Girl X Settles With CHA for $3 Million
By Art Golab, Staff Reporter
Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, April 18, 2002
Toya Currie, the 15-year-old known as Girl X, who was raped, beaten, strangled, poisoned and left for dead in a public housing project stairwell, will get a $3 million settlement from the CHA and two of its security contractors.
The payment, disclosed Wednesday by attorney Robert Clifford, will settle a suit filed on behalf of Currie.
The suit alleged that the CHA and its guard services failed to protect Currie when she was attacked by Patrick Sykes in 1997 in the Cabrini-Green housing complex.
It also charged that the housing agency allowed the condition of the premises to deteriorate to such a degree that Sykes was able to get the roach poison he used on Currie from a vacant apartment.
Currie was an energetic and articulate 9-year-old who had aspirations of becoming a dancer when Sykes lured her into a Cabrini-Green apartment and attacked her.
Today she is blind, paralyzed and unable to speak. She communicates with others by blinking her eyes and will need around-the-clock care for the rest of her life.
The settlement, negotiated by Clifford and his partner William Hooks, will go into a trust fund that will help pay Currie's medical expenses and living expenses for her family.
"It will fall short of completely taking care of her needs but it reflected the reality of the amount of insurance available from the CHA and the corporate defendants," Clifford said.
"The family is just thankful to put this behind them."
Under a complex formula, Currie will continue to be eligible for some public aid.
The cost of the settlement will be split among the CHA, Digby's Detective and Security Agency, and the Apollo Detective Agency, with the CHA and Digby's assuming the bulk.
"This was a tragic criminal case," said CHA spokesman Derek Hill.
"Our hearts go out to the girl and her family. Our attorneys felt it was best to settle and bring closure to the family," he said.
Her attacker was convicted and sentenced to 120 years in prison last year.
Currie revealed her real name in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times in February.
She said then that though she will never dance as she wanted to, she has another creative outlet. She wants to be a writer when she grows up.
Asked what she would write about, she painstaking spelled out: "M-y s-t-o-r-y. L-i-f-e i-s h-a-r-d-e-r n-o-w."
