New York, July 19^th, 2010

Honorable David A. Paterson, Governor

State of New York

State Capitol

Executive Chamber

Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Paterson:

I am writing this letter to strongly urge you to please sign into law S6877/A3233B (Establishes the Independent Office of the Child Advocate) as a first step to close the justice gap in the present child welfare system in New York State.

I am the founder and Executive Director of a grass-roots, not-for-profit, New York State organization that works hard to preserve families. From my personal experience and from my day-to-day work helping families, I can assure you that our present family court system in New York City is an institutionalized system of injustice. Of the approximately 16,000 children in foster care in New York City, 96.1% are children of color, which shows how the system is a predatory system that preys on those who offer the least resistance. A generous estimate is that parents in family court in New York City win about 2 cases out of every 1000 cases in a 1028 hearing, the most important initial hearing in family court. This is only an estimate, since actual statistics for this hearing officially do not exist, in spite of having asked ACS for them for the last nine years. The Office of Court Administration keeps detailed statistics for hearings from 1021 to 1027, and also for 1029 hearings, although these hearings seldom happen; but conveniently skips the 1028 hearings that happens almost in every abuse or neglect case.

With very rare exceptions, the present 18B Panel of attorneys (Court Appointed attorneys), have no value for parents in Family Court. We consider them rather as gatekeepers to make sure the parents do not get a chance to defend themselves properly. They usually see their clients five minutes before entering the courtroom itself. They usually do not return calls from their clients for an appointment at their offices to prepare the case. They almost never call witnesses and expert witnesses. They usually do not provide copies of the clients’ court papers to the clients, and in those cases when the clients are able to obtain the papers, we have found in every single case that there were errors, either false information or distorted information solely based on hearsay that the client was not aware of, and that of course the attorney had probable never even read, but that was taken as an uncontested fact by the court. Also, the court of appeals only looks at the Family Court record, and since 18B atorneys usually do not allow parents to place anything positive in the court record, then if they ever appeal a decision, the only thing that the court of appeals will see is tons of documents with information against the parents, including hearsay and uncontested false information.

The present family court system is an assembly line where all those who make a living by keeping children of color away from their parents and dictate the terms of the outcomes. The parents have no say and are presumed guilty until proved innocent, which is something very hard to prove.

At present, the state legislature uses the number of children in foster care as the best predictor for building new prisons, since 75% of those children will later join that ever growing industry. Those children are traumatizad, not from the alleged abuses by the parents (yes, there are some abusive parents, but most removals of children are totally unjustified,) but from the trauma of being taken away from the people they love and trust the most.

Yes, the independent Office of the Child Advocate will need funding and in these times of fiscal crisis, many will use this as an excuse for killing this legislation, but that would be shortsighted since by creating this office you will save billions in the short and long run––not only in moneys, but more importantly, in human capital. Little by little, by bringing some degree of justice to Family Court, we will shrink the juvenile criminal system, the prison industry, the homeless industry, and the mentally ill industry. Foster care is one of the main feeders of these social cancers that errode the very fiber of our society.

In the same way that you, in spite of all the pressure, were brave enough to sign into law the stopping of the racist practice of keeping a database with the names of the victims of the Stop and Frisk by the NYPD, you need to do this now.

God Bless you, Governor Paterson.

Rolando Bini – Executive Director

Parents in Action

For Leadership and Human Rights

http://www.parentsinaction.net

rolando@parentsinaction.net

718-713-6488

C:  Hon. Barbara M. Clark

     Hon Kevin Parker

     Hon. William Scarborough