Vol. 50 No. 27
October 24, 2019 - October 30, 2019
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Child Law Penalizes Moms for Abusive Partners Published on October 16, 2019 By Angelika Albaladejo
Ingrid Archie (Photo by Joanne Kim Ingrid Archie thought she was doing everything right to protect her children. She got a restraining order against her abusive partner and moved into a domestic violence shelter with her kids. Then Archie got arrested for child endangerment. It had been only a month since she’d left the relationship and she was struggling to get back on her feet. She was stressed out and trying to run errands with her two youngest daughters. One of the kids had fallen asleep in the car, so Archie cracked open the windows and ran inside a store with just her baby. She returned to find Los Angeles police officers with her child in the car. Archie’s daughters were taken away, including her oldest, who wasn’t with her at the time of her arrest. At the police station, Archie told a social worker about the steps she’d taken to separate from her abuser and find safety for herself and the girls. She explained that she had postpartum depression and was having trouble finding child care and a steady job. It made no difference; Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) charged Archie with “failure to protect” her children from domestic violence, on top of child
endangerment. “I thought you get a ‘failure to protect’ charge when you’re still in the relationship, not when you go to a place to protect you from the relationship,” Archie said. Archie’s experience is an extreme example of how California’s failure-to-protect law gives social workers and courts incredible leeway to penalize domestic violence victims with children whether they do or do not take action to stop their partners’ abuse. The law’s impacts on the lives of victims and their kids have remained obscured behind the complexity of these cases. Archie is far from the only domestic violence survivor to be held responsible for an abuser’s actions by California’s complicated web of child welfare and justice systems. Some parents who experience abuse at home are being dragged through the courts, losing custody of their children and being incarcerated—all for not stopping their partners’ abuse. How many domestic violence victims are being charged with “failure to protect”? What are the long-term effects for them and their children? Remarkably, no California institution queried for this story seems to know. More
than two-dozen domestic violence advocates and service providers who work with survivors and their children were interviewed for this story, as well as social workers and court officials tasked with handling these cases in Los Angeles and across the state of California. They all describe how a vaguely worded law meant to keep kids safe is casting a wide net that’s capturing abuse victims and holding them accountable for their batterers’ behavior. The institutions handling these complex and sensitive cases— from child welfare agencies to the courts—have been aware of the issue for more than a decade, but little has been done to track or address it. Oftentimes, misunderstandings of domestic violence dynamics translate into the blaming of abused parents and prioritization of the immediate safety of the child, without consideration for the long-term welfare of the whole family. The law’s cruelest irony is that the threat of being punished actually stops many victims from seeking help in the first place. “A Very Wide Net” Archie had followed the playbook for seeking safety from an abuser by getting a restraining order and moving to a shelter,
actions that are often recommended or required by social services and courts in California. “I did all of those things and I still got a ‘failure to protect’ charge. So what does that tell you?” Archie asks. California’s failure-to-protect statute—Welfare and Institutions Code 300(b)—broadly holds parents responsible for “willful or negligent failure” to safeguard their children from harm or the risk of harm. The language of the law is very imprecise, and unlike federal law, it makes no mention of how domestic violence fits in. This gives counties across the state lots of leeway for interpreting and applying it. In practice it becomes even more complicated because domestic violence cases involving children can straddle a multilayered system of child welfare, public health, dependency and family courts, and criminal justice institutions. “If you don’t see the bigger picture, you blame the victim,” said Mary Alvin Nichols, a retired DCFS social worker who focused on best practices for handling domestic violence cases during her nearly three decades on the job. Alvin Nichols explained that the state and, as a result, most California counties, interpret the law to mean that if a battered parent, usually a mother, doesn’t leave the abusive relationship, they’re “unwilling or unable” to protect their child. This “standard approach” doesn’t recognize the many reasons why a victim might be unable to leave and thus makes it “very tricky” for even well-trained social workers to convince their supervisors, administrators and the courts of the nuances in domestic violence situations. Oftentimes, victims stay in the relationship as a way to protect their kids and maintain stability in housing and schooling, (continued on page 6)
HUD's Ben Carson charges California city with discrimination The Department of Housing and Urban Development is charging the city of Hesperia, Calif., and San Bernardino County with violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against black and Latino residents, according to HUD officials. By KATY O'DONNELL
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Updated: 10/19/2019 05:26 PM The Department of Housing and Urban Development is charging the city of Hesperia, Calif., and San Bernardino County with violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against black and Latino residents, according to HUD officials. The complaint — only the second initiated by Secretary Ben Carson during his tenure — charges that Hesperia’s city council enacted an ordinance in 2015 intended to drive out minority residents. The ordinance
