Domestic Violence

29 January 01

by Tracey Middlekauff

Get off me baby,
Get off and leave me alone
I’m lonely when you’re gone

but I’m even lonelier when you’re home
A blues song by Holly Near

Rosa Schirripa is a full-time student at the City University of New York, a part-time intern in social work and a full-time mother of two teenage boys. She is also a former victim of domestic abuse.

She accepted the beatings for years. “I thought marriage is not about happiness, it is about starting a family and raising kids,” she says. ”My father used to hit my mother, so I thought that is the way a husband and wife treated each other.”

In 1999, New York City’s domestic violence hotline received more than 95,000 calls. These included reports of child abuse, elder abuse, abuse of a partner in a gay or lesbian relationship, and other crimes.
But the majority were from women who are abused by their husbands or boyfriends. An estimated 49 percent of all women who are murdered in New York City die at the hands of their intimate partners. In Brooklyn alone, from 1998 to 1999, domestic violence homicides nearly doubled (from 14 to 25 by September).

New Yorkers are now facing the problem in several ways. The city recently enacted two landmark laws designed to help both former and present victims. Private groups provide victims with shelter and educating them. School programs try to reach young girls before they become victims. New York’s court system will soon become somewhat less Byzantine, thanks to a new plan that will allow each domestic violence case to be heard by a single judge, rather than in a series of often unrelated courts, as is now frequently the case.

The efforts are going on in Washington as well. In her final days in office Attorney General Janet Reno issued a ruling that could make it easier for foreign victims of domestic violence to receive asylum in the United States.

Still, life is not easy for people like Rosa Schirripa. She left her husband when she read an article about wife abuse and recognized her own life story. She contacted a counselor, who helped her move out. Her first hurdle was to find a place to live, initially an apartment, then a house in Staten Island. Now she continues to struggle, with school, with work, with childrearing – and with the constant temptation to go back to her ex-husband. She deals with the stress, she says, by eating and crying.

THE NEW LAWS

In December, Mayor Giuliani signed into law a bill — the first of
its kind in the country — that gives domestic violence victims the
right to sue their former abusers for compensatory and punitive damages.
The federal Violence Against Women Act had included such a provision,
but it was overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that such
protection should be left up to states and municipalities. The New
York City law is partly a response to the court.

This “provides one more avenue for women to use, especially women
who are economically dependent on their abuser,” says Bea Hanson,
vice president of domestic violence services at Safe Horizon, a nonprofit
victim assistance, advocacy and violence prevention organization.

Far more controversial was a bill that aims to prevent employment discrimination against victims
of domestic violence. It would, for example, require an employer to
grant an abused woman leave to pursue her case in court.

Elisa Velazquez, deputy counsel for Public Advocate Mark Green, who
introduced the bill two years ago, says one aspect of domestic violence
distinguishes it from other crimes. “It is an ongoing crime,” Velazquez
says. “Home is not a haven. That is very different from someone who
is a victim of a one-time act.” She also explained that “there is
a stigma associated with domestic violence, which is why we specifically
targeted it.”

Mayor Giuliani initially opposed the bill but reversed himself and
signed it on January 5 — with reservations. While stressing the positive aspects of the legislation, Giuliani called for amendments to clarify the definition of a domestic violence victim and to require that employers be given proof than an employee seeking relief under the measure is, indeed, a victim of domestic violence.

GETTING OUT

One perplexing question for people who have never been in an abusive situation is why someone would “choose” to stay. Schirripa herself does not know why she let her ex-husband hit her for years: “If I ever figure it out, I will be happy to tell you.”

One problem is that the victims are often financially dependent on their abusers. Even a “wealthy woman” can feel trapped, with limited options, if she has no access to the family finances.

To remedy that, organizations in the city try to expand those options, by offering counseling services, shelter and education. Safe Horizon, has a contract with the city to run its 24-hour domestic violence hotline (1-800-621-HOPE) and oversees 25 percent of the city’s emergency beds, as well as its own shelter facilities, transitional
programs and counseling services.

Its services seek to help women achieve independence, both financially
(by hooking them up to job training) and emotionally (by building
their self-esteem). “Independent living arrangements are important
as well,” Safe Horizon’ Hanson says.

Hanson admits that there are never enough shelters to fill demand.
She would also like to see more supportive, permanent housing for
abused women. “Women who do not have many Resources often go back
to their batterers,” she says.

Rosa Schirripa agrees that there should be more housing options for
women who are trying to get out of desperate situations. “I wish once
the victim felt strong enough to leave, there would be some kind of
public housing with a reasonable rent,” she says. “Not a shelter;
that’s a joke. I was given a choice — ‘There is room for you, but
not for your kids.’”

EDUCATION

The best approach, of course, is to stop abuse before it starts.
This includes prevention programs in the schools. “It’s important
to reach people before they’re stuck in violent relationships; People
who grow up with abuse don’t see it as a problem until it’s too late,”
says Rona Soloman of the Center for the Elimination of Violence in
the Family, which is working in 13 city high schools to teach the
fundamentals of a healthy relationship.

The city also sponsors public education campaigns such as the Teen
Relationship Abuse campaign, which seeks to teach the public that
patterns of abuse often start early. At present, though, there is
no citywide program in the public schools to teach self-esteem to
girls.

CALLING THE POLICE

Rosa Schirripa remembers that things got so bad with her husband
one holiday that she called the police. “Why don’t you just kiss and
make up for the kids,” an officer told her.

Attitudes since then have been changing. In 1994, Mayor
Giuliani established the Mayor’s Commission to Combat Family Violence,
which places specially trained domestic violence prevention officers
(DVPOs) in every precinct. These officers take complaints seriously,
follow up on them and make it clear that they are available to be
contacted for further assistance.

In potentially violent family situations, the police must fill out
a domestic incident report that can be used in court if a victim needs
to seek an order of protection against her abuser.

One problem with this program, some critics says, is that while the
domestic violence officer may be well trained, they are not always
the ones who respond to a call, leaving the situation up to the particular
sensitivity of the officer in question.

