Dante’s Unwritten Circle

About 20 years after I was returned to my mother from foster care, I testified for the public hearing on The Child Welfare System and the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse and Maltreatment in New York State. I revealed how my family was harmed by mandated reporting and the extreme abuse my siblings and I endured during our ten years in foster care. The hearing was canceled twice before and the built-up anticipation I had leading up to this was indescribable.

I appointed myself as the spokesperson for my family because I wanted to unburden ourselves from a past, we didn’t ask for. I yearn to live in a society where the most marginalized of families aren’t surveilled and traumatized. I had the harsh wake-up call that the room I entered for the hearing, wasn’t a venue that centered abuse survivors or traumatized parents.

Before the impacted parents and I was allowed to testify, we had to listen to Suzanne Miles-Gustave and Jess Dannhauser spew their propaganda for over an hour. Suzanne Miles-Gustave is the Interim Commissioner of the NYS Office of Children and Family Services, OCFS for short. Jess Dannhauser is the Commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS. To add further insult, these two didn’t stick around to listen to our perspective on issues that were the focal point of the hearing.

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