Child welfare in New York: “Despicable” them.

That’s just one of the choice words appellate court justices applied to the behavior of the New York City family police agency during oral argument last week.

Imagine being 11 years old. You’ve moved with your brother and your mother to a new state to start a new life in a new school. Suddenly, armed sheriff’s deputies are marching through the halls, calling out your name. When they find you, all your new friends can see as they bring you to a semi-public place to interrogate you.  

Now imagine it’s Christmas morning. You’re at home celebrating, family are visiting. Suddenly the armed sheriff’s deputies are back, pounding on the door, loudly calling out that they’re there because there’s a child welfare agency case against your mother.  They demand entry, “observe” you and your brother and search the entire apartment, all in front of the guests. 

Of course, it’s all ok because a “child welfare” agency would only do this when parents are accused of beating or raping children, right?  Well, OK, maybe they’d also do it if parents were accused of starving children, or running a drug lab in a basement, right?  But they’d never, ever inflict so much trauma on children whose parents were accused of doing nothing to them at all – would they? 

Of course they would. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time. But last week, in a scene that played out like the climax of a courtroom drama, one mid-level appellate court judge pledged that, at last, in one state, in at least one type of case, it will no longer be tolerated. She called the behavior of the agency in question, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), “despicable.”  

Said Presiding Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels: 

The issue here is that this woman has done nothing wrong, but she's being treated like a criminal, and her children are being retraumatized again and again. That's the issue here, and that's going to be put to a stop! 

You can see it all in the video above of oral argument in the case, known as Matter of Liam M. The argument starts at 2:22:22 in.  If you follow this link  it goes a little past that, to 2:38:00. That's the point where, at long last, an agency which normally is accountable to no one, finally is held to account for what it has done to so many children. 

Lawyers sometimes refer to judges who ask a lot of questions as a “hot bench.” This one was on fire. That requires some explanation. 

The context 

More than 20 years ago, a federal court barred ACS from tearing apart families and throwing children into foster care just because a parent, usually the mother, was herself a survivor of domestic violence. New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, effectively extended that statewide. (NCCPR’s Vice President, Carolyn Kubitschek, was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in that landmark case, which has been cited scores of times across the country in the intervening years.) 

Of course this didn’t stop the practice completely, but it curbed it. But the response from ACS could be summed up as: Oh yeah? Maybe we can’t take the kids, but we can still harass families with endless supervision and surveillance as much as we want! 

Two recent appellate court decisions stopped ACS from doing this at an early stage in the process. To which ACS effectively responded: Oh yeah? Maybe you can stop us early on, but we can still harass families with endless supervision and surveillance at later stages in the case! 

That brings us to the case argued last week. 

The facts of the case 

What might prompt such questioning from the justices? 

Here’s the backstory, as recounted in the brief for the mother, known as Ms. C., submitted by the Family Justice Law Center and the New York University School of Law (quotes in blue) and in oral argument, mostly from the Legal Aid Society, which represented not the mother, but the children (quotes in green). (And, lest there still be any question who really is on the side of protecting children here, they were supported, through amicus briefs, by, among others, Children’s Rights, Lawyers for Children, who do what the name implies, and the National Association of Counsel for Children.) 

The family is from Florida. They moved to New York to be close to the children’s grandmother, who was suffering from cancer. They moved to a New York home that the mother owned with her ex-husband. On one occasion, the ex got violent with her in front of the children. The mother did everything right, immediately calling the police and then getting all the court orders she needed to kick the father out of the house and keep him out. He followed those orders to the letter. 

The father consented to a finding of neglect against him. The mother was never charged with anything, and, indeed, ACS records repeatedly attest to the fact that she took excellent care of the children.  Eventually, she and the children moved back to Florida. So any supposed “threat” from the father was now 1,300 miles away. 

But through it all, ACS repeatedly demanded that the mother and the children be under their surveillance and control, and the Family Court repeatedly rubber-stamped those requests. The only grounds ever given for this surveillance: the father had not yet jumped through all the hoops in his case plan. 

Here’s what this did to the family: 

ACS monitored Ms. C.’s care of her children for more than five months, conducting numerous announced and unannounced searches of her home, from which the respondent father remained judicially barred. Caseworkers searched every room in the apartment during every home search. They even repeatedly inspected inside the refrigerator. 

I keep wondering: Did ACS think the father was hiding in the fridge?  

When ACS said, “Jump!” the family immediately had to say, “How high?” If they weren’t home when the caseworker was at the door, they had to drop everything and race back there – even when they were visiting their grandmother, sick with cancer. 

When the family moved back to Florida, things actually got worse. ACS went high-tech, demanding the right to virtually enter the home at any time and surveil every room (and, yes, the refrigerator again) by video. But that wasn’t enough for them. They recruited armed Florida sheriffs to inspect the family in person, and not just at home. As the children’s lawyer told the court, and the brief explains, one of the children 

was at school with her new schoolmates, and these unformed people with guns come, like, running into the school, calling out her name and saying they're there on behalf of ACS. They take her out of class. They interview her in a quasi-public space. Kids she wanted to be friends with saw. 

She began “shaking and crying with embarrassment and rage” and “yelling at the sheriffs to leave her alone.” 

She was so humiliated and mortified, her mother had to come to school to take her off campus. She couldn't even calm down. She was so upset. 

And after that, it was hard for her to even come back to school. But when she did come back … she started having problems that she had never had before. She started having behavioral problems. She started getting in fights. … 

She's finally doing better now, but it took a while. It took a really long time. 

And then, two months later, this happened: 

On Christmas morning, ACS sent armed sheriffs to Ms. C.’s apartment. In public outside the apartment building, the sheriffs loudly announced that they were there because of a children’s services case against Ms. C. and demanded to see her children. The sheriffs observed Liam and Sari and searched the apartment. Ms. C. had family over for the holiday and testified that the law enforcement search was “humiliating.”… 

Ms. C. felt “constantly threatened” that she would lose her children if she did not comply, a possibility that kept her awake at night. As she explained, “I [felt] like I left one abuser for another. …  ACS use[d] methods of control, including sending sheriffs to my apartment, to remind me that they’re in charge.” 

[The children] felt “watched and controlled” by ACS, and were “embarrassed and frightened” by sheriffs demanding to see them at school and at home … They implored the caseworker directly: “we don’t want to talk to you, don’t call us.” 

Even a family court judge overseeing the case said: 

“[I]t bothers me that ACS reached out to the Florida law enforcement authorities that put [Ms. C.] and her children through . . . these embarrassing ordeals.” 

But the judge let ACS keep on doing it anyway. 

Now, however, some appellate justices are making clear they’re not going to tolerate such “despicable” behavior.