BATTERED TWICE?: VICTIMS, OFFER CRITIQUE OF COURTS

BATTERED TWICE?: VICTIMS
OFFER CRITIQUE OF COURTS

http://www.citylimits.org/content/ar...med ia_type=4

A compilation of the experiences of 75 survivors of domestic violence
shows that many feel Family Court adds to their families' problems. By
Bosede Adenekan


Convinced that Family Court proceedings do not adequately protect
battered mothers and their children, a grassroots survivors' group is
working to alter the court's ways – and has a new report to back up its
call for change.

Members of the Brooklyn-based group Voices of Women Organizing Project
(VOW) met with Family Court Administrative Judge Joseph Lauria recently
to discuss their report, "Justice Denied: How Family Courts in NYC
Endanger Battered Women and Children." This was the first in a series of
meetings to discuss the group's judgment that court practices not only
leave battered moms feeling unsafe, but also contribute to children
being removed from the mothers' custody and given either to the accused
abusive partner, or to foster care.

“When my mother was charged with child abuse, no one even asked me if it
was true, and it was not,� says a teenager quoted in the report. Now in
foster care, this youth remains perplexed and frustrated by the court’s
ruling.

The survey and analysis of women's experiences, by VOW's Battered
Mothers' Justice Campaign, includes four major allegations: that court
procedures violate policy; that decisions endanger children; that the
court system underrates claims of domestic violence, neither protecting
victims nor holding abusers responsible; and that the court system is
both biased against women, and gives preferential treatment to the
wealthier party.

“We issued the report because we really want to get administrative
judges to look at the seriousness of our findings and recommendations
and get things implemented,� said VOW Director Susan Lob. (The report
will be available soon at the group's website.)

According to Judge Lauria, it sounds like that goal is on the way to
being met. “It was a productive and constructive meeting," he said last
week. "The issues raised are very important to family court and family
court personnel and we will consider them."

The report was produced through surveys, conducted in 2006, of 75 women
with ongoing family court cases since 2005 or 2006. Only one out of 19
people interviewed felt that the "law guardian," or child's attorney,
represented their children’s wishes. Forty-two percent of interviewees
felt the law guardian did not advocate for the safety of their children
or take the history of domestic violence seriously. The report found
that in violation of court policy and procedure, law guardians sometimes
recommended children to be removed from the battered woman’s custody
without actually meeting the mother and child or seeing them interact.
Taken together, these factors can cause the victim of domestic violence
to lose custody of the child for whom she was once a primary caregiver.

Though the report lacks the two hallmarks of scientific study,
randomized samples and statistically significant results, when it comes
to legal violations, one person's tale can be enough to raise eyebrows
and rally others.

According to the findings, law guardians at times act contrary to Chief
Judge Judith S. Kaye’s administrative order issued in October 2007
specifying the function of these attorneys.

Attorney Karen Freedman, executive director of Lawyers for Children – a
nonprofit group offering free legal and social work support on behalf of
children – explained the ruling. “Basically, if a child is capable of
knowingly and voluntarily articulating his or her position, the attorney
will advocate for the child’s wishes, unless the child’s position places
them at substantial risk of imminent, serious harm. Absent this level of
harm or in the situation where a child does not have the capacity to
articulate a position, we do not substitute our judgment for that of a
child,� she said. “It is the judge and not the attorney who is charged
with the responsibility to determine what is in the child’s best interests."

Freedman is currently working with the New York State Bar Association to
develop a standard of conduct for law guardians. The VOW report
recommends that the guidelines be enforced once they are completed.

The report also recommends that law guardians receive training on
domestic violence – but Judge Lauria said lawyers already receive such
training. He mentioned the Lawyers Committee Against Domestic Violence,
which holds workshops every eight weeks.

And while the report claims that the city Administration for Children's
Services (ACS), which oversees child protection and foster care, does
not adequately protect children in foster care despite allegations of
child abuse, the agency said it’s committed to ensuring the safety of
children. It has developed "Practice Guidelines" for addressing
relationship abuse in foster care, addressing relationship abuse in the
preventive agency setting, and for addressing teen relationship abuse in
the foster care setting, according to ACS spokeswoman Sharman Stein.

"These guidelines were created to help agencies in their role as
investigators to collect information that is critical to the health and
safety of the children and families we serve. ACS has mailed these
guidelines to all agencies, and has been engaging the agencies to
conduct trainings that support the well-being of children and
adolescents in our care," says a statement issued last week by ACS.
"Completed in 2006, these guidelines with their focus on assessment will
be better able to create partnerships with domestic violence service
providers and preventive and foster care agencies to further enhance
best case practice.�

In the statement, ACS also said it “does not penalize mothers because
they are victims of domestic violence—and does not prevent them from
seeing their children. ACS’s goal is child safety, and safe
reunification with the family."