But Bea Hanson says that, despite its shortcomings, “the domestic
violence prevention officer has pushed the domestic violence agenda
ahead light years.”

TOO MANY COURTS

After a case leaves the hands of the police, it often goes to the
courts, where reforms are also being made.

One program, to be launched in two Brooklyn precincts with high
rates of reported domestic violence, will place key evidence in a
domestic violence case onto a secured Web site that will be available
to judges within hours of an
attack. This will provide the judge with pictures and sounds from
the incident as well as information about the defendant’s criminal
record and whether the couple has previously been involved in Family
Court. Now, most misdemeanor domestic-abuse cases in New York are
dismissed, many because of poor evidence.

In a further attempt to make the judicial system more responsive,
New York State’s chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, announced a plan on
January 8 that would allow domestic violence cases to be heard by
a single judge. Currently, as many as four courts can be involved,
with the Supreme Court handling the divorce aspects, Family Court
resolving custody issues and Criminal Court hearing any criminal charges.
Surrogate Court also sometimes plays a role.

By this spring, integrated Domestic Violence Courts will be established
on a trial basis in four counties, including the Bronx. The plan should
eventually be implemented statewide.

HOPE

Rosa Schirripa says she still loves her ex-husband. But for her own
sake and the sake of her sons, she says, she is firm about one thing:
She will never return to him. She knows she will make it through the
tough times. “I want to teach my kids that we are not quitters. It
might not be easy, and it might not be today, but it can be done if
you have the will.”

###

By Tracey Middlekauff

When Marjina, a young Bangladeshi woman working as a live-in housekeeper
for an Indian family in Dubai, was invited to accompany the family
to live and work in the U.S., she jumped at the opportunity. To her,
America meant money and freedom. But soon after she arrived to begin
her new life, Marjina says her dreams quickly dissolved.

“I thought they would treat me like a family member,” she says, speaking
in her native Bengali through an interpreter. “But I was lied to.”

At the time, Marjina was unaware that she, like any domestic worker
– documented or undocumented — was legally entitled to a work environment
free from exploitation and abuse. But unfortunately, employers often
thumb their noses at the law and ignore the rights of their domestic
help.

Indeed, Marjina describes a grueling work schedule with little or
no compensation. 18-hour days on Monday to Friday, 8-hour days on
her “days off” during the weekend. She says she was never allowed
to eat until the family was finished, she was forced to sleep in the
basement with no mattress, and she was made to shovel snow in the
cold Teaneck, N.J. winter wearing the only shoes she brought with
her from Dubai: sandals. During this time, she says “I didn’t even
know what a U.S. dollar looked like.”

Marjina found an advocate in one of her employers’ friends, who located
a Bangladeshi family in need of her services. But according to Marjina,
things went from bad to worse.

Her new employers forced her to work similar backbreaking hours,
Marjina says, and promised to pay her a meager $400 per month, most
of which she never received. She was never allowed to leave on her
own, and alleges she was physically abused by the couple’s mentally
impaired son. After three months, Marjina finally demanded payment,
upon which she was locked in a basement, then ordered to leave with
only $375 cash.

Distraught and frightened, with no English and little money, Marjina
got on a bus, where she finally found some luck. The driver spoke
Hindi, and he took Marjina to an Indian store where the owner called
for help. Subsequently, Marjina was put in contact with Andolan, a
Queens-based South Asian workers’ rights group. Last fall Marjina
filed a lawsuit against her former employers, who deny all her allegations.

LONG HOURS, LOW WAGES

Marjina’s story is not an isolated one, according to many advocates
for workers’ rights, or even a particularly extreme example of the
abuse that many immigrant domestic workers face on a daily basis.
Ai-jen Poo, program director at the Women Workers Project of the Committee
Against Anti-Asian Violence in Manhattan, says that, “It’s the
norm that people are subjected to long hours, little or no overtime
pay, low wages, little privacy and a difficult environment.” For live-in
domestic workers, things are even worse. “(These workers) are often
on call 24-7,” Poo says.

The problem is extremely difficult to quantify accurately, because
several groups, including the New York City-based South
Asian Workers Rights Project, are only now starting to gather
the hard data.

Experts estimate that ninety-five percent of immigrant domestic workers
are women of color, half of them undocumented, and in many cases they
work for people of their own ethnicity. Typically, Caribbean and Latin
American immigrants will find jobs with white families through an
agency, whereas Asian women, particularly South Asian women, will
find jobs in upper class Asian families through direct ads in South
Asian newspapers. “The Asian-American community is much more insular,
and tends to hire more undocumented workers,” says Chaumtoli Huq,
an attorney working with the South Asian Workers Rights Project. When
an Indian family hires an Indian domestic, Huq says, what separates
them is not ethnicity, obviously, but class.

USING THEIR IMMIGRANT STATUS AGAINST THEM

The worker/employer relationship is inherently based on an imbalance
of power, an imbalance which employers often use to intimidate their
employees and prevent them from leaving. “If employers can, they will
use immigration status as an added weapon,” says Nadia Marin-Molina
of Workplace Project.

This can take the form of an employer confiscating a worker’s passport,
keeping a worker in the house to keep them ignorant of their rights
and out of contact with potential allies, threatening to turn an undocumented
worker over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and holding
out false promises of a green card. Molina tells of one worker who
was promised green card sponsorship by her employer. After 10 years
of working for low wages, she found out that her employer had never
even taken the first step to sponsor her. And in any case, according
to Chaumtoli Huq, getting a green card rarely happens at all for a
domestic worker, and even if it does, it takes from ten to 15 years.

One might assume that even the most vindictive employers would hesitate
to turn an undocumented employee over to the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, because they could be fined thousands of dollars for having
violated the law by hiring the worker in the first place. But the
standard to determine if an employer should be fined, Huq says, is
whether the employer knowingly hired an undocumented worker. All the
employer has to do is say they were ignorant of their employee’s work
status.

