Albany acts to rescue youngsters from lethal abuse — 10 years too late

Days ago, Albany politicians did the unthinkable: They passed a sensible piece of legislation that puts kids’ needs over adults’ desires.

“The legislature recognizes that the safety of children is of paramount importance and is an integral element of their best interests,” the bill known as Kyra’s Law reads.

“To that end, the legislature finds that judicial decisions regarding custody of, and access to, children shall promote the safety of children as a threshold issue.”

Now it’s up to Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign it.

It’s been 10 years since two-year-old Kyra Franchetti was shot to death by her father during a court-ordered unsupervised visit.

Despite warnings by the Long Island toddler’s mother that her ex-husband was suicidal and was stalking her, the court approved this custody arrangement — with devastating consequences.

Far too many children in this country are at risk of suffering the same fate, as our courts refuse to heed flashing warning signals before they place kids in dangerous situations.

We tend to blame child welfare agencies for these mistakes.

Caseworkers may be quick to dismiss concerns about one parent’s history of domestic violence or mental illness, chalking up those claims to exaggeration during nasty break-ups.

And agencies may prioritize keeping children with parents instead of protecting them from harm, out of some misguided sense of social justice.

But the truth is, judges are the ones making the final decisions about where children should be placed — and too often they’re getting it wrong.

Just like we can’t blame police for public chaos when it’s judges who are the ones releasing violent criminals back onto the street hours after an arrest, we need to realize that agencies like New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services aren’t calling all the shots when it comes to keeping dangerous adults away from vulnerable children.

In some cases, ACS recommendations are simply being overridden by activist judges.

Too often, we’re giving parents and caregivers with clear histories of domestic violence and child abuse a chance to do kids harm.

Over the past two years, my colleagues and I have collected information on 5,000 child maltreatment fatalities between 2022 and 2026 in a database called Lives Cut Short.

Using media accounts, child welfare reports and medical examiner records, we’ve seen some distinct patterns.

While the records are by no means exhaustive, almost 900 of the cases we’ve analyzed have involved a history of domestic violence.

In New York state, where fatality records are easier to access than elsewhere, we found 109 cases where domestic violence by a parent or caregiver was involved.

There were almost 200 New York cases with prior histories of child protection reports.

In fact, cases of domestic violence should be a growing source of concern.

“Three fathers killed their families this week as domestic violence deaths remain high,” read a June 6 headline from The Washington Post.

Even as overall homicide rates are falling, the paper noted, the percentage of killings happening in families seems to be rising, from 1 in 7 in 2020 to 1 in 5 today.

One reason is that the victims are often too scared to help authorities punish their abusers: According to the NYPD, the city’s district attorneys did not prosecute 938 domestic-violence cases in the last quarter of 2025 because victims failed to cooperate.

The language of Kyra’s Law will seem like plain common sense to any ordinary New Yorker.

The law instructs judges to consider “any party’s history of domestic violence or child abuse or incidents involving harm to a child” when making a custody decision.

That means they must take into account “police reports, including domestic violence incident reports or reporting of incidents involving child abuse or domestic violence,” as well as “threats to harm or kill the child, the other party, the other party’s children, self or others, or companion animals” and “sexual abuse or other sexual offenses against the child or the other party.”

“That history may be a strong indicator of future behavior in these matters,” Ron Richter, who headed the Administration of Children’s Services under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, told me.

Indeed, he lamented, “We don’t prioritize history in our investigations.”

The new law will not only require Family Court judges to consider such histories; it also directs them to receive training to understand the risks they pose.

Kyra Franchetti was murdered in 2016.

Her grieving mother Jacqueline has fought for this law ever since.

It’s hard to believe that state legislators needed a decade to agree that it’s the right thing to do.

Let’s hope Hochul can act a little faster.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.