In the News
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 27, 2005
Relatives of slain girl, 3, file suit against city; They claim authorities delayed responding to an abuse report that led to the death of Porchia Bennett
Relatives of Porchia Bennett - the 3-year-old South Philadelphia girl who was starved and beaten to death in 2003 while in an aunt's custody - have sued the city, contending delays responding to an abuse report led to her death.
The civil-rights suit on behalf of the child's estate was filed Wednesday in federal court in Philadelphia, reportedly at the request of Porchia's paternal grandparents for the child's putative father, Lester D. Trapp.
Neither the estate's administrator, lawyer Thomas Bruno, nor his law partner, Alan E. Denenberg, who filed the suit, could be reached for comment.
In court filings, city officials have denied liability in the child's death.
According to court documents, Porchia's mother, Tiffany Bennett, 29, had a history of drug abuse and "itinerant vagrancy." Despite a Family Court judge's order that she and the children live in a shelter where the city Department of Human Services could monitor their welfare, Bennett often disappeared with her daughters and then left them with relatives.
Porchia's whipped and starved body was found Aug. 17, 2003, wedged between a mattress and a wall in a squalid South Fifth Street house in which she and three sisters lived with her aunt, Candace Geiger - Bennett's sister - and Geiger's boyfriend, Jerry Chambers.
Porchia died one day after a city social worker - responding to an Aug. 14 abuse-hotline call - knocked on the door but left when no one answered.
Police arrested Geiger, 19, and Chambers, 33, and the girls' mother, Bennett. All are in custody awaiting trial: Geiger on third-degree murder and related counts, Chambers on first-degree murder and related counts, and Bennett on charges of endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy.
This week's suit by the estate poses a possible conflict with another civil-rights lawsuit filed in 2003 on behalf of three of Porchia's sisters: Alexus, Aliyaha and Priscilla, all of whom also were beaten and abused. The three - a fourth sister was removed from Bennett's custody in 1997 - were living with Porchia and witnessed her beating and death, allegedly because the 3-year-old would not turn away while Geiger and Chambers had sex.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller, who is handling the suit filed on behalf of Porchia's three sisters, ordered lawyers in both cases to explain why the cases should not be tried at the same time.
Nadeem A. Bezar, the lawyer who filed suit for the three sisters, said there was no reason the suits could not be tried together, although each is based on a different theory: his case involving the city's purported failure to protect the three girls from continuing abuse, and Porchia's based on the city's purported failure to promptly and effectively respond to the Aug. 14, 2003, abuse call.
Bezar said Porchia's three sisters remain in foster care and are receiving psychological treatment: "They're as comfortable as they can be. But it's not a fast process, and I don't think what they have gone through is ever going to be fully erased."
