New Jersey children in their state's care are being neglected and abused by the agencies trusted to care for and protect them, according to a report released Monday by School of Social Work Dean Richard Gelles.
Based on a random sample of 500 case files, the report was prepared to support the plaintiff's case in Charlie and Nadine H. v. McGreevey, a federal suit filed in 1999 alleging that New Jersey violated the civil rights of children in its custody.
The claim is being pursued by Children's Rights, a Manhattan-based advocacy group formerly affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the New Jersey law firm of Lowenstein, Sandler.
"New Jersey is one of the worst jurisdictions that we have seen in the country," Children's Rights senior staff attorney Eric Thompson said, noting that even state officials have admitted that theirs "is a broken system and that children have been harmed by that system."
One of only a handful of states do not to have an automated filing system. Thompson said that without one New Jersey "couldn't even tell whether or not the child was in or out of foster care" in almost 25 percent of the cases reviewed.
Along with these gaps in the record, the stories the files did tell prompted Gelles to call his final report "Falling Into The Abyss: How New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services Fails to Protect Children In Its Care." The analysis is as blunt as the title.
"Institutional abuse, neglect, and ineptitude are the dominant themes," Gelles said in a press release issued by the plaintiff's lawyers on Monday. "I have seen many instances of poor child protective service casework.... I have never seen such a disorganized and inept child welfare system, placing all children in out-of-home care at high risk of harm."
Though the children whose names have come to identify the case are now "happily adopted" according to Thompson, the injunctive suit aims to force DYFS to improve care for all those children entrusted to the Garden State.
Andy Williams, speaking on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Human Services -- DYFS' parent agency -- said that the state "acknowledged that there are longstanding problems with the system that pre-date the current administration."
Thompson, meanwhile, noted that DHS' broad concession came in the context of an aggressive legal defense.
"The first thing they did was hire an outside law firm to defend the state," Thompson said, noting that even "given the now acknowledged failure of the system to protect children and provide for their basic needs," the case has not been and likely will not be anything but "hotly contested."
"We had to go to a full evidentiary hearing before the court on our right to have access to a sample of case records of our own clients," Thompson said. "Even that was contested by the state."
In effect, Thompson continued, "there's been no concession, and that's one of the issues for trial later this year."
Both sides have stated that they were considering a settlement and had pursued negotiations toward that end. Though unable to comment on specific settlement items, Thompson said that "the relief that we intend to seek from the court is a broad remedial order compelling the state to provide adequate resources and protections for children to meet their basic constitutional rights."
Thompson summed up Gelles' report saying, "In general, I think his findings starkly illustrate the harm that children are subject to while in DYFS custody."
"A typical child is in DYFS custody more than 3 years, is shuffled through numerous placements and has an unacceptably high likelihood of being abused and neglected while in state care," he concluded.
A final pre-trial date has been scheduled for September. Although a date has not been set, the trial itself is expected to begin shortly thereafter.
