The decision in court was taken by a secular judge based on, as the NYT article suggests, the late girl’s showing symptoms of previous physical abuse not related to her very accident. Having a foster kid placed with you is not beneficial to Satmar (or any other frum) families. There are no subsidies under NY state regulations for accepting those children. Either those two men are clueless as to how the community works or they aim at giving the Satmar community a bad name.
I’m not saying Yemenite Jews had it easy, they certainly didn’t and wouldn’t have had it easy in any state / environment that was fast-forward 1,000 years from what they were used to. But what the documentary displays seems to be a pamphlet turned a film, not a film documenting matters.

In the early part of the movie, the two men who try to help the Yemenite Jews state that the lawyer to defend the wife from the charges against her was provided by the Satmar community. He further states that the outcome was beneficial to the Satmars, not to the couple who lost all their children…to Satmar families.

- foster children don’t receive any subsidies; children must be available to adoption.
- adopted children must either be handicapped or “hard to place” to be eligible for subsidies (cf. childwelfare.g...).
- the maximum amount of subsidies is $2,000/month. (Yeshiva etc. is around $1,000/month at a cheap one just to provide some gauge.)

At around 41:20, you have the shiva and one of the Satmar mothers who comes to the shiva explains why she didn’t bring one of their children. Her reason? He was sleeping. In fact, she continues to explain, all the other children who are now living in Satmar households are sleeping. At around 45:10, the mother describes how when she visits a daughter at one of the Satmar families that raises her, the mother asks her not to take the child to the car. This is not to discuss that the Satmar families don’t make an effort to raise the children with any knowledge or respect for the place from which they originate. At 47:30, Yehya explains how they brought him in on a student visa but expect him to go fundraising for work. He also explains that the Satmars have his passport and haven’t returned it. He further explains that they use him and pictures of him for fundraising but he doesn’t see a penny of that money. At 49:00 you have a second Yemenite family – Salam and Fadah – who also had all of their six children taken by the social services and given to be raised by families in the Satmar community. Isn’t that a little too much of a coincidence, Yaaqoob? at Around 50:50, Yehya starts talking about how he had no idea there would be people in the Satmar community – cheats, he calls them – who would make a business out of his children. And they give him a 10% commission, even though he says he wants his kids not the money.

And finally, why weren’t the children given back? Yaaqoob, the family is in Israel, the doctor interviewed at the end of the film says his investigation into the daughter’s death showed that medical malpractice was the reason for the child’s death and the Rockland prosecutor never filed murder charges against the mother for the daughter’s death.

And please don’t give me this line about Monsey at the end when it’s clear that it’s the Satmar community that has lobbied for their coming to this area.

My name is Zvi Yaaqoob with close friends in Yemen.
I am very close with the Jaradi Families in Yemen’ In Israel, In Monsey. The story with Yehya and Loza Jaradi has nothing to do with Satmar. I am communicating a lot with them since they moved to Israel. They are now in Israel and 9 years ago they were many nights in my house here in Boro Park.
The Film “In Satmar Custody” is a nice produced film, Nitzan Gilady who is a film producer makes it up, and it’s just like the film of the killing of Jesus, which was produced a few years ago.

Yehya Jaradi told me 100 times in my face that they never had any children abducted by Satmar people. It’s a Rockland County Family judge who set the judgment.
Yehya even told me that he was very happy while residing 4 years at the Satmar community.

Yehya and his wife Loza came to the US in August 1994 with 2 kids when they got a nice apartment by Satmar for a few years. Until April 1998 they lived on a street called Gezl Berger Blvd. Which is in the Satmar community in Monroe N.Y. (that is in Orange county not to be mistaken with Monsey, NY which is in Rockland county and is not a Satmar community.)
They returned to Yemen in end of March 1998 when Loza’s mom called from Yemen demanding her daughter to come visit her in Yemen.

The Jaradi’s with the 2 Girls Ghoson and Laye returned to Yemen on the expense of Satmar who paid for the Travel.
Yehya wanted to stay in NY but after a few weeks he also returned to Yemen.
Since then; the Jaradi’s had no more anything with Satmar.

In October 1998 Yehya and loza Jaradi decided to come again to the US on their own. Nothing to do with Satmar, They went too look for an apartment on their own, First in Lakewood, NJ then in Montaindale, NY then they decided to settle in Monsey without any connections to Satmar. On Dec. 23rd late evening Yehya was not home and without any abuse it happened an unexpected tragedy with the 18-Month-old Hadiyah. She fell from the table and hit her skull on a corner point of the baseboard iron-heating unit, that was no ones fault. When Loza (the mother called for help, the child was taken by local ambulance to the Westchester Medical center Emergency room were they started the whole story of abuse.

Another point:
Monsey NY is a city just like Flatbush and has nothing to do with Satmar. Over 10,000 Jewish families who are living in Monsey are from all kinds of people, Sephardim and Yemenites, Chabad and Yeshiva style, Ashkenazi and Hasidic. 90% of them have nothing to do with Satmar.

As was reported by the NYT in 2001, the bruises on the girl were in various stages of healing. That is generally understood as a sign typical of frequent abuse. (cf. nytimes.com/20...) The doctor at the end of the documentary suggested the girl died because of mistreatment at the hospital; if anything, that would require further investigation. (A lot of children in the US die from misplaced breathing tubes every year, partly because doctors do usually not get to practise on children that have passed away even though a survey indicated that more than 70% of all parents would consent to such a procedure had their child just passed away if that could help in saving another child’s life.)

The idea that Satmar people take away children and even in all seriousness try to buy them is pretty absurd; anybody familiar with that community knows that, despite the ideal of large families, any additional child also means additional high expenses that can in no way be met by child welfare contributions (with marrying off a child alone in a non-too elaborate wedding easily totalling up to $50k per child). Also, adopted children are always problematic in terms of yichus. In the documentary, it was actually shown that the Satmar community was supportive in claiming the girl’s body. I’d like to add that the Jaradi children were no differently educated than Satmar children. There definitely are a lot of serious flaws to be found within the Satmar community, but based on the actual facts available on public record, making blames beyond what investigators found appear a tad bad-mouthing, even more so if you’ve got some insight into the community in question.

Placing Yemenites among Satmar communities though still is a bad idea as that extreme cultural gap cannot be bridged all that easily.