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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. There's been so much said about criminal court in New York City recently that a really important story is getting largely overlooked. It's a report that came out last week from The New York City Bar Association, and The Fund For Modern Courts about a crisis in New York's family courts. Specifically, it's about the shocking impact of COVID on family court, which primarily means on children caught in child support or domestic abuse cases. Largely children from lower-income homes, disproportionately Black and Latino children falling through the cracks.

How much so? Well, for example, in a story that WNBC Channel 4 did about this report, they interviewed a mom named Cieanne Everett, about a date she thought she had in family court for last December, but then the clerk set her straight and said, "No, no, no, it's for next December."

Cieanne Everett: "You're telling me that I don't see you again for more than a year?" and he goes, "Yes. That's how backlogged we are," and hung up the phone.

Brian Lehrer: That's the tip of the iceberg for a system that the report says goes under-resourced, even in non-pandemic times. Let's take a closer look. With us now, are retired Family Court Judge Sidney Gribetz. He resided in the Bronx for about three decades and sat on the Family Court COVID Working Group that produced the report. Judge Gribetz also happens to be a family friend, and Dawne Mitchell, who heads the Juvenile Rights Practice at the Legal Aid Society, and also sat on the Family Court COVID Working Group.

Dawne, and Judge Sid, thanks for coming on with your report. Welcome to WNYC.

Judge Sidney Gribetz: Thanks for having us, Brian.

Dawne Mitchell: Yes, thank you for having us.

Judge Sidney Gribetz: I just want to correct you for a second. Although it seemed like three decades, I was a judge for just two decades.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Sorry.

[laughter]

A lot of things that go on for two decades feel like three decades. Would you tell listeners who have little contact with family court, Judge basically what goes on there? This is not divorce court, right?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: Right. That's an important thing that dovetails with what our report is about. It's not just about COVID, but the entire court system in New York, how under-resourced it is. Many people as you said when they think of family court, they think it's divorces. No. In New York, you go to Supreme Court for the divorce. New York has 11 different types of trial courts. It's a Byzantine system, and it harms our populace in making it inefficient to do justice. What Family Court does contain is juvenile delinquency, which is about youths who commit acts which if committed by adults would be a crime.

Child abuse and neglect, adoptions, child custody, child support, guardianship cases. A very significant aspect is of domestic violence cases. We have a simplified procedure by which domestic violence abuse victims can come to court and get an order of protection. I left that a whole lot of other aspects, but those are the main aspects. As you said, in your introduction, as anyone listening can see those have a dramatic impact on the life of a child. In order to produce a good society, we have to care about our children and their education.

Also the way we deal with the families and make sure children come from strong families and can be successful in our society.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Dawne, how do your clients tend to be in your Legal Aid Juvenile Rights Practice. Again, for background so people who have not had contact with the system know the kinds of things that go on?

Dawne Mitchell: Sure. At Legal Aid, we represent about 90% of the children who are the subject of these cases the judge describes. They are children who their alleged or parents are alleged to abuse or neglect them. They are youth who may have been arrested by the police. They are children who are in families where they seek support and intervention of the court for custody matters, and visitation orders and guardianship orders, adoptions. They are the children at the heart of every single matter that precedes in family court.

We cover the city so there are other provider agencies that also represent children in family court, but for the most part, the Legal Aid Society represents the vast majority of them.

Brian Lehrer: Now listeners, we invite your experiences with family court during or before the pandemic. It's an opportunity to shed more light on that system and how it can be improved now that this report has come out from The Fund For Modern Courts, and the New York Bar Association. 212-433-WNYC. If you've been in family court, as a client of any kind, plaintiff defendant when it's been split up like that. As a child, as a lawyer yourself, like Dawne, or any story that you want to tell, pandemic here in particular, but not necessarily, or any question that you have.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's get to the report. Judge, have there been family court services that have functioned better and others that have function worse during the pandemic?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: I think if any of your listeners think about their own personal or business lives, there was a great change in the norms due to COVID. When COVID first really exploded in March of 2020, the court actually even shut down. Then once it gradually reopened with piecemeal fashion, it only handled what they called, were essential cases or emergencies and non-essential cases. Insofar as the dedicated staff and hard-working judges of the court go, yes, for those that were in the good category of emergencies that work well.

