Cuyahoga County expected to pay $3 million to estate of Ta’Naejah McCloud, 5-year-old girl killed in abuse case

McCloud

Ta'Naejah McCloud.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County is expected to pay $3 million to the estate of Ta’Naejah McCloud, a 5-year-old girl who died from abuse in 2017, an attorney in the case said.

A filing in U.S. District Court in Cleveland on Monday indicated that the case had settled. Officials for the county declined to comment, as the issue is pending before Cuyahoga County Council. The panel is expected to vote on the matter next week.

A lawsuit filed in 2018 alleges that the county’s Division of Children and Family Services badly mishandled the abuse case. The suit contends that county employees were notified several times of abuse to Ta’Naejah.

In interviews, Ta’Naejah spoke to case workers about her injuries with her abusers – her mother, Tequila Crump, and Crump’s girlfriend, Ursula Owens, – present, according to court records.

The lawsuit says the interviews went against the agency’s policy of speaking with victims away from suspected abusers. Attorneys for the estate claimed Ta’Naejah suffered greater abuse after the interviews.

“In our view, it will never be enough for what had happened,” said Jay Paul Deratany, an attorney who represented the estate and Shabrina McCloud, who raised Ta’Naejah in Virginia before Crump and the girl moved to Cleveland in 2016.

Deratany said the county has agreed to pay $3 million to settle the case. Shabrina McCloud had lived with Crump prior to their separation. She had named the child, and Ta’Naejah carried her last name.

“In [Shabrina McCloud’s] view, it was never about the money,” Deratany said. “She just didn’t want Ta’Naejah to die in vain.”

Deratany said the county failed Ta’Naejah because it left her “with two women who were violent and mentally unstable.” He claimed the women starved, beat and burned the girl. A year before her death, Ta’Naejah was admitted to a hospital for severe burns.

The beatings began soon after Ta’Naejah arrived in Cleveland, according to court records. Multiple complaints of neglect and abuse were made to county authorities, the records show.

Authorities said the final beatings took place as Owens attacked Ta’Naejah for urinating on herself. Owens and Crump left the girl for 10 hours before taking her to the hospital. Ta’Naejah died in March 2017 of a brain bleed brought on by head trauma.

A year later, a Cuyahoga County jury found Crump guilty of reckless homicide and Owens of murder in the death of Ta’Naejah. Both were also convicted of child endangering.

Common Pleas Judge Kelly Ann Gallagher ordered Crump to serve 10 years in prison. Gallagher sentenced Owens to serve life, with a chance of parole in 25 years.

“You’re not a monster, Ms. Crump,” Anna Faraglia, an assistant county prosecutor, said to Crump during a sentencing hearing in 2018. “You’re a mother who failed miserably. You watched your lover kill your kid in front of you. How much more despicable does it get in this community?”

Months after the sentencings, attorneys for the estate filed the lawsuit in federal court in Cleveland. A year later, Judge Patricia Gaughan dismissed the case, stating that that county employees’ decision to talk with Ta’Naejah in front of Crump and Owens did not amount to a constitutional violation.

The county had contended that its actions did not place Ta’Naejah in greater harm. In September 2020, a three-member panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that when the government acts in a way that increases the danger to a victim, it can be held accountable for damages. It overturned Gaughan and sent the case back to federal court in Cleveland.

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