A Child is Dead. The City Must Respond the Right Way. 

The tragic death of Jahmeik Modlin is confounding and utterly heartbreaking. Allegedly starved by his parents, who have recently been charged with second-degree murder, the 4-year-old Harlem boy weighed only 19 pounds, the size of an average 1-year-old. Prosecutors say he lived in an apartment stocked with food — a refrigerator turned to the wall and zip ties on kitchen cabinets. Feces covered the only room with a doorknob and a lock on the outside. Three older siblings, ages 5, 6 and 7, were also severely malnourished, their skin caked in dirt and hair matted with feces, and remain hospitalized. 

Perhaps even more disturbing, the family was previously known to child welfare authorities. Their involvement with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) from 2019 until 2022 has raised important questions about missed opportunities for intervention. Multiple investigations are in progress, and the state will conduct an independent review. Jah’Meik’s maternal aunt is suing the city, seeking $40 million in damages and accusing the agency of negligence. 

But heightened scrutiny shouldn’t prompt aggressive policy changes that unnecessarily pull more families into the child welfare system, subjecting them to intrusive surveillance and threatening to tear them apart. Current finger-pointing and advocates’ calls for greater community vigilance could pressure the agency to step up investigations, as has occurred following other high-profile child abuse deaths under the city’s watch. As a lifelong New Yorker, the names of those children who slipped through the cracks are seared into my memory: Lisa Steinberg, Elisa Izquierdo and Nixzmary Brown, to name a few. Public outrage in those cases prompted major agency changes and restructuring towards greater monitoring.

Social justice advocates criticize child protective services as policing families rather than addressing the poverty and structural inequities underlying most neglect charges, which comprise the majority of claims — not abuse. They point to the legacy of racism, slavery and white supremacy embedded into the design of oppressive systems, which are so deeply flawed that some argue they should be abolished altogether. 

I don’t argue for abolition here, but the numbers paint a stark picture of the disproportionate harm that families of color suffer. An estimated 53% of Black children nationwide have contact with CPS by age 18. Human Rights Watch identifies the consequences of these racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities as a national “family separation crisis.” In their 2022 report, they outline the much higher likelihood of Black and Indigenous families suffering investigations, having their children placed in foster care and losing their parental rights. 

Causal links between conditions in more disadvantaged communities and the incidence of child abuse and neglect remain murky, though poverty is often cited as a risk factor and associated with increased numbers of child welfare reports. The recent U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on parental well-being identifies a number of growing stressors, including financial stress and social isolation, and urges addressing parents’ poor mental health — especially those navigating poverty, exposure to violence and relationship conflict — to bolster children’s health and safety.

President Biden’s recent formal apology for the government’s removal of Native children and transfer to boarding schools reminds us of the historic misuse of the state apparatus to separate families, a misuse which subjected countless American citizens to not only forced assimilation but also physical and sexual abuse, with some put up for adoption and hundreds dying at the schools and being buried in unmarked graves.

Dorothy E. Roberts, professor of law, sociology, Africana studies and civil rights at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about how the system hurts — and sometimes destroys — Black and poor families. She cautions, “one of the biggest myths is that it’s benevolent. That it’s supportive. The truth is that...it coercively intervenes in families. It does not support the families. It doesn’t provide what families need to care for children, the concrete material resources they need. Instead, it forces upon them what are called services, but are actually mandates of tasks that families have to fulfill in order to keep their children or get them back.”

Damage from unfounded investigations endures long past the case-closed date, and in some cases permanently fractures kinship bonds. This is what happened to my family. 

Twenty-two years ago, half my life ago, my biggest dream and nightmare came true in the same week: I received an acceptance and scholarship to the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Columbia University, and a thick packet of papers were masking-taped to my front door by New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, informing my father and me that we were being investigated for “educational neglect.”

Though neither the parent nor legal guardian of my 15-year-old sisters, as a caregiver I was reported to child welfare due to their truancy from school. I found it absurd that anyone could accuse me of neglecting my two youngest sisters, for whom I’d cared for most of my young life and especially since our mother died when I was 16. I’d worked tirelessly the prior six months to keep them in school, meeting with guidance counselors and enrolling them in new schools. But by then, my sisters had given up.

I felt like I’d plunged headfirst into the Twilight Zone. Three years earlier, I’d interned at the Manhattan and Bronx Family Courts for a nonprofit called LIFT (Legal Information for Families Today, now Family Legal Care), passing out informational pamphlets to stressed families with no legal representation. The atmosphere of dreary desperation convinced me I didn’t want to become a lawyer after all.  