Cases where juveniles were arrested and prosecutors wanted to put them in custody, those were handled very efficiently. When the ACS was going to charge a new child abuse case and was seeking to remove children from the parent, at its inception, those cases from our reports were attacked appropriately. The initial appearance of someone walking in to get a temporary order protection in domestic violence, those were handled pretty well. The overall way that the system ground to a halt, and just reopened in such piecemeal fashion and cases, literally for about nine months.

Even after the gradual reopening with remote courtrooms, had an intensive backlog. The numbers are stunning. I mentioned those types of cases that were handled. Well, but that's only about 80% or 90% didn't fit into that. In an average year, in family court, I pulled out the numbers, there were 60,000 child support cases. Child support grants to halt. Imagine the impact on a child with a single mother or father, who was unable to get relief in securing child support.

Brian Lehrer: Could you linger on that for a second judge, child support cases ground to a halt?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: That I think was the most graphic of it all in that there was a triage system. Some may say that we're doing some Monday morning quarterbacking, and that might be true, and so you don't want to give individual fault to our administrators. A decision was made that child support was not essential. I think they had one part in the Bronx opening and gradually just the old violations, but no new child support cases were heard for the first period of time when the COVID crisis hit us.

Brian Lehrer: How back to normal is that now?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: I wouldn't know directly. It's gradually getting back to normal, but it's not normal, as per the anecdote that you just said. What happened, all the cases that would have been filed in the first year of COVID were mailed into the court. Then they gradually being scheduled, or the pending cases that were in the middle of the trial were interrupted. Then what the court has been doing is just willy-nilly e-mailing to people like that person who got a notice in November, saying her case was rescheduled for December but then had to look twice and said no, it was rescheduled for December 2022.

Brian Lehrer: Dawne Mitchell from Legal Aid--

Judge Sidney Gribetz: Also, just quickly--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Judge Sidney Gribetz: To notify those people, of course, the court used the addresses that were on the papers that were filed a year earlier, and so many people moved and had no reason to know that they had to give their updated address. We didn't even receive a notice saying a case was rescheduled for a year.

Brian Lehrer: Dawne Mitchell from Legal Aid that clip for people who heard the beginning of the segment and that the judge just referred to, from the Channel 4 story of a woman who last year thought she had a court date for December, but it turned out to be December 2022. Is the backlog that bad?

Dawne Mitchell: Yes, it is staggering delays and scheduling. I want to just point out that, in large part, the vast majority of people affected by the gross scheduling or mischeduling, or delayed scheduling on these cases are unrepresented litigants. I want to be clear that litigants' children, who my office represents, and other provider agencies represent, fared better even with this delayed scheduling and mismanaged technology, and absent technology.

For the vast majority of New Yorkers who appear before the court and asked the court set, nearly 80% of the matters that are before the court are individuals who seek the court's support, but they are unrepresented. They had and they still have a tremendous time navigating a very confusing system of getting their cases heard during this period. The only way once the court did begin to open, let's just say its proverbial doors, its virtual doors, it allowed for unrepresented individuals to essentially put a request in a bucket.

It was a system called EDDS, put your request in the bucket for your case to be heard or your matter to be filed. What that individual described was the opening of the bucket, and as the court, one by one manually. Pulling these items out of this bucket to schedule them, was then met with the reduction of jurists on the bench. The reduction of court personnel to manage this volume. It just compounded the issue, this lack of technology. Of course, no one prepared for the unprecedented impact of the pandemic.

Certainly, we've learned in this period that the family court was even more grossly under-resourced than we thought the court was prior to the pandemic. We were already facing high volumes of filings and underresourced family court prior to the pandemic. The issues of the pandemic, just really compounded [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a listener's story. This is Ben calling in, who says he's been in and out of family court for a number of years for a reason that I guess he'll describe. Ben, you're on WNYC. Hi, there?

Ben: Hi, good morning, Brian, thanks for taking my call. Yes, I've been in family court for the last at least five years. Obviously, it's very stressful, but just before the pandemic, I wasn't able to afford my own lawyer anymore. Switched to a court-appointed attorney. Just before that, we filed papers in EDDS for there were violations of the parenting agreement that we had. I called after three months to a clerk and the clerk said, "Oh, we are working on them in the order of their received."

Seven months later, still haven't heard anything just trusted that it would be worked on. Called again, the clerk literally screamed at me, telling me to get a lawyer to deal with it. If it's still needed, why would I wait seven months to call again? The system doesn't work on so many levels. If you have a private attorney compared to an attorney from the courts, you're basically screwed already most of the time. Now it's basically just like a stillstand, you can't get anything done. You can't see your kids. It's horrible.

