The New York State Legislature approved this week a bill that prohibits anonymous complaints to the direct line of state child abuse. If Governor Kathy Hochul signs the legislation, New Yorkers will now have to provide their name and contact information if they want to make an accusation that some could be neglecting a child.
This dramatic change in the law produces a year and a half after a Property investment showed how the direct line had armed the legs by former jealousy, resentment owners and others that they called in accusations without foundation. Even if a person he called left his name or any detail, and even if the same accusation had repeatedly investigated and discovered that he had no basis, he automatically activated an invasive search for the accused house and a search for children’s strips.
We detail the case of a Brooklyn mother whose apartment was wanted in time dishes, by police officers and social workers of child protection services who never had a court order and presented themselves after midnight, all because Anonmsley accounts Re. It was never discovered that he had not made his children in any way.
According to federal statistics, 96% or anonymous calls to the direct lines of child abuse are considered unfounded after an investigation. Among all accusations of child abuse or negligence, including non -anonymous calls, 83% are finally considered unfounded.
In New York, more than 4,000 children every year, experienced children’s protection services as a result of anonymous calls, so far.
The approval of the legislation is “a mutual benefit for all,” said Democratic State Senator Jabari Brisport, the sponsor of the bill. Not only will it protect victims from domestic violence that a current or former abusive partner may have used by the anonymous reports system to harass them or to influence a custody dispute, it will also help the social workers themselves, Brisport said. “They already stretch so thin,” he said. “By reducing the number of these false complaints, we can let their job do better.”
“But the fact that false reports make such an effective harassment method is a deeper symptom or problems in the way CPS operates,” Brisport added, referring to how searches and investigations in the home that result from the calls of the life of Turne Families’s life backwards. Black parents thickest, he Sade, and can feel helpless incapable of comforting their children through a terrifying and opaque process that can lead to their separation from their mother and dad.
A Committee from the United States Civil Rights Commission last year published a report that cited propublicic journalism on these issues and asked New York to abolish anonymous reports. Propublicic articles were also distributed among legislators and legislative personnel in Albany both last year and this spring.
California and Texas have also approved legislation to reduce anonymous reports. Several other states are considering similar invoices.
The new New York Law will maintain the confidentiality of people who call the direct line of child abuse, but not their anonymity. That means that if some think that a family member, neighbor or fight is damaging a child, and they call him, they may still be sure that the State does not reveal their identity to the alleged abuser or publicly in any way. The person who calls will only have to provide their name and contact information so that workers can monitor, partly to ensure that they do not have a hidden reason to make a malicious accusation and so that social workers can collect more details of the person who calls Condulay to Condurom to drive.
If they refuse to identify them, the direct line staff will refuse to pass the tip to child protection services. But an amendment was added to the bill that indicates that if a person who calls does not want to leave his name, he can still talk to a supervisor, who will explain that if it is a name that will remain confidential; That intentionally making a false report is illegal; And that problems involving needy children can also be addressed through homes, food and other services. The contact information for these services will be provident.
The new law will not affect the mandatory reporters of child abuse, as teachers and police, who were no longer anonymous.
Chris Gottlieb, director of the Family Defense Clinic at the Nyu Law School, helped guide legislation to its approval. She said that when she used to mention this problem in Albany, and talk about child protection services agents seeking family homes without a court order can be deeply traumatizing for both parents and children, she was blank. But then, propublicic reports “helped change the conversation,” he said, and most importantly, the parents themselves, many of them black and Latinos and led by the community organizer Joyce McMillan, began to celebrate regular demonstrations on the stairs.
In fact, parents have filed a collective claim that challenges searches for child protection services without the court order of their home as institutional. New York City is disputing the demand, but the administration of city services has said that it is committed to addressing child security conerns while respecting the rights of families.
It conforms to Propublic, ACS has said that state law requires that you investigate fully and seek to carry out an evaluation at home, provided that it receives a report of child abuse of the State, regardless of the original source of that report. But a spokesman said that the agency supports the anonymous reports of reports with the perspective that protections for children who are in danger should also be preserved.
One of the plaintiffs in the demand for collective action, Shavona Warmington, praised the legislators of the state of New York for abolishing the anonymous reports once and for all.
Queens’s mother alleges that someone called complaints about every several months for a decade, knowing that the mere fact of a call would make social workers hit him; They threaten that they would call the police if she had let him in; Look for in his refrigerator, cabinets, cabinets and bed while his children watched; And then strip them and interrogate them. She said that the content of the reports to the direct line always sounded familiar, clearly from the same person, but that this never mattered.
In the lawsuit, he said that the person who filed the complaints was probably the man who abused her. I could call every day and still send someone.
Their children have a leg traumatized by the sound of a blow to the by, he said.
“Otherwise, I have no contact with him, only through ACS,” Warmington said, referring to his abuser.