The mother had called the police repeatedly to report the brutality of her husband, but each time he deflected their attention with an explanation delivered in perfect English. Speaking only Spanish, the mother wasn’t heard. The couple’s children were silent because they were interviewed in the presence of their father.
Eventually, the mother brought a domestic violence action against the father and the case was referred to King County Superior Court’s Family Court Services (FCS) unit. An FCS social worker interviewed the mother with the help of an interpreter, and went to the schools to interview the children and into the community to find other witnesses. FCS was able to substantiate the abuse and give the mother and her children a voice they had never had before.
“I will never forget the thank you the 14-year-old son gave to me as I entered the domestic violence protection order against his father,” recalled Family Law Commissioner Bonnie Canada-Thurston. “Because of FCS’s thorough investigation and report, it was revealed that the father had bullied his family for years and had assaulted the mother repeatedly in the presence of the children. FCS helped save their lives.”
Sadly, the court’s 50-year-old Family Court Services unit is facing virtual elimination. The King County Executive was forced to request 12% across-the-board budget cuts after two members of the County Council voted against placing a 0.2% sales tax increase on the August ballot. The Council’s decision not to allow voters to determine the future of programs such as FCS and many vital criminal justice programs has put the courts and the Department of Judicial Administration (see accompanying article) in the position of eliminating valuable programs and valued services.
We remain hopeful that a similar measure will be placed on the November ballot and that, if it is not successful, the Council will recognize that the cuts proposed for the county’s judicial branch pose an unacceptable threat to our ability to make sound and efficient decisions.
If the cuts are made, no longer will judicial officers have professional assistance in determining the truth behind allegations of domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness. Last year, FCS screened 2,580 cases, provided evaluations and status reports in 671 cases, and mediated 181 family law matters. The least of the consequences of these cuts will be delay on the ex parte and family law calendars; the real cost is the mistakes that will be made, for which children will pay the price.
Examples are numerous. Sometimes people make false allegations against a spouse; FCS’s thorough investigations can clear a parent of domestic violence allegations and thereby ensure ongoing relationships between children and both of their parents. The value of FCS social workers is their ability to expertly question the parents and children and go out into the community to interview disinterested witnesses who can confirm, deny or elaborate on the strengths and weaknesses of parents.
Not infrequently, judges have to make custody decisions when both parents are dysfunctional. Judge Michael Fox recently presided over a trial involving a mentally ill mother who had physically and verbally abused her children to the point that both were seriously traumatized. The father was an alcoholic who left parenting to his own mother. A thorough FCS report recommended that the father be designated the primary residential parent.
“I was able to fashion a Parenting Plan which required the father to stop drinking, attend two AA meetings every week, attend parenting classes and cooperate with the FCS social worker so that she could prepare a thorough follow-up report six months from the end of the trial,” Judge Fox reported.
“Without FCS, there is no practical way to stay on top of this father and make sure he is working at improving his parenting skills and maintaining his sobriety. He knows he is being watched, and that a failure on his part to do what he’s been ordered to do may lead to the filing of a dependency action by the State. In short, the ‘brooding omnipresence’ of FCS will give these two kids a much better chance of having at least one involved parent capable of taking care of them.”
Perhaps our biggest fear is that without FCS, we will decide incorrectly about allegations of domestic violence and someone will wind up dead. A few years ago, a 36-year-old mother of six was referred to FCS for an evaluation of allegations that her U.S. Army officer husband was abusing her and several of their children. The father claimed he had completed domestic violence treatment and was ready for unsupervised contact with the children.
An FCS social worker traced the father’s path through a series of treatment programs, only to find that he kept being terminated from treatment because he failed to follow the rules, continued to blame the mother and even became so aggressive with staff that the police were called. Eventually, the father found a treatment program that didn’t investigate prior treatment experiences and “graduated” him after only 13 weeks. All of this information was reported to the court, which imposed further restrictions on the father’s contact with his children.
Three months later, the father was charged with three felony counts of assault against his new wife, among others. The police found a cache of firearms in his home (in violation of a protection order), as well as body armor and a note that suggested he was on the verge of committing “suicide by cop.” Without FCS, the judge would have been hard-pressed to challenge the father’s report that he had successfully completed treatment and the results could have been disastrous.
“FCS’s investigation gave me the unbiased information that proved that the risk to my children was real. I felt trapped and dependent on my abuser. They helped me seek change and support so that I could seek other resources and learn to help myself,” said the domestic violence victim, who has since completed a college degree.
“My abuser is about to be released from prison and I have no doubt he may again seek renewed contact with the children. I am terrified that there will be no FCS to investigate his claims. Where will parents like me go to escape this cycle now?”
Sometimes all a family needs is to be pointed in the right direction. The Courthouse Facilitator Program assisted more than 12,000 pro se litigants in-person last year, and answered an additional 6,000 phone calls. It helped with tasks as straightforward as reviewing documents for completeness before submission in court to steering people to other legal resources in the community.