But the report also found that 54 percent of interviewees, all victims
of domestic violence, felt that they were given no help by ACS to
reunite with their children placed in foster care. “It’s really
difficult to get the kids back once they are placed in foster care. ACS
should help with housing if that was what was standing in the way or
help with financial issues. The ACS worker is supposed to provide
services; it okays housing vouchers and subsidies,� said Lob from VOW.
She recounted an interviewee's experience, in which her daughters were
released from foster care back to her as teenagers when she was living
in a homeless shelter; the woman did not receive the support from ACS
that she needed.

This is just one of many testimonies documented in the report using
international human rights documentation standards and participatory
research methods. “If human rights standards are violated just one time,
it’s enough. We need to do something about it,� said Ramona Ortega,
assistant social scientist at the Women of Color Policy Network at NYU's
Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. As former director of the
Urban Justice Center’s Human Rights Project, Ortega assisted in training
VOW members in the human rights documentation standards used for
large-scale war crime tribunals. This type of study has been also done
in Denver, Arizona, and Massachusetts to document domestic violence
cases. It provides community organizations that are not equipped to do
academic studies with the opportunity to produce a study that is both
qualitative and quantitative. And it validates a grassroots critique by
questioning adherence to international law, even if breaches of city,
state or federal law are not indicated. “These women are victims of
human rights violations, which point to systemic problems that may be
overlooked,� Ortega said.

Judge Lauria wants to continue discussions with VOW, but he has his
doubts about the report. “The title’s description is about family court,
but only a fifth of the report relates to family court. Four-fifths is
about other agencies,� he said. “It does not seem accurate. I was
disappointed with the report because there’s no empirical basis of the
data, just anecdotal information.� Lauria said meeting with him, which
was always an available option, would have been more appropriate than
the report. He met with VOW members regularly until their last meeting
in 2005.







An Inconvenient Truth about Child Protective Services, Foster care, and
the Child Protection "INDUSTRY"

Child Protective Services Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of CPS.

every parent should read the free handbook from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

Perpetrators of Maltreatment

Physical Abuse CPS/Foster care 160, biological Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS/Foster care 112, biological Parents 13
Neglect CPS/Foster care 410, biological Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS/Foster care 14 biological Parents 12
Fatalities CPS/Foster care 6.4, biological Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.

THIS IS AMERICA'S HIDDEN HOLOCAUST

Currently Child Protective Services violates more constitutionally
guaranteed liberties & civil rights on a daily basis then all other
agencies combined, Including the National Security agency/Central
intelligence agency wiretaping programs…

THE CORRUPT BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES
BY: Nancy Schaefer Senator, 50th District of Georgia

http://www.senatornancyschaefer.com/...s.php?filter=6

This is Child Protection?
By Gregory A. Hession, J.D.

http://www.jbs.org/node/4632

Mercenary Motherhood: "Memoirs of a Babystealer."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...nion-rightrail

FOSTER CARE IS A 80 PERCENT FAILU. A Brief Analysis of the Casey
Family Programs. Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study. By Richard Wexler

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfpanalysis.doc

HOW THE WAR AGAINST CHILD ABUSE BECAME A WAR AGAINST CHILDREN

http://www.nccpr.org/issues/1.html

Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness
DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families
By Nev Moore Massachusetts News

http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/...May/mayds4.htm

A recent study has found that 12-18 months after leaving foster ca

30% of the nation’s homeless are former foster children.
27% of the males and 10% of the females had been incarcerated
33% were receiving public assistance
37% had not finished high school
2% receive a college degree
50% were unemployed

Children in foster care are three to six times more likely than children
not in care to have emotional, behavioral and developmental problems,
including conduct disorders, depression, difficulties in school and
impaired social relationships. Some experts estimate that about 30% of
the children in care have marked or severe emotional problems. Various
studies have indicated that children and young people in foster care
tend to have limited education and job skills, perform poorly in school
compared to children who are not in foster care, lag behind in their
education by at least one year, and have lower educational attainment
than the general population.
*Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support

80 percent of prison inmates have been through the foster care system.

The highest ranking federal official in charge of foster care, Wade Horn
of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a former child
psychologist who says the foster care system is a giant mess and should
just be blown up.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2017991

Four rigorous studies have found that at least 30 percent of America’s
foster children could be home right now if their parents had decent housing.

This study found thousands of children already in foster care who would
have done better had child protection agencies not taken them away in
the first place.

Front-page story in USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...m?csp=34#Close

Read the studies online.

Casey "alumni" study: "Improving Family Foster Ca Findings from the
Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study,"

http://www.casey.org/Resources/Publi...lumniStudy.htm

MIT study: "Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects
of Foster Care,"

http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_fo...arch07_aer.pdf

Texas comptroller's "Forgotten Children" reports:

www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren

The bottom line? - Child Protective Services and the Foster Care system
for the most part turns out young adults that are nothing more than
walking wreckage...

CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CONSTITUTIONALLY
GUARANTEED LIBERTIES & CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER
AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...