Brian Lehrer: Dawne, do you want to talk to Ben, and either give him some advice about what to do as the system slowly gets back to normal from COVID or just in general?

Dawne Mitchell: Well, first, I'm a player in the court, a stakeholder in the court. Ben, I feel for you and I really am sorry that you've had this experience. I can't speak to the response from the court specifically, but I would be more than happy to make phone calls and make connections to see if we can get you the answers that you're seeking. One of the challenges that represented and unrepresented players have had, is that we haven't had access to what we call the uniform court management system. Which gives us the details about when the court has rescheduled or scheduled matters.

We sit in a place very similar to Ben, except that we are able to walk into the court now and speak to a clerk directly. That may be there are Help Centers that are now reopening. They have limited hours then, but I would recommend that if you can, your counsel can walk into the courthouse into the Help Center and determine when the case will be filed. I don't have enough information to give you any specific advice, but I am learning that the court is now opening its doors.

One of the services that was so instrumental in servicing the community was the Help Center in each of the county courthouses and those centers, although they have limited hours have reopened.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 80.1 Trenton, WNJP 80.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey, Public Radio. A few more minutes on this topic of what we've learned because of COVID about the family court system in New York, a veil has been lifted for people who care to look by. For one thing, the horrendous delays in giving mostly children mostly lower-income, disproportionately Black and Latino children the services they need in court when it comes to things like child support, custody, and even domestic abuse.

Although physical abuse cases got prioritized during the pandemic, as we've heard from Judge Gribetz. There's a new report detailing all of this. Which also gives everyone else an opportunity to learn about the family court system, how it's been under-resourced according to the report. What it needs in the first place called The Impact of COVID-19 on the New York City Family Court, from The New York City Bar Association in the Fund for Modern Courts. Our guests are Dawne Mitchell, who has the Juvenile Rights Practice at the Legal Aid Society.

She heads that up, and retired Family Court judge from the Bronx, Sidney Gribetz. Let's take another call. Tina, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tina.

Tina: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Tina you're on here.

Tina: Hi. Good morning. Yes, I'm here.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Tina: Yes, I have a similar case with a woman on [unintelligible 00:18:02] Channel 4. My case has been in family court since October 13th, 2015. My twins were moved from their school by two administrator workers and saying that they're special ed and they want to put them in good school. Because of that, it took my kids bring them to Children's Center in Manhattan. From there, they took my son sent him to Pennsylvania. He stayed there for three years. Now from Pennsylvania Woods, he used to come to visit me but since he went to Nassau County, we haven't seen him in the last three years, maybe three times.

Every time I go to see him in Nassau County, I have to call Nassau County Police to tell them allow the people at SCO to allow me to see my kid. Last time I saw him was in September for his birthday for two minutes. He's 21, and they still wouldn't let me have my son. It was in family court, and I don't know why the judge is in favor of them. You don't even know who they are. My son is being molested. He's hungry.

Brian Lehrer: Tina, I'm going to leave it there and ask the judge a question. Obviously, there are two sides in your case, and we're hearing your side. We don't know what the other side is, so we can't verify on the radio one or the other. Judge, I'm sure you hear cases like this or when you were sitting you heard cases like this and claims like this, and whatever the counterclaims might be. How do you do it?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: With a lot of patience and fortitude and hopefully with a good heart. It's heart-wrenching work and that's I think one thing that Tina's call indicates something I'd like to bring to the attention too. The average person you read in the news if there's sometimes these graphic cases of maybe a deranged parent seriously abuses, or even there's a fatality and kills their child. That's when people think that's what ACS does and that's what family court does. No, it ranges from things that are less graphic, instances of child abuse and neglect, and people get caught up in a system like Tina did.

The judge has the obligation to quickly move that case forward. Stay on top of it, make sure the child's doing okay in foster care, and give the idea of how you do-- In 2019, there were 14,000 new child abuse cases filed. Lots of which were things that were less graphic and foster care is supposed to be a temporary solution. There are court proceedings that monitor the children in foster care, and a judge can make rulings to return the child to foster care if the situation is better.