Ai-jen Poo believes that employers take advantage of their domestic
workers simply because they can. “We have to change the culture where
all the power lies in the hands of an employer,” she says. Poo points
out that domestic work is traditionally seen as women’s work, which
is devalued. “The work these women are doing completely enables every
other industry to function — it’s crucial,” she says. “But it’s not
seen that way.”

WORKERS’ RIGHTS

Whatever society’s perceptions of the value of domestic work, one
fact is certain: domestic workers, both documented and undocumented,
are legally entitled to the same basic rights any U.S. citizen should
expect. According to a pamphlet for workers put out by the Women Workers
Project, these rights include (but should not be limited to) workers’
compensation insurance, short term disability benefits, minimum wage,
overtime, meal breaks and one full day off each week.

The problem is, many workers are not aware of these basic rights,
and even if they are, fear of employer retribution may prevent them
from seeking help. In New York, several groups provide representation,
education and outreach to domestic workers in need.

The Women Workers Project has recently initiated an effort to institute
a standard, industry-wide contract for domestic workers. While Ai-jen
Poo admits that such a contract may be difficult to enforce, she stresses
the need for a standard model and organized support. Such an effort
is dependent on numbers; the more workers who are armed with the contract,
the better. Although the contract effort is in its infancy, Poo says
thousands of copies have already been distributed to workers.

Chamtoli Huq cites two important elements in creating a better work
environment for domestic workers. One is to support the contract campaign
and the viability of enforcing such a contract, and the second is
to push for legislative change, such as the bill passed in the House
May 9 which would offer protection from deportation to domestic workers
who sue their employers. The bill, authored by Congressmen Christopher
Smith (R-Trenton) and Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn), is currently awaiting
a Senate vote.

But community outreach organizations remain a crucial element in
the fight for domestic workers’ rights, because before a worker can
take advantage of any of their rights, they must first learn what
those rights are.

MARJINA

Shortly after Marjina met Andolan’s co-founder, Nahar Alam, she found
work with a new family, and says she is now “very happy” with them.
But even though she currently makes $1,000 a month, Alam points out
that this is not even minimum wage given the hours Marjina works.
Marjina still gets no holidays. “It’s still not enough,” Alam says.

Marjina says that she knows her rights now, and “will tell other
people to go to organizations (like Andolan) when they come to this
country.” As for what she endured when she first arrived, she says,
“Until the day I die, I’ll remember this experience.”

Tracey Middlekauff is a journalist living
in Brooklyn.

###

Lead Poisoning

16 April 01

by Tracey Middlekauff

Over the years, Cordell Cleare had complained about the state of
her apartment in central Harlem, and city inspectors had cited her
landlord for over 40 violations. The presence of lead paint, however,
was not one of them.

Then, in 1994, a pediatrician found that Cleare’s son, not yet two
at the time, had been poisoned by lead.

When a child is found to have levels of lead in his blood in excess
of 20 micrograms per deciliter, the
target=new>Department of Health gets involved. It ordered Cleare’s landlord
to remove the lead paint from her apartment.

Cleare says that her landlord picked “10 random guys” to work on
her apartment; they followed no safety procedures. “They were burning
paint off the walls with flames,” she says. To make matters worse,
Cleare had not been directed to a lead “safe house” for the time the
work was being performed. Her son was re-poisoned. Cleare called the
Department of Housing Preservation and Development, who told her to
call the Department of Environmental Protection. Finally, after two
years, HPD performed the work that should have been done immediately.

Tragically, it took a “painfully long time,” Cleare says, to get
the level of lead in her son’s blood back to normal. He lost his ability
to speak, which he eventually regained through therapy. Now eight,
her son has had to overcome many challenges, Cleare says, and still
gets speech therapy and other support to help with the learning disability
she is convinced was caused by the lead poisoning. Her son is now
performing at his grade level, and she remains hopeful that things
will work out. “I believe my child will eventually be functional without
help.”

A PREVENTABLE ILLNESS

Lead poisoning is widely recognized as one of the most serious childhood
health problems in New York City, and one that is preventable. Found
in about 30,000 New York children, it can cause serious problems such
as mental retardation, neurological damage, and developmental disorders.
If detected early enough, and if the lead contaminant is properly
removed from the environment in which the child lives, the problem
is fully treatable. However, it is not as easy as: test, remove (the
lead), and treat. Along every step in the process, dealing with lead
is a hotly-contested political issue.

Activists call for strict regulations covering testing for lead and
removing it. They insist that landlords should be held strictly liable.
Their opponents say that the demands are financially unrealistic and
draconian. Both see right on their side; neither seems willing to
compromise.

The primary cause of lead poisoning in children comes from lead dust
and paint from peeling or deteriorated lead paint. New York City banned
the use of interior lead paint in the 1960s; the federal government
banned lead paint altogether in 1978. While lead paint can be found
in dwellings in any neighborhood–wealthy to low-income–lead poisoning
is primarily a problem in low income neighborhoods, where apartment
buildings have not been well-maintained, and lead paint has been allowed
to peel and crack due to lack of proper maintenance. While not confined
to any one geographical area, activists have located what they call
a lead belt, which runs through Red Hook, Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant
in Brooklyn, and Jamaica in Queens.

Carol Hill, co-chair of the New
York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning, explains, “Apartments
that are well-kept, where the paint is not disturbed, do not have
a problem. But when less affluent people move in, generally speaking,
the landlords do not care as much.” Hill explains that any breach
or crack in paint that may contain lead poses a threat, and lead dust
is even more dangerous. “Paint has to go through the stomach,” she
says, “dust goes right to the lungs.”

Hill believes the best ways to prevent lead poisoning is to educate
people in any community about the risks of lead paint, and to make
sure that testing is wide-spread and frequent. There are measures
to lessen the impact if a child is exposed to lead, such as what she
calls nutritional intervention: While a well-balanced diet does not
make high levels of lead absolutely safe or desirable, a diet rich
in iron, calcium, and vitamin C can help prevent a child’s body from
absorbing lead. A law enacted in New York City in 1992 mandates testing
every year for children ages one and two, and every year until age
six for at-risk children. But Hill advocates testing every six months
for at-risk children. That way, she says, if a child does contract
lead poisoning, they will not have it that long before something is
done.

