This article was published in partnership with The New York Times.

A teenage girl came forward in May 2023 with a horrifying complaint: Her adoptive father had been raping her since 2021, she told police officers in an interview at her school. After some of the assaults, according to a police report, he would give her soda, candy or blueberry iced tea. The abuse started when she was 13.

The teen was removed from the home, and the case was assigned to Megan Morehouse, an investigator in the Yates County Sheriff’s Office who had met the girl at the school. For the department, in one of New York State’s smallest counties, the case was among the most serious of the year.

Investigator Morehouse did not believe the teen — she said as much in a conversation with a colleague that she accidentally recorded. She did not take basic investigative steps recommended by Todd Casella, the Yates County District Attorney, who consulted on the investigation. She did not obtain search warrants to access the father’s phone or to search the home, where a half dozen or so children lived. The teen said the abuse had occurred in a bedroom and the garage, among other places.

Strained social service departments across the state are scrambling to implement new work rules that suddenly went into effect this month for New Yorkers who rely on food assistance.

The requirements — which were enacted as part of a sweeping federal bill passed in July, but went into effect months earlier than expected — could result in hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers losing their access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps.

The rushed rollout comes at a chaotic time for food assistance.