Flashback: How an article gets demolished

I was lucky to even get this approved.

Judge Andrew Crecca

In January 2021, I had this article published in the Long Island Press.

One year ago, in February 2020, ex-New York City police officer Michael Valva and his fiancée pleaded not guilty to killing his 8-year-old son Thomas by forcing him to sleep in an unheated garage in their Center Moriches home, triggering Child Protective Service reforms aimed at not repeating such a tragedy.

But critics say additional reforms are needed to provide better oversight of court-appointed psychologists who play a key role in granting deciding where young children should live when parents are in custody disputes. Complaints regarding such appointees are filed with the New York State Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), but OPR requires all court records to do an investigation and if the court refuses, the investigation is closed.

“A problem underlying the OPR’s refusal to investigate complaints against custody evaluators is the fact that most judges in [New York State] do not allow the litigants (parents, usually) to have copies of the custody evaluations,” says Nancy Erickson, an attorney who has represented several parents who’ve filed complaints about such appointees in Suffolk County court cases she’s handled. “In fact, some don’t allow the attorneys to have copies — a total violation of due process.”

The article was a rather unremarkable six hundred words, though even that I was glad to get approved.

Since the spring of 2020, I was covertly communicating with two teenagers- then 16 and 14- who were desperate to change their living situation.

They were forced to live with their abusive mom, who- like many abusive people- was claiming that she was actually being alienated.

By the time it was published, the story was changed significantly, and little mention of the kids’ plight was made.

The story sat in a word file until now. I’ve changed the children’s first names.