Even something as seemingly simple as childhood testing is not without
controversy. This month, the New
York Public Interest Research Group sued the State Health Department,
claiming that officials have refused to release their statistics on
the number of New York children who have been tested for lead poisoning.
The watchdog group feels that not enough children have been tested,
and they are therefore not receiving the
proper care.

Controversy aside, when a child is tested, levels under 10 mcg/dcl
are considered safe by the Centers for Disease Control. A level of
10 is considered to be the beginning of lead poisoning, but it is
not until the level of lead concentration in a child’s blood reaches
20 that the New York City Department of Health is required to take
action when a child under six is involved. When he was just under
five years old, in 1993, Carol Hill’s grandson was diagnosed with
a level of 49. Luckily, an emergency repair team from HPD came in
a timely fashion and covered the walls with dry wall and plasterboard
while Hill and her grandson stayed in a safe house. He suffered no
long-term effects.

But unfortunately, things do not always go as smoothly as they did
for Hill, and just what laws and regulations should govern lead abatement
is the subject of much controversy.

LAW AFTER LAW

Until 1999, lead abatement (removal) was covered by Local Law 1.
At just half a page, the law was not specific in its proscriptions,
and various regulations were imposed to expedite and clarify it. According
to Matthew Chachére, an attorney for the Coalition to End Lead
Poisoning, there were often problems enforcing the law. “Roughly 40
percent of lead paint violations were still on the books a year later,”
he says. Chachere says that these violations were supposed to be fixed
within 24 hours. “The city was ordered to have time frames, and was
held in contempt over and over.”

Ostensibly with the purpose of consolidating, clarifying, and codifying
lead paint regulations and abatement, the City Council passed Local
Law 38 by a 36-15 vote in June of 1999, replacing all other legislation
dealing with lead.

Lead poisoning activists were incensed. Local Law 38, they charged,
was nothing more than a “landlord protection bill, ” one which would
decrease landlord responsibility in dealing with lead paint hazards.
Supporters of the bill maintained that it was a practical way to serve
the public interest.

In October of last year, Justice Louis York struck down the new law,
ruling in favor of the Coalition, who had brought the lawsuit against
the city. Justice York ruled that the city did not properly address
the bill’s environmental impact before voting on it. The city has
since appealed this decision; a ruling will probably be made early
next month. Chachere feels that there is almost no chance the decision
will be overturned. He says that those who are in favor of Local Law
38 “try to make it sound like something new, when it curtailed prior
responsibilities. … It eradicates lead dust as a hazard even though
all experts agree that lead dust is dangerous.”

Frank Ricci, the director of government affairs with the Rent
Stabilization Association, sees things differently. He believes
that most critics of Local Law 38 are trial lawyers who are afraid
that, under this new law, they would have has a much higher burden
of proof when bringing cases against landlords. “Under 38, the lawyers
would have to prove that the child got poisoned in the apartment,”
Ricci explains. “Some advocates are very sincere, but trial lawyers
are often masquerading in sheep’s clothing. That’s as plain a truth
as you’re going to get.”

Andrew Goldberg, an attorney for NYPIRG, feels the new law was deeply
flawed for a number of reasons. First of all, he says the new law
would only have addressed lead-poisoned children under the age of
six, when “Health Department records show that ten percent of lead
poisoned children are over the age of six.”

Even more disturbing, according to Goldberg, is that the new law
did not address lead dust as a potential hazard. The law also failed
to require a clearance test–a dust wipe test–to determine if a once-contaminated
area is free of lead dust. “This testing is the gold standard,” Goldberg
says. “It is the only way of knowing if an area is safe.” Instead,
the new law contained provisions for a limited clearance test, to
be done only if work was done on windows or doors.

Finally, Goldberg explains that who actually performs the lead abatement
is an
target=new>extremely important issue. The work must be done by trained workers,
he says, because “they know how not to poison themselves, how not
to contaminate the apartment further, and how not to contaminate their
own family.” Local Law 38 did not contain a provision that the work
be performed by trained workers. “The landlord lobby knows that clearance
testing and trained workers is a one-two punch,” Goldberg believes.

But Ricci feels that claims such as Goldberg’s are not grounded in
fact. He says that 99 percent of lead dust is tracked into an apartment
from outside due to its presence in soil from years of using leaded
gasoline. The dust-wipe test that advocates like Goldberg call for
simply “doesn’t correspond to the condition of the apartment,” according
to Ricci.

Ricci also says that lead abatement would still require trained experts,
but that Local Law 38 calls for specific cleaning procedures, which
could be done by the landlord, that constitute preventive maintenance.
He points out that the city, HPD, and owners’ groups have been running
training courses for landlords and supers.

Councilman Archie Spigner (D-Queens) strongly supported Local Law
38, and says he “would rather bet on a horse race” than guess whether
Judge York’s decision will be overturned. As for the critics of 38,
he says “people are entitled to their opinions.” He says he believes
Local Law 38 would “safeguard the health of children without placing
a fiscal burden on housing that is already on shaky fiscal ground.”

Spigner defends Local Law 38’s various specific provisions, which
he says were passed “after exhaustive testimony.” But he also feels
that legislation alone is not enough: “I think education is as important
as legislation … one without the other will never do the job.”

NOW WHAT?

What do activists advocate in lieu of Local Law 38? Carol Hill feels
the city needs “something kinder than Local Law 1, but more strict
than 38.”

Matthew Chachere believes that one good alternative was Intro 205,
which was written a few years ago by Councilman Stanley Michels (D,
Manhattan). “People will say that Local Law 1 is over-the-top,” he
admits. “But 205 says to take the appropriate action on a case-by
case basis.” NYPIRG is currently drafting a new proposal to cover
lead issues. Goldberg believes that it is important to have a strong
mandatory enforcement program, health-based standards, and liability;
in other words, if a landlord is negligent in his duties, he should
be liable.

