NYC’s Family Court Gap: Protecting Children From Domestic Violence Without Repeating Past Abuses

By Michael Phillips | NYBayNews Staff

A new essay from Vital City NYC is quietly reigniting one of the most consequential — and uncomfortable — debates in New York’s child welfare system: how to protect children exposed to domestic violence without sliding back into the era of punitive government overreach that once tore families apart.

In “Supporting Children Who Experience Violence at Home,” author Liberty Aldrich, head of the Children’s Law Center of New York, argues that New York City has created a dangerous service vacuum. The city has rightly moved away from reflexive child removals — but it has failed to build a parallel system of voluntary, non-punitive support for children who still desperately need help.

The result: tens of thousands of children appearing in Family Court every year, exposed to domestic violence, yet receiving little or no therapeutic or social services because their cases never trigger formal involvement by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).

A System Designed Around Adults, Not Children

The scale of the issue is hard to ignore. In 2024 alone, New York City saw more than 150,000 Family Court filings related to custody, visitation, and guardianship. According to Aldrich, conservative estimates suggest one-third to one-half of the children in these cases come from homes with domestic violence histories.

Yet fewer than one in three of those children receive counseling, supervised visitation, trauma therapy, or other stabilizing services.

That disconnect is not accidental. Family Court proceedings are structurally adult-centered — disputes over custody, access, or orders of protection — while children’s exposure to violence often remains untracked, undocumented, and legally peripheral.

Many parents are unrepresented. Forms rarely capture child-specific harm. And crucially, services in New York remain heavily tethered to ACS supervision — something many families now actively avoid.

The Legacy of Nicholson — and the New Paradox

Aldrich’s analysis is rooted in a landmark legal shift that conservatives and civil libertarians alike have long supported: Nicholson v. Scoppetta.

Decided in 2004 by the New York Court of Appeals, Nicholson ended the practice of treating domestic violence victims as neglectful parents simply because their children witnessed abuse. The court held that exposure alone is not neglect, and that removals require individualized proof of imminent harm.

The ruling was a decisive rejection of bureaucratic overreach — a reminder that the state should not punish victims or reflexively separate families.

More recent appellate decisions in 2025 have gone further, reinforcing family integrity and limiting automatic ACS supervision in domestic violence cases.

But Aldrich identifies an unintended consequence: as ACS involvement declines, access to services declines with it.

Families who avoid child welfare supervision — often for good reason — now find themselves unable to access therapy, housing assistance, supervised visitation programs, or trauma counseling. The state stepped back, but nothing stepped in to replace it.

When Protection Becomes Inaction

One of the essay’s most troubling anecdotes involves a child Aldrich calls “Jennie,” who was sexually abused by men in her father’s apartment. Family Court intervened, appointed counsel, and relocated her safely — all without ACS.

But when it came time to secure long-term therapy and support, the system stalled. Without ACS involvement, services were fragmented, delayed, or unavailable altogether.

This is the quiet failure Aldrich highlights: a system so afraid of repeating past excesses that it now tolerates neglect by omission.

A Centered Warning: Build Support Without Coercion

From a center-right perspective, the argument is compelling — and cautionary.

New York spent decades empowering agencies to act aggressively “for the children,” only to learn that centralized authority, unchecked discretion, and perverse incentives caused profound harm. The pendulum has rightly swung back toward family preservation, due process, and limited state intrusion.

But restraint is not the same as abdication.

Aldrich does not call for expanding ACS power or reviving removal-heavy policies. Instead, she proposes solutions consistent with conservative principles:

• Voluntary, community-based services untethered from child removal threats
• Resource coordinators embedded in Family Court, not enforcement agencies
• Targeted funding, such as the proposed Child and Family Wellbeing Fund (S6431), to support therapy, visitation services, and housing stability
• Guaranteed counsel for children in Family Court, ensuring their interests are represented independently of state agencies or parental conflict

These proposals aim to correct a structural flaw — not expand government coercion.

The Bigger Question for New York

At its core, the article raises a question New York policymakers can no longer avoid:

Can the city protect vulnerable children without recreating the very system it spent decades dismantling?

The answer will define the next era of child welfare reform. A system that defaults to removal betrays families. A system that defaults to inaction betrays children.

The challenge now is building a third path — one that supports families, respects liberty, and takes child safety seriously without surrendering it to unchecked bureaucracy.

For a city still reckoning with the legacy of ACS overreach, that balance may be the hardest test yet.