Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

For child maltreatment cases in New York’s family court, the poor have a right to free counsel. A judge assigned lawyers to each of the parties: one for Chanel, one for Supreme, and one for all seven children. In court on September 20, 2011, the children’s lawyer, Marty Feinman, objected to removing the children. He was “not convinced,” he told the judge, “that it’s in the children’s best interest—seven children—to take them out of this environment where they are living together…and have them wind up in foster homes, who knows where in the city and going to school or daycare or getting assistance who knows where.” To divide Dasani and her siblings would, Feinman argued, “present a greater imminent risk to the children than remaining where they are.”