Frank Ricci, however, doesn’t see any possibility of compromise.
He says, “They will never be happy. Thirty-eight was the compromise.”

But some important issues have not been covered by legislation. For
example, residents of buildings with fewer than three apartments have
no protection or recourse until a child is actually lead poisoned.
And some feel that small-time landlords should be offered monetary
compensation as an incentive to do the right thing. One solution,
according to Andrew Goldberg, is to offer tax breaks to landlords
who do building upgrades and repairs. This would help encourage landlords
who may not otherwise be able to afford it to maintain their buildings
properly.

The (relatively) good news is that, according to Goldberg, given
the age of New York City housing, the prevalence rate of lead poisoning
is lower than in many other cities. This, he says, is a credit to
the programs that have existed. “New York City is not the worst place
in the world,” he says, “but still we are talking about thousands
of children a year.”

To Cordell Cleare, even one lead-poisoned child is too many. Her
son deals with the results of his lead poisoning every day. That is
what led her to the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning,
which she now co-chairs. Her activism has been ignited, in fact; she
also serves as Council member Bill Perkins’ director of constituent
services. She believes that lead poisoning has a ripple effect. “It
costs us all around,” she says. “Housing, education, medicine. I feel
fortunate that I got in touch with a good group. But there are people
for whom it never worked out.”

###

By Tracey Middlekauff

Timothy Stack has seen some sickening acts perpetrated against animals in his 12-year career as a humane law enforcement officer with the New York-based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, including people burning or stabbing their pets, or throwing them off the roof. But Stack knows that animal abuse does not have to be so blatant. Some owners abandon their pets. Some neglect them. Some simply do not spay or neuter them. And he knows that no form of abuse is without consequences; the results can be not just ugly, but deadly.

When a group of stray dogs late last year broke into the Staten Island Zoo and killed several animals, and then two days later another group attacked and mauled two people on the boardwalk in the Rockaways, the press focused on the “bloodthirsty strays” going on a “bloody rampage.” News accounts made no mention of where these dogs came from – that they were abandoned pets, or the offspring of abandoned pets – and so did not finger the real culprits.

The same has happened again and again with the pit bull, a breed once owned by Theodore Roosevelt and Helen Keller, but now often associated in the public mind with viciousness. “There’s no way to determine that any breed of dog is more dangerous than another,” says Jane Berkey, founder of Animal Farm Foundation, which takes in abandoned, adoptable pit bulls, a breed she describes as “so trainable, so soft.” The pit bull’s negative image began in the 1980’s, Berkey believes, when sensational coverage of dog fighting, which is a felony in New York, focused on the dogs themselves rather than the inhumane owners who instigated their behavior. “It’s about what’s at the other end of the leash,” Berkey says, “never the dog.”

But last month, blame was placed where it belonged, when in a highly publicized case a jury in San Francisco found Marjorie Knoller guilty of second degree murder because her two dogs, both Presa Canarios, had mauled to death a neighbor named Diane Whipple. “They were dangerous dogs, but it wasn’t the dogs’ fault,” jury foreman Don Newton said. “They were never trained, never properly conditioned to be around people.”

In New York, educating the public about responsible pet ownership is high on the agenda of animal welfare groups, as is making sure that New York has a humane and effective shelter system, and ensuring that felonious acts of abuse are recognized and prosecuted. There are plenty of laws already on the books, but much more could be done to combat the abuse and neglect of animals by human beings.

POPULATION EXPLOSION

Since November of 2000, a city law has required that all animals adopted from shelters be spayed or neutered. But the law has not done much good in curbing the growing problem of pet overpopulation. Not everyone gets pets from a shelter. The law would have required pet stores as well to sterilize all animals before selling them, but state law specifically prohibits this; proponents of more widespread mandatory sterilization laws point out that animal breeders typically resist such regulations.

The city could take steps to make spaying and neutering more convenient and inexpensive for pet owners, says Lisa Weisberg, policy director of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. One way to do that is with roving vans that go into underserved neighborhoods. The society has two such vans, and is soon to get more. The Center for Animal Care and Control, the agency which has been contracted by the city since 1995 to round up strays, has another two vans, though they do not rove; they remain parked in their lot and used to alter the dogs just from their own shelters.

Another initiative in the attempt to curb overpopulation was the recent passage of a law allowing residents of New York City public housing to own pets, at the discretion of each building manager. It is too soon to tell if the legislation has had any impact on the stray population. But it cannot hurt to have more potential homes for animals, and less incentive to abandon them.

Pet abandonment is a misdemeanor in New York, but Samantha Mullen of the regional office of the Humane Society of the United States says that often people would rather abandon their animals than take them to a shelter. “What an ignorant and inhumane way to give up your animal,” she says. They are afraid that in the shelter, the animal may be euthanized.

THE EUTHANASIA DEBATE

Many animal activists are not happy with the shelter system as it exists now, criticizing the Center for Animal Care and Control, which runs shelters in Brooklyn and Manhattan, for a policy that, they claim, emphasizes euthanasia (i.e. killing) over adoption.

Julie Van Ness of United Action for Animals charges that Mayor Rudy Giuliani was never motivated by concerns for animal welfare when he contracted with the Center for Animal Care and Control, but rather simply wanted “to get animals off the street and euthanize them so they wouldn’t bother anyone.” (It is unclear what Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s position will be regarding animal welfare issues).

But Samantha Mullen of the Humane Society believes that often people see euthanasia as the problem, rather than the symptom. And Doris Meyer of the Center for Animal Care and Control says that they run an “open admission shelter. Every animal that shows up at our door is accepted.” Such a situation can lead to some difficult choices, she says, but “no animal is euthanized until the staff vet confirms that it’s legitimate.”

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR

Debate over euthanasia often boils down to personal convictions. There are other issues on which everyone agrees, at least in theory, such as animal cruelty. But it is sometimes difficult to convince lawmakers, prosecutors and police to take animal cruelty cases seriously.