The harrowing investigation dragged on for more than a year before ACS deemed the case “unfounded.” Only while writing this piece I learned of my right to refuse entry to our home without a court order. Eager to resolve the case quickly, I let them in, attended every interview, and cooperated with invasive home inspections. Caseworkers roamed through our clean but shabby two-bedroom apartment with clipboards, scribbling notes as they opened the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets, poked in closets and peered into every corner. Weekdays brought constant anxiety about unannounced visits. 

Decades later, walking past the ACS office on 150 William St., I’m still haunted by memories of defensive meetings in which I tried to explain why my sisters had stopped going to school and documented my efforts to help them. A battery of questions (How did we pay the bills? Did “another man” help me?) stirred deep shame and anger I knew I needed to control.  

Our involvement with ACS triggered a cascade of stressors. My father worried about losing his children and job and feared deportation, as a green card holder who hadn’t obtained citizenship. We had no lawyer. My college sociology and criminal justice classes went only so far in preparing me for this real-life, high-stakes test. If we failed, we lost the only thing we had left: our family. 

I moved out two months later. The following year, one of my sisters ran away from home and never returned, convinced that CPS planned to remove her. Both my sisters dropped out of high school altogether, despite my efforts and pleading. They obtained GEDs and attended community college for a time but never finished. I still mourn their lost education. 

Most of all, I grieve losing my relationship with them. I once considered my sisters my best friends. Today we have no contact, mirroring other years of estrangement I still don’t entirely understand, though intellectually I know accumulated trauma can rupture even the strongest ties. Child welfare turned our relationship adversarial, pitting us against each other and sowing division in our increasingly fragile family. I’ve not seen one of my sisters since 2019. Her five children barely remember me; I never met my youngest 4-year-old niece, guaranteeing these fractured bonds will reverberate into the next generation.

My isolated family needed help. Without any relatives to assist after Mom died, we were overwhelmed for years before investigators arrived at our door. I’d hoped then that if we had to endure this crisis, the case might open the floodgates to services for my sisters. That didn’t happen. 

To be fair, the Administration for Children’s Services is evolving — and moving away from punitive approaches. ACS has recently leaned into something called the CARES approach, rerouting cases considered less serious to prevention programs aimed at addressing social safety net needs, such as assistance obtaining mental health counseling and healthcare, SNAP benefits, furniture, clothing, access to education and daycare, Social Security and direct cash assistance from other government programs. This is a good thing. Still, critics point to families’ reluctance to participate due to fears of further judgment and losing their children. Language on the city’s website confirms the inherent tensions of tasking one agency with the dual responsibilities of investigation and support: “Although the CARES approach is unlike an investigative approach, CARES is still a child protective response.” 

Serious abuse allegations warrant a timely and thorough assessment to ensure a child’s life is not in danger and that no suffering child slips through the administrative cracks.

Passing crucial child welfare reform legislation to reduce the size of the system’s “footprint,” as advocates have long fought for, would decrease the number of unfounded cases clogging the system, minimize harm to families already under investigation and ultimately support overburdened caseworkers by freeing up resources so that they can devote sufficient time and attention to investigating complex allegations of serious abuse. Legislation to inform parents under investigation of their due process rights and eliminating anonymous reports to Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, in favor of a secure confidential reporting system, has thus far failed to pass in New York State. Senate Bill S901 would require child protective officers to read a Miranda-like warning notifying parents of their right to refuse entry to their home, to have a lawyer present and to deny the release of personal information and drug or alcohol testing without a court order. Even conservative states like Texas have recently signed similar parental protections into law, along with narrowing the legal definition of neglect in 2021. Since the Texas law took effect, data show that reducing the number of child removals has not coincided with an increase in fatalities. In New York, Senate Bill S902 prohibiting anonymous reporting would cut down on the number of false reports from members of the public, such as abusive ex-partners, disgruntled landlords or anyone else with malicious intent.

Severe abuse rarely occurs overnight. The family of Jah'Meik Modlin struggled for years with homelessness, domestic violence, mental illness and no doubt the stress of having four children in as many years. If it takes a village to raise a child, then it also takes a village to prevent the collective complacency and persistent social conditions that lead to the deaths of far too many children. While some terrible crimes defy explanation, our societal failure to alleviate the structural suffering that leads most families into the child welfare system makes us all a bit complicit, echoing the words of District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who called the death a “tragedy that has scarred this city” and “a stain on our collective conscience.” 

Offering families compassion and tangible support ultimately saves more lives and protects more children so that they can grow into healthy adults. Even in cases of substantiated abuse and neglect, respectful partnering with families increases the likelihood of successful interventions that preserve families and reduce trauma for children in those relatively rare instances in which parental rights are terminated. Inflicting reactive, punitive bureaucratic machinery on struggling families like mine kills in other ways. At nearly 45, I’m still grieving the day child welfare entered my life, killing trust, belonging and relationships that once seemed so durable I never imagined leaving home or my sisters — until one day I had no choice but to flee in order to save myself.