required landlords to incorporate a crime-free clause into leases that mandated the eviction of an entire household for a single instance of criminal activity by a resident or guest. The ordinance also mandated unannounced annual inspections and criminal-background screenings by the sheriff ’s department. The county sheriff’s department enforced the ordinance in a way that targeted minorities and evicted some residents who were the victims of crimes, including people who had
called the police, HUD alleges. Between January and December 2016, at least 137 households, comprising 258 people, lost housing because of the ordinance, according to HUD’s investigation, and at least 75 applicants failed the new mandatory tenant screening. “In enacting and enforcing the Ordinance, Respondents intentionally targeted Hesperia’s Black and Hispanic residents,” HUD alleges, according to a copy of the charge obtained by POLITICO. It says that “during the City Council hearings on the Ordinance, City officials made disparaging statements targeting groups that are predominantly minority and more likely to live in majority-minority areas.” A council member allegedly said that while “not all people in Section 8 are bad people,” Hesperia had “issues with a lot of the Section 8 housing” and the ordinance would “straighten things out,” according to HUD. Low-income tenants can rent from private landlords with housing vouchers under HUD’s Section 8
program. “HUD is committed to ensuring that people can live where they choose free from discrimination,” Carson said in an e-mail. “We are not going to allow minorities to be denied a place to call home simply because of how they appear. HUD will hold local communities accountable if they allow or create loopholes that evade our country’s fair housing laws.” Hesperia officials and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Carson has come under fire in the past for his handling of fair housing issues. Civil rights groups unsuccessfully sued him last year over his decision to delay implementation of an Obama-era anti-discrimination rule, which Carson had previously likened to “social engineering” in a 2015 op-ed. HUD also proposed a rule in August that would make it more difficult to bring discrimination (continued on page 8)
Publisher’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Editor in Chief Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
Congressman Elijah Cummings Dies at 68 By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia
The Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a titan of the U.S. Congress, Representative Elijah Cummings (DMD-7). (Photo: Twitter.com) The Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a titan of the U.S. Congress, Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD-7), died early Thursday morning. He was 68. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the congressman’s wife and chairman of the Maryland Democratic Committee, said Cummings died at 2:45 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Mrs. Cummings said her husband’s death resulted from complications concerning longstanding health challenges. In recent years, Cummings had been in and out of the hospital. “Dr. Elijah Saunders and I took care of Congressman Cummings for [years] for his blood pressure,” said Cummings’ longtime nurse, Barbara “B.J.” Shaneman. “He always called me the boss because he told his team I was a short woman with a big voice. I would fuss at him about watching his blood pressure. His health was my concern. I screamed when I heard the news. I said, ‘this can’t happen.’ I said they [Cummings and Saunders, who died in 2015] were the last of the old guard,” Shaneman said. Recently, and in increasingly rare sightings of the congressman, Cummings was seen using a walker. He underwent an undisclosed medical procedure, and his office expected that he would only miss about one week of work. “He was an honorable man who proudly served his district and the nation with dignity, integrity, compassion, and humility,” Mrs. Cummings said. Cummings obtained his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Howard University, serving as Student Government President and graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law. The recipient of 13 honorary doctoral degrees, Cummings dedicated his life of service to uplifting and empowering the people he was sworn to represent, according to his biography.
He began his career in public service in the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served for 14 years, becoming the first African American in Maryland history to ascend to the position of Speaker Pro Tem. Since 1996, Cummings has represented Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cummings was committed to ensuring that the next generation has access to quality healthcare and education, clean air and water, and a strong economy defined by fiscal responsibility. Children “are the living messages that we send to a future we will never see,” he often said. In addition to the contributions he made to improve the lives of all Americans, the congressman was a passionate advocate for his beloved Baltimore, where he was born and raised. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump disparaged the city – particularly parts of Cummings’ district — labeling the city as a “rodent-infested mess where no human being would want to live.” Cummings immediately responded: “Those in the highest levels of government must stop making hateful, incendiary comments that only serve to divide and distract the nation from its real problems, including mass shootings and white supremacy.” “Those in the highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior,” Cummings added. “He was a champion of the people, a soldier and a warrior for his city, the state, and the nation,” said Baltimore Times Publisher Joy Bramble. “Elijah Cummings made Baltimore and all of those who came across better.” The congressman told a local reporter that he and Trump had just one face-to-face conversation since the president took office in 2016. “I said, ‘Mr. President, you’re now 70-something, I’m 60something. Very soon, you and I will be dancing with the angels. (continued on page 3)
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