The Humane Society’s First Strike campaign makes the connection between violence done to animals and to humans. In many cases, it demonstrates, animal abusers also engage in domestic violence.

The ASPCA is also working to educate police officers about their duties regarding animal cruelty. “Police need to be trained in detecting and dealing with the problem, and not always deferring to the ASPCA,” says Barbara Stagno, northeast director of In Defense of Animals. Though some police officers are responsible and responsive, many seem unaware that they must pursue animal offenders just like any other crime, and as a result the ASPCA’s Humane Law Enforcement unit ends up with an overwhelming caseload. “There’s no other law where the police abdicate their responsibility to a private agency,” says Jane Hoffman, of the committee on animals of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

While Hoffman says that she would like to see stronger penalties in abuse cases, she is more interested in seeing the current laws enforced. The Humane Society’s First Strike manager, Virginia Prevas, says that cruelty reporting is up across the nation due to greater public awareness, but Hoffman points out that whether or not the case is pursued depends on the individual prosecutor. Lisa Weisberg says that enforcement of current dog licensing laws would also help, as such enforcement would demand accountability for abused and abandoned animals.

But dogs are not the only domestic animals to suffer from abuse and neglect in New York. Packs of roaming cats do not make the front page, but Timothy Stack says that he receives at least as many calls about cruelty to cats as to dogs. Weisberg says that there is a tremendous cat overpopulation problem, but there are not that many laws governing felines. Last year, the ASPCA drafted legislation that would penalize New York cat owners who let their cats roam outside, thereby contributing to overpopulation, but such laws would be difficult to enforce.

Trying to protect every pet in New York City is a daunting task. Some say that education will be the key. Barbara Stagno points out that New York City has an old law on the books mandating humane education in public schools, but it is generally ignored. This is too bad. “It starts in the schools,” Jane Berkey says. “We should teach compassion and love of all life from the very beginning.”

By Tracey Middlekauff

20 May 02

Frank Brancato’s ninth-grade remedial English class begins with the
Parable of the Lamp from the New Testament, about Jesus telling his
disciples that when one lights a lamp, one does not hide the light
under a bed or a bushel.

“Is it saying you shouldn’t hide your intelligence?” one student
asks.

Brancato replies with a resounding “Yes!” and then moves on to the
main lesson, the book they are reading, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit
451,” about a future society where books are banned. What Brancato
is clearly trying to teach the students is the importance of thinking
for themselves.

In a public school, a principal would surely reprimand a teacher
for reading from the Bible. But Frank Brancato happens to be the principal
of this school, and the school is Bishop Ford Central Catholic High
School in Brooklyn.

It is not just being able to read from a religious book that makes
Catholic schools different from public schools, nor is it the uniforms
or the crosses. For many years, New York parents have scrimped and
saved to send their children to Catholic schools – whether or not
they were Catholic – because they thought them a better option than
the public schools in their neighborhoods. Some experts long have
said that comparisons between parochial and public schools are inherently
unfair, since the religious schools can choose whom to admit, and,
perhaps more significantly, whom to expel. But the argument only bolstered
the notion that a Catholic education was a superior education.

Lately, this conventional wisdom has been tested, in several ways.

Say “Catholic” these days and the first things that spring to mind
for many people are the priest abuse cases. But in the classrooms,
offices and even the hallways of Catholic schools like Bishop Ford,
there is surprisingly little talk about the scandal. This may be in
part because about 94 percent of the faculty and administrators in
the country’s Catholic schools come
from the laity, not the clergy.

It may also be because Catholic schools in New York have other pressing
concerns — an ongoing financial crisis, an overall decline in enrollment,
a difficulty in attracting quality teachers, labor strife, a slide
in test scores. Indeed, some say even the schools’ long-term survival
is not assured. The New York Archdiocese, facing a $20 million deficit,
has closed three of its schools, and the only surprise was that there
were not more.

This summer, in what many expect will be a landmark church-state
case, the Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of Cleveland’s
school voucher program, which subsidizes tuition for students to attend
religious schools,
target=”_blank”>primarily Catholic ones. A win for school vouchers might seem
an answer to at least some of the prayers of New York’s Catholic school
educators. But they themselves do not see it that way.

“Catholic schools have struggled for years,” said one educator. “It’s
always going to be a struggle.”

MONEY TROUBLES

Catholic educators like Frank Brancato believe that they provide
a unique education, both academically and spiritually rigorous. If
there has been a general drop in enrollment, Brancato says, that is
because the city has fewer Catholic families — a claim that is not
supported by hard statistics (the U.S. Census does not ask questions
about religion). He also says there has been a failure to get the
good word out.

But Brancato need make no excuses for his own school, whose 900 students
represent an actual increase in enrollment from five years ago. He
also points with pride to the diversity of the student body, which
is roughly a third each African-American, Caucasian, and Hispanic
(with European and Asian mixed in), the most diverse of the 20 high
schools in the Diocese
of Brooklyn , which also includes Queens. (The New
York Archdiocese, which has 55 high schools, includes Manhattan,
the Bronx, Staten Island, and seven other New York counties). The
percentage of their students who are actually Catholic, 77 percent,
is typical both for New York and for the nation. Students of any religion
are welcome, Brancato explains, but all students must take four years
of religion and attend church with the school. “This is a Catholic
school, and we have not compromised our Catholic identity to raise
enrollment.”

But, despite its growing enrollment, Bishop Ford is experiencing
the same financial problems of the city’s other Catholic schools,
which are mostly independent of their dioceses, receiving no money
from them – though even the diocesan schools are struggling.

Next year, students at Bishop Ford will pay tuition of almost $6,000,
which is about $1,000 more than average for a Catholic high school
in the city. But even this does not cover the full cost of educating
a student, which Brancato estimates to be about $8,000. The difference
is made up by fundraising events.

It might seem like common sense to raise tuition in order to cover
costs, but Nora Murphy, a spokesperson for the Catholic Schools of
the Archdiocese, says this would run counter to the mission of most
of the schools, which is to be open to children of all economic classes.

