Principal indicted, accused of not reporting alleged child abuse by Atlantic City mayor
Sep 12, 2024, 11:06 AM
Atlantic City N.J. Mayor Marty Small looks up at the Boardwalk during a tour on July 1, 2024 of areas where homeless people congregate. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The principal of Atlantic City High School has been indicted on official misconduct, child endangerment and other charges for allegedly failing to notify child welfare authorities that the teenage daughter of Atlantic City’s mayor claimed she was being beaten at home by her parents.
The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said Thursday that the eight-count indictment against Constance Days-Chapman was made by a grand jury a day earlier.
The mayor’s wife is the superintendent of schools in Atlantic City, and the high school principal’s boss.
Days-Chapman is a close friend of Mayor Marty Small and his wife, La’Quetta, who were charged in April with abusing and assaulting their teenage daughter on numerous occasions. The Smalls deny any wrongdoing, as does Days-Chapman, who uses the nickname Mandy.
“Mandy is innocent of the charges in the indictment,” her lawyer Lee Vartan said. “We provided the prosecutor’s office with incontrovertible evidence of her innocence. The prosecutor ignored it; the jury will not.”
According to the prosecutor’s office, in December 2023, the Smalls’ then-15-year-old daughter told Days-Chapman she was suffering continuous headaches from being beaten by her parents in their home.
The principal did not notify state child welfare authorities as is required under state law and district policy, according to the indictment.
On Jan. 22, 2024, the girl informed a school staff member that she had been emotionally and physically abused at home, and that she had previously disclosed the abuse to Days-Chapman.
The school staff member discussed the matter with Days-Chapman later that same day, during which the principal denied that the Smalls’ daughter ever told her she was being abused.
But Days-Chapman told the school staffer that she would report the matter to New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency.
Instead, she met with Small and his wife in a car outside the Smalls’ home that evening.
The child welfare agency confirmed to authorities that no one from Atlantic City schools had reported any alleged abuse of the Smalls’ daughter to them.
In announcing charges against the couple in April, the prosecutor’s office said Marty Small is alleged to have hit his daughter multiple times in the head with a broom, causing her to lose consciousness. He also is accused of punching his daughter in the legs multiple times, leaving bruises, and threatening to throw her down a staircase and “smack the weave out of her head.”
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