Anne Stockton, 72, is facing a $550,000 lawsuit after a Manhattan judge slapped her with a temporary restraining order for allegedly tormenting the family living above her.
The owner of 85 East End Avenue, a luxury Upper East Side building, sued Stockton in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, accusing her of driving three previous families out of the same 11th-floor unit and now targeting Tara and Riad Abrahams and their three children. The couple moved into the four-bedroom apartment, listed at nearly $18,000 a month, in November 2025. Stockton’s rent-stabilized unit directly below them costs just $1,775 monthly.
Stockton greeted the South Asian and Filipino family with obscenities including “get a f–king rug,” “what the f–k are you doing?” and “you f–king animals,” according to court documents. Within their first week, she had called the police on them multiple times.
The harassment escalated during what should have been a celebration. The Abrahamses were opening presents for their eldest daughter’s 16th birthday at their dinner table earlier this month when Stockton called the cops and began yelling at them, according to an email Tara Abrahams sent to the landlord and court filings.
“In addition to calling the police, she began yelling at us and repeatedly referring to our family as ‘animals,'” Riad Abrahams wrote in his own email included in the suit.
Stockton has repeatedly screamed “profanities, threats and derogatory racial comments” at the family, banged on her ceiling with what sounds like a lead pipe “for hours on end,” and called police at least 10 times with “groundless and unsubstantiated allegations,” the lawsuit claims. The bad behavior “has no other purpose than to drive [the family] out of their home,” it contends, “just as [Stockton] has done with the three prior tenants of [the unit].”
Tara Abrahams stated in a court filing that Stockton “does not care that her foul-mouthed tirades are heard by our children. In fact, that is the very idea.”
Riad Abrahams wrote in a sworn affidavit about the toll on his 10-year-old son: “My 10-year-old son now constantly asks me, ‘What did we do wrong? Why does the lady on the 10th floor hate us?’ I do not know how to answer him.”
“Our children are now scared in their own home and are afraid to be in the apartment alone,” he added.
The pattern stretches back more than a decade. Jennifer Gaydos Stephan lived in the 11th-floor apartment starting in 2013 with her then-husband Scott Hartman and their four children.
“She was a disaster,” Stephan told The Post. “She would constantly take a broom and hit the ceiling daily. She would leave nasty notes on my door, saying, ‘tell your kids to be quiet.'”
Stephan said she “loved” the building, which overlooks the East River near Carl Schurz Park and features a fitness center, children’s playroom and pet spa. But she was forced out after two years.
“We had to move out. She was horrible,” she said.
A 2014 email from Hartman to the landlord, included in court papers, said Stockton had threatened she would “discipline” the couple’s children herself.
“Also last week, and for the second time, she cornered 2 of our children in the elevator and made threatening overtures,” the email states.
“We refuse to continue to live under these unsafe conditions for our children and family,” it continued, noting they would break their lease and move.
Mitch Jacaruso, the next tenant starting in 2014, wrote in a 2017 email that Stockton screamed at his 11 and 8-year-old kids in the elevator, calling them “animals and horrible children,” and threatening that “she was going to sue them for everything.” That incident “finally compelled Mr. Jacaruso to vacate the building,” the lawsuit states.
Mark Weiss, who moved in next, experienced similar harassment even though his son and daughter only visited occasionally due to partial custody.
“[It’s] really scaring my daughter who was afraid to leave the apartment last night,” he wrote in one email.
“[Stockton] is really scaring my children by banging on the ceiling. My kids are barely there,” he wrote in 2019, adding minutes later, “She came up to my apartment again. She is really becoming of great concern.”
Stockton’s noise complaints routinely proved unfounded when building staff investigated, the filing claims. When confronted, she told the building manager that “incredibly… the noise comes from her kitchen cabinet,” a worker wrote in a court document.
Stockton has lived in the elegant doorman building since 1992 but has paid rent only sporadically since 2018, with no major payments since 2022 aside from $24,000 through the state Emergency Rental Assistance Program last spring. Her rental arrears sit at nearly $88,000, though she disputes this. She declined repeated requests for comment.
A spokesperson for building owner Fetner Properties said, “Our residents deserve nothing less than the utmost courtesy from their neighbors. Behavior such as yelling at or berating another resident is contrary to these values and will not be tolerated.”
The temporary restraining order, signed days after the suit was filed, bars Stockton from “making unreasonable noise.. Assaulting, menacing, intimidating, or threatening behavior against the tenants, occupants and children” in the above unit. The building owner seeks at least $550,000 in damages and legal fees.
Tara Abrahams declined to comment further when reached.