SCHOOL VOUCHERS

One would expect Catholic educators to be hopeful that school vouchers
will become a reality in New York. After all, if parents were receiving
vouchers, more students could afford to enroll.

Proponents of school vouchers believe that not only would vouchers
offer a solution for parents in neighborhoods with failing public
schools, but that vouchers would help create an incentive for public
schools to improve
their performance.

But opponents charge that vouchers would take much-needed taxpayer
money away from the public schools. And, they say, school vouchers
are unconstitutional.

The New
York Civil Liberties Union has pointed out that the Blaine amendment
in New Yorks constitution expressly forbids the use of any public
money being used, directly or indirectly, to help any school which
is in whole or part affiliated with any religious group.

Sol Stern, a contributing editor of City Journal, who is also working
on a book critical of urban public schools, does not believe vouchers
will ever happen in New York.

But, even if they did, Catholic school educators like Brancato do
not believe they would make that much difference to the schools themselves.
The vouchers would only cover tuition. As Nora Murphy points out,
even schools in the archdiocese which are running at capacity are
still struggling to make up the gap between tuition and cost of education,
which is on average about $1,300 per student.

SALARIES

Naturally, the financial crunch in the schools has an effect on the
salaries of Catholic school teachers, who make far less than public
school teachers; Catholic elementary school teachers fare worst of
all. Salaries for New York City public school teachers range up to
$70,000. Elementary school teachers in the archdiocese make a maximum
of roughly $37,000; high school teachers in the archdiocese max out
around the low 40s. At Bishop Ford, the scale runs from $20,874 to
$46, 337. Earlier in the school year, members of the Lay Faculty Association
and the Federation of Catholic Teachers called in sick to protest
pay and pension issue. These issues have not been resolved across
the board, although Brancato says that the Lay Faculty Association
signed a two-and-a-half year contract at his school.

“We have been really fortunate in keeping some really good people,”
Brancato says. But he points out a pattern that mirrors the problem
the public schools often have when they lose teachers to higher paying
jobs in the suburbs: “We get people out of college, we train them,
they peak and they get swiped up by the public schools.” The way to
try to keep teachers, Brancato says, is to make them feel as if they
are part of the community. “We are doing Gods work,” Brancato believes.

A SOLID EDUCATION?

Whatever problems Catholic educators acknowledge, many maintain their
schools provide an enormous bang for the buck. A recent
study comparing Catholic and public schools in New York found
that the Catholic schools were twice as efficient spending less money
per pupil, with better academic results, and that their students generally
perform better on state tests.

In March, however, it came to light that the citys parochial eighth-graders
did nearly as badly as public schools students on the state math exam.
Sixty-two percent of the Catholic students in the New York archdiocese
failed, compared to 77 percent of the public school students. Catherine
Hickey, superintendent of schools for the archdiocese, expressed displeasure
with the results at the time, and a study conducted by New York University concludes that “Catholic
schools need to address the challenge of the new state standards in
mathematics.”

But Principal Brancato, while admitting that some students do struggle
with the test, also argues that the numbers of students who fail the
test are relatively small compared with the number of students who
graduate with advanced math courses. In addition, he points out that
that particular test is relatively new, and that teaching to the test
has not traditionally been the Catholic school approach. “Testing
takes a lot of the creativity out of teaching,” he feels.

Sol Stern looks at the testing results in another way. “There has
been a lot of comparison of tests over the past couple of decades,”
Stern says. “If you could accumulate all of the data, most would indicate
at least some advantage for similarly situated poor minority kids.”
But the real point, Stern believes, lies in something more important:
graduation rates. In the New York archdiocese, the high school graduation
rate is about 95 percent, more or less comparable with the nation.
The figure is roughly double the graduation rate in New York City
public schools.

But Jacqueline Ancess, co-director of the National Center for Restructuring
Education, Schools and Teaching, does not believe in making sweeping
generalities about the relative merits of Catholic and public schools.
She points out that Catholic schools have the power to expel; that
there are children in the public schools who have “a lot of issues”
and “I am not convinced Catholic schools do better with those kids.”
As for the higher graduation rates, Ancess points out that this may
be linked to the fact that many of the parents in Catholic schools
are making a sacrifice to send their children to that school, indicating
a more supportive home environment than many public school children
may have.

Another factor the Catholic schools may have on their side is their
size. In general, Catholic schools are smaller than public school
in New York. In fact, the NYU study indicates that the performance
gap between Catholic and public schools in New York is smallest in
Manhattan, where the public schools tend to be smaller than in the
other boroughs. Ancess concurs, pointing out that research shows that
kids tend to do better in smaller schools. Smaller schools, she says,
are also generally safer.

SAFETY FIRST

Indeed, according to Brancato, it is not the education that is first
on most parents’ list of reasons for choosing Catholic school. The
reason is safety. Nora Murphy agrees, though she is careful to point
out that public schools are not necessarily less safe; many parents
simply perceive this to be the case. Perhaps, Ancess says, the public
schools in certain neighborhoods are not doing a good job reaching
out to parents and making them feel that their school is safe.

Of course, as Brancato admits, “violence, scandal etc. can happen
in any school.” Near the end of the school day, three 11th-graders
say that there are troublemakers in Bishop Ford and confide, perhaps
with a touch of adolescent bravado, that a student can get away with
anything at school if they want to. But at the same time, two of them
admit that, unlike the public schools they used to attend, there is
no pressure to be “bad.” The third, a lifelong Catholic-school student,
is loath to make a comparison between the two kinds of schools. It
is not about the school, he says, it is about the individual student:
“It depends on what you make of it.”
### ]]> http://www.gotracey.com/catholic-schools-gotham-gazette/feed/ 0 http://www.gotracey.com/teachers-as-cops-gotham-gazette/ http://www.gotracey.com/teachers-as-cops-gotham-gazette/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2001 16:41:07 +0000 buskerdog http://gotracey.com/wp/?p=118

Teachers As Cops?

by Tracey Middlekauff

29 October 01

In a Manhattan public school, a boy kissed a girl while they were alone. She complained to a teacher. He protested that she wanted him to kiss her; she said that she did not. The teacher called the cops. The boy was taken away in handcuffs.

