MAYS LANDING, N.J. — The daughter of Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr. took the stand in an Atlantic County courtroom Tuesday morning to testify against him at trial as he stands accused of physically abusing her.
As a Superior Court judge looked on, the teen told jurors her father had beaten and punched her and struck her with a broom.
“He put his hands on me,” she said.
Small, a Democrat, faces charges of child endangerment, aggravated assault, and witness tampering in connection with a series of incidents in which prosecutors say he punched, beat, and threatened his then-15-year-old daughter, largely over his disapproval of her relationship with her boyfriend. He has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have challenged his daughter’s credibility.
The girl, now 17, recounted the abuse in a soft voice, calmly answering prosecutors’ questions — and rejecting suggestions by an attorney for her father that she had lied about key details.
“My dad came home and he was like, upset,” the girl said as prosecutors asked her about crimes they allege took place in the Small family home in January 2024.
She said her mother had recently gone through her phone and learned that she had sneaked her boyfriend into the house. Her father, she testified, was “mad and disappointed.” As she sat in a chair that she recalled as having a Philadelphia Flyers theme, she told the jury, he hit her with a belt and punched her in the legs.
Louis Barbone, an attorney for Small, maintained that there were inconsistencies in statements the girl gave to investigators, and he disputed her account of the incident with the broom.
Earlier in the day, prosecutors played video footage they say the teen recorded at home.
Though the camera did not show images of Small or others, it captured the sound of the girl and her parents screaming amid what prosecutors described as the chaos that descended on the home after the teen started a relationship they did not approve of.
Prosecutors also showed Instagram messages the girl exchanged with her boyfriend about the alleged abuse, including one in which she told him, ”I’m scared to get in the shower because my bruise is gonna burn.”
Small’s daughter told jurors that as her father was rousing his family one January morning to attend the Atlantic City Peace Walk, she did not have her hair done and didn’t want to go. She said she and her father argued and he pushed her, so she splashed him with laundry detergent.
Small, she said, then got a broom and struck her multiple times in the forehead. She testified that she passed out, and the next thing she remembered was her father telling her brother to get her some water.
On cross examination, Barbone returned to a theme he struck in his opening statement to the jury on Monday — that Small was a caring father who, watching his daughter’s life veer off course because of a relationship he believed to be manipulative and inappropriate, had legally disciplined a disobedient child.
He told jurors prosecutors did not have a recording of the incident involving a broom, and he said the girl had been wielding a butter knife and the injuries she sustained that day happened when she fell as the two wrestled for the broom.
Barbone said the teen had exaggerated her injuries, and he noted that when initially questioned by investigators, she told them she felt safe at home.
“I didn’t want to get taken away,” the girl said, “so I said, ‘yes.’”
The trial is expected to continue through the end of the week.
