Tiny Sierra Roberts was little more than a meal ticket to her abusive single father, the slain 7-year-old’s neighbors and former foster parents charged yesterday.
By gaining custody of the pigtailed youngster, Russell Roberts was assured a decent place to live and a regular income, they said.
“He was getting [federally subsidized] Section 8 housing, food stamps and checks from social services to support her,” said Alonzo Freeman, the first-grader’s former foster father.
And when he didn’t get what he felt was his due, he turned violent and beat her, Freeman charged.
Roberts, 43, is accused of thrashing his petite daughter with a strap and brutally and repeatedly kneeing her in the stomach in their apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaways.
She died Oct. 25 of blunt trauma to the torso.
A week earlier, Freeman claimed, Roberts had been denied food stamps.
He was enraged, said Freeman, and on Oct. 24, “he raised hell about it in the social-service offices, and they had to escort him out.”
“He beat her that night, and the next day, she was dead,” he said.
Freeman’s wife, Mary, also believes Roberts wanted custody of his daughter “to get what he could out of the system.”
Several of Roberts’ neighbors agreed yesterday, noting that father and daughter had lived in homeless shelters before being placed in subsidized housing two years ago.
“It’s clear he was using her for housing. It’s very clear,” said neighbor Catherine Harris.
Another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, confided that she had heard Sierra being beaten in September.
“I admit I heard a beating. I heard the child crying, defending herself from licks,” said the 34-year-old woman. She said she confronted Roberts: “I asked him, ‘I heard you beating Sierra. Why?’ ”
He replied that someone from PS 42 “had called. They said [Sierra] had raised her skirt to a boy in school.”
“He said she lied, she said she didn’t do it,” and he beat her, the woman reported.
Officials of the city Human Resources Administration had no immediate comment on Freeman’s claim that Roberts’ food stamps had been cut off.
Sierra – born prematurely to a drug-addicted mother in 1998 – was placed in foster care with the Freemans in South Ozone Park, Queens, when she was just 6 weeks old.
She remained with them until 2001, when Roberts was awarded custody.
Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the city Administration for Children’s Services, explained why:
“He went into drug rehab, he visited his child regularly over a three-year period, he underwent parenting classes. Anything we asked him to do, he did.
“He proved he could be her caretaker and be reunited with her,” she said.
But Roberts retained custody even after Sierra suffered two serious injuries – a fractured spine in December 2002 that required three months of rehab in a Westchester hospital and a broken leg in May 2003.
Both were blamed on falls.
After the second injury, Sierra’s doctor notified the ACS “but didn’t phone it in as an abuse report,” Stein said.
ACS interviewed Sierra, her doctors, her father and the Freemans “and no one said there was any reason to believe there was any abuse,” Stein noted.
Since then, she said, “no one called in and said that her father may have been hurting her,” she added.
Roberts, who was initially released on a $100,000 bond, was ordered held without bail yesterday.
john.doyle@nypost.com