A 12% cut will require the court to eliminate this program entirely, leaving unrepresented people with no assistance whatsoever. Litigants without lawyers, who already struggle to complete legal paperwork, will be sent home over and over again to try to accomplish something as simple as an uncontested divorce.
People who can’t afford lawyers and who receive no help from the court are, in the words of Ex Parte Commissioner Carlos Velategui, likely to be “as confused as a 4-year-old standing on the fourth floor of an eight-floor department store with no clue what to do next. In a highly charged, fast-paced adversarial litigation model, underserved litigants will find themselves feeling that the system is rigged in favor of lawyers or that the court system does not concern itself with their individual problems.”
Courthouse facilitators are all about helping people with their individual problems. Roberto, for example, had been served with an action to establish parentage and a child support obligation for a daughter who lived with her mother in another state. For years, he had been sending money to the mother, but he had recently been injured in an auto accident and had not been able to find full-time work.
Roberto didn’t understand the court paperwork and feared entering the courtroom because of his limited English skills. A courthouse facilitator told him when his hearing was scheduled, and helped him prepare for the hearing and arrange for an interpreter. This help gave him the courage to go to court by himself, where the court entered a support order he could afford to pay.
The facilitator also referred him to the KCBA and a volunteer at a Neighborhood Legal Clinic negotiated a settlement with the at-fault driver’s insurance company. The money helped Roberto get back on his feet and allowed him to pay more child support.
It’s advocating on the level of the individual child that defines the court’s Dependency Court Appointed Special Advocate program, an idea pioneered here that has spread across the country. The proposed 12% cut will require us to cut two CASA supervisors and all CASA attorneys.
At present, each supervisor covers an average of 110 dependent children, represented by a group of about 40 volunteers (the national standard is a ratio of 30:1). The supervisors review reports from volunteers (a total of almost 2,000 last year), as well as train and support CASA volunteers who advocate to the court for the best interests of children.
The proposed cuts will further increase the ratio of volunteers to supervisors and require CASA volunteers to appear without representation in court. We worry that as the ratio climbs, quality volunteers will leave the program or never step up in the first place, rather than attempt to take on without adequate support the child welfare bureaucracy, bevies of lawyers and the court.
Talk of increasing ratios may seem the language of government bureaucracy, but there are real world consequences, whether increasing the ratio of volunteers to supervisors or juvenile probationers to juvenile probation counselors (JPCs). Another cut we anticipate would eliminate an entire unit of JPCs, increasing the caseloads of their remaining colleagues by 28%. These cuts come on top of a reduction of 26% since 1999.
Our JPCs screen youths initially brought into detention, follow youths through the Juvenile Court process, make dispositional recommendations and supervise youth who remain in the community, rather than serving time in a state institution. It is well known that sending kids to institutions increases their rate of recidivism, while good supervision and access to services in the community offer the best chance to steer them away from lives of crime.
Our JPCs are coping with problems beyond most of our imagining.
“I’ve got one girl who is seven months pregnant, her mother’s in prison for murder, and she is homeless,” explained JPC Bill Bodick.
“And I have another who is a mentally ill, East African boy who can’t read or write, won’t take his medication, and I’m trying to help him either stay in school or find work. I can’t just call his parents, because they don’t speak English. With some of these kids, the JPC is the only stable adult they have.”
If we are forced to cut JPCs, Bodick’s caseload would go up to more than 32 such youths at one time. “In the long run,” he said, “it’s cheaper to provide probation services than incarcerate kids. The community will pay, one way or another.”
For King County District Court, the requested 12% cut could bring an end to probation services altogether. Eight years ago, misdemeanants in King County were supervised by 32 probation officers in eight locations. Today, only 14 probation officers in five locations supervise the nearly 3,000 misdemeanor offenders deemed most serious by the court.
District Court probation officers monitor compliance with the terms of judges’ sentencing orders for DUI offenders with multiple charges and domestic violence perpetrators, many of whom face homelessness, addictions and other challenges. When an offender violates a judge’s order, probation officers notify the judge and see that the offender gets back to court for review.
With the proposed cut, the entire Probation Services Department could be eliminated and offenders currently on active probation could be without supervision in the community. No longer will experienced probation officers make sure repeat DUI offenders stay in alcohol treatment and attend 12-step programs or are held accountable for failing to do so. Perpetrators of domestic violence will no longer have someone checking up on their participation in treatment, attempting to enhance victim safety.
Judges will have the Hobson’s choice of sentencing defendants to treatment and other rehabilitative conditions, without the probation resources necessary to monitor defendants’ compliance, or simply putting offenders in jail, knowing that they will be released to the community with the same issues and posing the same high risk to reoffend as before.
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