with their attorneys Michael Schreiber, second from left,and Ed Jacobs. Behind them is Jordan Barbone, who is working with Jacobs.
A judge denied motions to dismiss charges in the child abuse case against Atlantic City’s mayor and schools superintendent.
Mayor Marty Small and Dr. La’Quetta Small were indicted in September after being accused of physically and verbally abusing their teenage daughter.
The mayor additionally was indicted for witness tampering after he allegedly asked the girl to “twist up” the story she told investigators about him beating her unconscious with a broom.
His defense attorney insists Small was being a good father, and instructing his daughter to tell the truth.
Earlier this month, attorneys for the couple argued that the Smalls were just concerned parents desperate to protect their daughter from a “juvenile delinquent” who turned the once straight-A, well-behaved student into a defiant teen at risk of needing to repeat the school year.
It was that same boyfriend who captured audio and video of the alleged abuse, handing over evidence that contradicted the teen’s apparent attempts to take back claims she made about her parents during the early part of the investigation.
Recordings include arguments where the teenage girl is heard giving a near play-by-play of what is happening.
Assistant Prosecutors Elizabeth Fisher and Joseph Remy argued April 15, that the teen often could be heard making sure her boyfriend was hearing what was going on, after the defense asserted that the recordings violated wiretap laws.
“Get off of me! Get off of my neck!” the teen yells at her mother during a Jan. 7, 2024 incident, according to the transcript quoted in Judge Bernard DeLury’s 20-page decision authored last week and recently obtained by BreakingAC.
“You still talking little girl,” her mother responds.
“Get off of me, you hit me,” the teen then says.
“A little punch in the eye ain’t going to stop her,” Dr. Small’s mother then says.
“You punched me in my mouth,” the teen says. “Get off of me!”
“Who you telling to get off of you girl!” La’Quetta Small is quoted as saying. “You don’t run me. You don’t run me. And I’m gonna touch you whenever I want to touch you.”
Days earlier, the teen and her boyfriend were on a video chat that captured an argument with her father.
The mayor threatens to hurt his daughter, who responds that he always hurts her, according to the transcript. When she indicates that if she goes to school injured, they will ask what happened, Small responds: “OK, tell them. I don’t care. What are they gonna do to me? What are they gonna do to me?”
His daughter then asks him to move so she can go to school. She then allegedly tells him to stop pushing her.
“I’m going to earth slam her down the steps!” the transcript quotes the mayor. “Come past this line and I’m gonna grab you by the head and throw you on the ground! Nothing is going to happen to me!”
The mayor was “attempting to control and reprimand his 16-year-old daughter, in his own home” and his “conduct is too trivial to warrant condemnation of conviction,” the decision states in summarizing the defense’s argument.
“Mr. Small’s threats to ‘earth slam’ a teenage girl, half his size, is not ‘trivial,’” DeLury wrote. “Even in a domestic setting, where customary tolerance involving parental and familial interactions may admit to certain minor expressions of pique or emotion, there is nothing tolerable in making such graphic and excessive threats of violence.”
DeLury also addresses La’Quetta Small’s alleged actions, noting they too “are far from ‘trivial…’”
“The conduct captured in the video and audio recordings of the treatment of J.S. at the hands of her parents obtained by the State clearly provide a basis for a prosecution under the endangerment statute,” the judge wrote. “The evidence in this case appears to support the State’s assertions that Mrs. Small engaged in aggressive physical contact with her daughter. Mrs. Small’s conduct was more than ‘fleeting’ or ‘trivial’ and was of such a nature and degree to make J.S. an abused or neglected child.”
DeLury also addressed the witness-tampering allegation against the mayor, saying that — if the initial charge of abuse actually occurred, the mayor’s conduct is exactly why the statute exists.
“The Defendant’s conduct with his daughter bespeaks a knowing engagement with J.S. to get her to change her story,” the judge wrote. “It is by no means ever proper or tolerable to use one’s power and authority as a parent to interfere or attempt to thwart the criminal justice process by getting a child to ‘twist up’ her reports of abuse to authorities.”
The boyfriend was not the only peer the Smalls’ daughter confided in, the decision notes.
In a direct message conversation on Instagram on Dec. 13, 2023, a friend identified as M.C. noticed a mark on the girl’s arm, and she asked what it was.
“Bruise,” the teen responded.
When asked “from?!” the teen responded, “mother.”
In a Dec. 22, 2023 direct message on Instagram with another friend, the Smalls’ daughter talks about how her mother went through her phone when she was sleeping and found out she had snuck her boyfriend in the house.
“I was wrong for it. They told me to stop talking to him, and I didn’t want to because he is literally my safe person,” she wrote. “I feel safe and comfortable and happy with him.”
She said he ordered her food because she hadn’t eaten and her mother threw it in the street.
“Her and my dad like beat me,” she wrote. “Bruises all over … lots of name calling.”
The Smalls called the police on her, and that she got suspended for defending herself but that her parents blamed her boyfriend.
“I just want to leave honestly,” she wrote. “(I) don’t want to stay here. Like I can’t. I don’t feel safe like I’ve been mentally, emotionally, verbally and physically abused and it’s a lot and I’m overwhelmed and keep cry(ing) every night, having headaches.”