Those were cases that were deemed not essential for emergency during COVID, just as another example. To their credit, ACS has done-- Ms. Mitchell can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong. In 2020, there were 8,000 children in foster care in New York City alone and that was an all-time low. To their credit, we've had enlightened practices to lower that number. During my career, there were tens of thousands of children in foster care not getting appropriate services, being either wrongfully or not--

I won't judge what Tina's case is, being prevented from being reunited with their parents. You think of the stress and trauma and interruption of regular child development that that gives to a child. That's why I said at the beginning, family court is so vital to the fabric of our society and what we're doing. Since it involves underrepresented people, people of communities of color, we just don't get the resources, don't get the respect. People are left in the lurch without any compassion or any thought of what's being done.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, judge, at the risk of embarrassing you or making you smile, a few people are tweeting because they recognize your voice from your other life. [crosstalk] One of them writes, they appreciate the work that you've done in the jazz world. Dawne, the report has recommendations. Where would you begin?

Dawne Mitchell: Well, I think we are all as a community of providers in the family court, we've been looking at the court system for years and ways in which the court system can improve. All of these issues heightened our awareness and the urgency that we need to make some changes. We have recommended in one of the first instances that the court improved its system of allowing for e-filing or electronic filing. Unlike the Supreme court, the family court does not have an electronic filing system.

We're really looking at the need for this, an opportunity because we do know that with the emergence of technology, and this sharp change in how we can actually manage the volume in family court, there are ways to build in efficiencies. One of the efficiencies is to really allow for there to be a more structured, efficient way to file cases in the family court for attorneys and parties to see the documents and the court orders. Having the ability to have a uniform system of filing, processing, and tracking these cases is essential.

The court system has to make this a priority. There's really no rational explanation why the Supreme Court has this ability, and the family court doesn't, especially in light of the volume. We've also talked about the need for the court system to understand and appreciate the value of communication and information sharing with the community. Small fixes and I consider updating and maintaining regular information on its website as a small fix.

It may not actually be a significant economic investment even, but simply said during this period, the community hasn't had access to information about where the court is open, what cases it's seen, what cases they can come in and file. It's really grossly under-communicated to the community at large about what they can and are able to do in family court. Really, updating the website, creating more user-friendly access would really support the communities that we serve.

Brian Lehrer: We're almost out of time I'm going to read one more tweet, another story that we're not going to have time to get into in-depth. Listener writes, "I filed for grandparents visitation in December, 2019, very little happened, and then COVID stopped all. Our granddaughter was literally kidnapped by the mother and my son doesn't know where she's at." It's another one of these hard stories where there are different sides of the families but in any case, the system ground to a halt so much during COVID that people who felt aggrieved have not even had their days in court.

Judge, like so many other aspects of inequality, that's endemic that people became aware of more because of the pandemic. What would you add to what Dawne was just saying before we run out of time about how this applies, what improvements can be made? What are the recommendations from the report that you would add?

Judge Sidney Gribetz: Well, there are a lot of things in the weeds and the inside baseball, so to speak that Dawne Mitchell said some of them. Those are things maybe for the system itself to do. I think that highlights a lot of the things that we ask for, things that are already existing in Supreme court. Maybe because our clientele is primarily people of lower economic background and of color, we've always been on the short end of the stick and disrespected. It's very easy to give us just some of the same sources that already exist in Supreme Court.

One aspect of the report, which we didn't touch on is also the number which is right for legislative action can be done, is that we're limited to the number of judges. A lot of the backlog obviously could be dealt with if you had more judges, but the number of judges that sit in family court is assigned by the state legislature. It was 2014 was the last time there were new judges added, and that was after 20 years when there were no new judges added. We had a fight hard to get nine additional judges in 2014. From 2014 until COVID, we need more judges.

Now with the COVID backlog, we can use even more judges. There are only 56 family court judges in New York City. It's up to the state legislature to do things and resources of that nature. That's one last word I'd want to add in.

Brian Lehrer: A report from The New York City Bar Association and the Fund For Modern Courts is called The Impact of COVID-19 on the New York City Family Court: Recommendations on Improving Access to Justice for All Litigants. We thank our guests, retired family court Judge Sidney Gribetz, who sat on the COVID Working Group that produced the, and Dawne Mitchell, who also sat on that working group and heads the Juvenile Rights Practice at the Legal Aid Society. Thank you both so much for coming on and lifting a veil on this for so many of our other listeners who are not personally involved.

Dawne Mitchell: Thank you.

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