“I’m not going to defend what he did, I have three daughters,” says Jill Herman, who was principal of the school at the time. “But I don’t know if it was criminal. I don’t know if it was harassment. I felt it could have been worked out.”

But Herman had no discretion to do so, she says, because Board of Education regulations dictate that such an incident must be reported to the police.

On November 6, voters have an opportunity to weigh in on an issue that is more complicated than recent headlines might suggest. One of the proposals that will be on the ballot,
called the school reporting proposal, would, if passed, “require Board of Education officials and employees to report immediately to the New York Police Department information relating to suspected crimes in public schools, including sex-offenses and violent crimes.” It would turn policy into law, and levy a legal punishment on those teachers and others who did not contact the police.

It would be difficult to find anyone who would argue that teachers should not report cases of adult misconduct towards children. But what about peer shenanigans such as that incident in Jill Herman’s old school? What exactly are “suspected crimes,” critics ask, and should teachers under threat of punishment take on in effect the role of cops?

A RISE IN INCIDENTS?

Several recent cases of sexual assault perpetrated by students have contributed to the perception that the situation is spiraling out of control. In October of last year, a 12-year-old girl at MS 2 in Brooklyn was allegedly pulled to the ground and sexually assaulted by a 13-year old boy; the Daily News reported that the school did not allow the girl to call home
after the incident. Three students at IS 158 in the Bronx were charged with attempted rape against a 14-year old girl last May, and a teacher there told the Daily News that sexual activity in the school was rampant. In another case last spring, two 6th grade boys at Community School 66 in the Bronx were charged with trapping two girls, 11 and 12, in the stairwell and then fondling them; school officials reportedly failed to notify police of the incident.

In May, second-grade Bronx teacher Milton McFarlane was charged with sexual abuse, sodomy, sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child after allegations that he victimized a 9-year-old boy in his classroom. What shocked many, beyond the act itself, was that McFarlane had been charged with the same criminal counts involving an 8-year-old boy in an earlier instance and was still teaching.

Taken at face value, the statistics paint a bleak picture of the situation as well. The New York Times reported in June that sexual incidents for the year 2001 jumped 13 percent to 354, four times the national average, while other crimes in schools appeared to be down.

The problem, many say, is that these statistics do not paint an accurate picture. Three-quarters of the incidents are classified as third degree, the least serious, which can include a wide array of offenses, and does not differentiate between acts perpetrated by students or teachers. It is also unclear whether the number of incidents have risen, or whether reporting has risen. Additionally, it is unclear from the statistics what sorts of incidents, if any, have increased. Donna Lieberman, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, says, “Nobody has an accurate assessment. It is all being lumped together.”

A REPORTING PROBLEM

Faced with highly publicized incidents in which school authorities failed to do anything, Schools Chancellor Harold Levy distributed a policy directive in June, 2000 to all school principals which mandated, upon threat of disciplinary action, that all incidents of a criminal nature be reported to the police.

In June 2001, the City Council Education Committee drafted legislation that would legally require all Board of Ed employees to report any crime or suspected crime to the police; failure to do so would risk being found guilty of a misdemeanor, with a possible one-year jail sentence or a fine of up to $1,000. A vote has been indefinitely postponed.

But now the charter proposal on school reporting will be on the ballot.

Levy was careful in his testimony before the City Council to emphasize that “we do not [want to] act in a way that criminalizes behavior that in some cases could be developmentally appropriate.” But many experts say that over reporting has already led to criminalization of such behavior.

PRO AND CON

Jill Chaifetz of Advocates for Children, a group which, among other things, works in educational advocacy, says that no one is against making schools safe. However, she adds, “Ever since Levy announced you’ll get fined if you don’t report everything, reporting has skyrocketed. … We’re getting the craziest cases. A 6-year-old girl had a pointy comb and was suspended for bringing a dangerous weapon. … We’ve had 6-year olds accused of sexual harassment.” Chaifetz says that there has been a “general complete overreaction.” The passage of the legislation or the charter revision proposal would only make things worse, she feels.

Detective Terrance Wansley, a co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, says that he can see merits on both sides of the issue. At the same time, he feels that a blanket mandate to report all suspected offenses could lead to problems. “I can say, as it stands, unless they get very specific, it’s going to be a mess,” Wansley says. Of course, he points out, as everyone agrees, all cases involving an adult must be taken very seriously and be reported. But in cases of alleged peer-on-peer misconduct, he points out some difficulties he has faced.

“I’ve found it difficult, as an investigator, to go into certain schools and interview students–victims or perpetrators,” he says. In addition, he says, “I’ve seen school officials relay just the bare, incomplete facts. School officials aren’t trained in criminal activity.”

Indeed, better training for teachers is an issue some point to as not only a good preventive measure, but also a good way to deal with the current reporting situation. Advocates like Chaifetz and Lieberman argue that the Board of Ed needs to draw a clear line between criminal and inappropriate behavior, and then give the teachers the skills necessary to accurately perceive the difference. “If the school system holds principals accountable and gives them the means to train their staff, we’ll go a long way towards dealing with disciplinary problems,” Lieberman maintains. “Kneejerk penalties with criminal sentences is counterproductive.”

Chancellor Levy, in his testimony on the school crime reporting bill, pointed to prevention programs such as conflict resolution, mentoring efforts, and gang preventions programs as steps the board has taken to help keep students safe from violence of all kinds. But Jill Chaifetz does not see enough emphasis on the right kinds of prevention. She cites measures such as peer-to-peer training, teaching students about inappropriate behavior, and more clear training for teachers as steps in the right direction. Jill Herman, the principal with the smooching boy, concurs. “We need to have real discussions about gray areas, and about what is expected adolescent behavior.”

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