This is not meant to
minimize in any way what Andrew and Jessica Schiefer and their children have
had to endure at the hands of the New York City Administration for Children’s
Services. But they got off easy.
Their five-year-old
daughter was not taken away from the
white, middle-class family in Queens.
The allegation against the parents almost certainly will be declared
unfounded. But they’ll never forget the
trauma of the interrogation, or the fact that the process will drag on for 60
days, or the fact that the ACS worker will march all over their child’s school
poking into the family’s life, or the fact that there will be a file on the
family in New York’s Central Register of alleged “child abusers” forever.
Almost none of it was
necessary. But of course, ACS is
encouraging more of the same.
Meanwhile, things didn’t
go nearly so well for a nonwhite family on Staten Island. Their child was taken away in a case that
raises questions about whether ACS is complying with a class-action consent
decree. The
child died in foster care.
TRAUMA IN QUEENS…
According
to WNBC-TV, Channel 4, for the Queens family, the story begins on April 26,
the day of the Republican primary in New York. Andrew Schiefer brought his five-year-old
daughter with him when he went to vote.
The little girl has eczema, a chronic skin condition characterized by
scaly rashes. From time to time, when
they see the family on the street, people ask them about the rash. The Schiefers answer the question and that is
the end of it.
But a poll worker didn’t
bother to ask. Instead, she simply assumed that the rashes were bruises and
called the New York State child abuse hotline.
That is exactly what New Yorkers have been encouraged to do year after
year by everyone from Mayor Michael Bloomberg on down. It was easy for the poll worker to give the
hotline the name and address – she used the voting records at the polling
place.
It was unreasonable of the
poll worker to jump to conclusions. But
once she did so, it was reasonable for a child protective hotline to screen in
a claim by an eyewitness that she saw a little girl with bruises on her hands
and legs. It was reasonable for ACS to
send a caseworker to the door.
But as soon as the parents
produced the prescription eczema ointment and the name and contact information
for the doctor, that should have been the end of it.
Instead, the
“investigation” drags on and the family is dragged through the mud; all so that
the caseworker can protect herself from sanction if she doesn’t follow every
bureaucratic procedure required in the investigation – and, of course, to
protect herself from landing on the front page if she doesn’t do it on any
particular case and then something goes wrong.
A
previous post to the blog gives a sense of the extent to which a typical
family is put through the wringer. And this excellent
story from New York Magazine
gives a sense of why caseworkers in New York City are on the defensive.
Both the Schiefers and at
least some of the reporters who interviewed them couldn’t understand why they
would have a permanent record as a result of such an obvious mistake. You can blame that on some legislative
grandstanding.
In New York State, the standard
for having an allegation “indicated” is absurdly low. It’s essentially a caseworker’s guess. The caseworker is supposed to check the “indicated”
box on a form when she thinks she has “some credible evidence” of abuse or
neglect – even when there is more evidence of innocence.
Only when a case can’t
meet even that preposterously low standard is the case ruled “unfounded.” So it’s no wonder that, until 1996, New York
State law wisely called for expunging the records of unfounded reports. But then, after a high-profile case, the
death of Elisa Izquierdo, state legislators started falling all over themselves
to show who could look tougher on child abuse. So they changed the law, and now,
except in very rare cases, families like the Schiefers never can clear their
names completely.
… AND TRAGEDY ON STATEN ISLAND
The Staten Island case
concerns William Monge, his girlfriend, Nicole Fair, and their two
children. They say the only reason their
children, a two-year-old and a six-month old, were taken away was what a
news story called their “constant fighting.”
Thanks to a settlement in a
class-action lawsuit, in New York City it is illegal to take children from
a battered mother just because she has been beaten – because of how harmful
that is to the children. (NCCPR’s Vice
President, Carolyn Kubitschek was co-counsel for the plaintiffs.) It’s not clear whether this case violates the
letter of that decree, but it sure seems to violate the spirit.
And even if a child must
be taken away, the first option is supposed to be placement with a
relative. Monge and Fair say they begged
ACS to place the children with relatives.
Instead, they were placed in stranger care. Now, the infant is dead. According
to WABC-TV, channel 7:
The baby died Monday night after being rushed to the hospital from her
foster mother's Steuben Street home on Staten Island. Sources now tell Eyewitness News the baby had
a 105-degree fever and marks consistent with past trauma. The medical examiner
says results of an autopsy are inconclusive, pending further study.
Meanwhile, back at Channel
4, reporter Melissa Russo was making the classic reporter’s error in these
cases, using her closing “stand-up” concerning the Schiefer case to parrot the
ACS party line. Said Russo:
As difficult as this situation might be for this family, too often
we’re out here reporting on tragic stories where a caseworker does not do the
minimum amount of investigation or neighbors don’t say something when they see
something. So ACS tells us, when in
doubt, when you suspect child abuse, it’s always better to err on the side of
caution.
But there was nothing
cautious about what that poll worker did.
And there certainly was nothing cautious about the behavior of the ACS
worker on Staten Island who took two children from a couple and sent them to a
foster home where one of those children died.
On the contrary, these were profoundly reckless acts.
And the real reason for
those horror stories Russo mentions, in which a caseworker doesn’t do enough,
almost always is because caseworkers are overwhelmed wasting hour after hour
day after day on cases like the one against the Schiefers in order to protect
not the children, but themselves. The
more people take the advice of Russo (and Bloomberg’s and ACS) and call in
anything and everything, the more likely it is that workers will be further
overloaded with false allegations and have even less time to find children in
real danger.
