The suit and trial last summer exposed the fact that the department routinely removed children from the homes of battered women by claiming the mothers were "engaging in domestic violence." Agency officials testifying at the trial said case workers and supervisors followed "normal agency procedures." The lawsuit was filed by Sanctuary for Families, a battered women's organization, and the law firm Lansner & Kubitschek.

Judge Jack Weinstein from the Federal District Court in Brooklyn said the "evidence before this court reveals widespread and unnecessary cruelty by agencies of the City of New York towards mothers abused by their consorts, through forced unnecessary separation of the mothers from their children on the excuse that this sundering is necessary to protect the children." He noted that the agency executes this policy about 1,750 times a year.

Weinstein sent a letter explaining his decision to lawyers involved in the case and said he would make a formal ruling within two weeks with the same conclusion. "To blame a crime on the victim," he wrote, "desecrates fundamental precepts of justice."

Last December Weinstein issued an injunction directing the city to stop taking children away from their mothers on the grounds that the women are victims of domestic violence. He said removing the children was a violation of the mothers' constitutional rights.

Weinstein had also ordered the state to increase the fees paid to lawyers representing women with low income who find themselves facing the loss of their children. In his March 4 ruling the judge said the miserly payments to lawyers appointed to represent the women effectively deprived them of their right to legal counsel, which is also a violation of their constitutional rights.

A 1963 Supreme Court decision acknowledged that an indigent defendant in a serious criminal case has a constitutional right to a lawyer. In New York State the legislature has set a limit of $40 an hour for court time and $25 for work outside court as the fees paid to lawyers representing indigent clients. As a result, women are often left with lawyers who do not investigate their cases or confer with them. Calling this setup "largely a sham," the judge directed the state to pay lawyers of women facing the loss of their children $90 an hour.

One of the 10 cases detailed in the judge's ruling involved April Rodriguez who fled with her children to the home of relatives after the children's father pushed her down during an argument in August 2000.

Several weeks later, while living with her children at a relative's home, the child welfare agency accused her of neglect for "engaging in domestic violence" and case workers sent her children to foster homes with strangers.

Rodriguez lost her job during nine weeks of fighting the Administration for Children's Services to return her children. The agency agreed to give back the children if Rodriguez took them to the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx and requested a place in a homeless shelter.

"We went through hell," said Rodriguez, who now lives in an apartment with her children. "If it wasn't for my lawyers, we'd still be there. But we haven't won until we actually know they're not going to do this to somebody else."

The injunction was '"a very important decision for all battered women across the country because now we have a legal opinion that says the government may not penalize the mother for being a victim of a crime," said Lynn Rosenthal, executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

While lawyers for the city did not challenge charges of low pay to court-appointed lawyers, according to the New York Times, city and state official said they were planning appeals against Weinstein's March 4 opinion.

According to articles covering the case, the situation in New York is not unique. Child welfare agencies across the United States have been increasingly separating children from abused mothers, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.  
 
 
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