NY state courts need to involve ACS in domestic violence cases

Should the Administration for Children’s Services get involved when women are being beaten by their partners while their kids are around? The answer seems to be no, according to two recent decisions from New York state courts.

In the first case decided by the state’s Supreme Court last month, a father “grabbed the mother by the face, causing her to fall to the ground, hit her, stomped her and strangled her until she briefly lost consciousness in front of their then-14-month-old child.” A neighbor called 911 and, when officers responded, the father — holding a knife — told the mother that he would kill her if she spoke to the police.

An order of protection was filed against the father to make sure he only had supervised visits with the child, but when ACS reasonably wanted make unannounced visits to the mother’s home to make sure the father wasn’t there, the mother objected — saying that she was not the perpetrator of any maltreatment so she should not be subject to this kind of “surveillance.”

In another case decided a couple of weeks earlier, a father who struck his eight-months-pregnant girlfriend was accused of neglecting his other children, causing them “emotional harm” and putting them at “risk of physical harm.” But the court ruled that his daughter “did not see the incident or any resulting injuries” and did not hear the girlfriend’s “plea to stop hitting her,” so ACS was not allowed to proceed with its case against the father.

What is happening here? It is true that beating your girlfriend is not the same as beating your children. But there is a high correlation between the two.

According to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, “Approximately 30 to 60% of children from homes where domestic abuse is present are also victims of abuse themselves.” Drug abuse and mental illness are often a cause of both. Indeed, “Domestic violence constitutes the single greatest precursor of child maltreatment fatalities.”

Pretending that domestic violence is not a serious issue for children because they didn’t hear the victims’ screams is nuts. It is true that we don’t want to punish those on the receiving end of these blows, like the mother in the first case, by removing their children or making their lives unnecessarily difficult with unannounced visits. But what is the alternative?

If a man has threatened you and you go to the police, what are the chances you will report when he violates an order of protection? In fact, a recent look at domestic violence in The Bronx gives a sense of the magnitude of this problem.

According to analysis from the Daily News of NYPD crime data, “Nearly 1,000 domestic violence arrests in The Bronx over the first three months of 2025 were not prosecuted by the district attorney’s office because victims declined to cooperate with prosecutors.” And those were the ones that were actually reported the attacks in the first place.

These victims may not cooperate with prosecutors because they are dependent on abusers for financial support. They may fear that an abuser will only get more violent if they are punished for their crime.

Kendra Doychak of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice has said that victims blame themselves or believe that the perpetrator “is still a good father.” Whether mothers actually believe this or they are simply living in fear, it is hard to depend on victims of domestic abuse to ensure that abusive boyfriends or husbands are kept away from the kids.

These court rulings mean that kids will be either be left in unsafe homes or that ACS will start filing cases against victims of domestic violence to make them more likely to cooperate with protective orders. In recent years, ACS leadership has ignored a lot of dangerous behavior in children’s homes. In these cases, though, the agency is recognizing the serious risks to kids but the state’s judiciary is making it harder for them to act appropriately.

We need to be realistic about the terrible effects of domestic violence — not just because watching your mother get beaten is not conducive to a decent home environment, but because there is obviously a high risk that a man who beats a woman unconscious may ultimately turn his fists on the kids.