New York State’s Family Courts were ordered to be opened to the public with much fanfare in 1997, supposedly allowing anyone to witness the cases of domestic violence, foster care and child neglect that inch through by the hundreds of thousands every year. But now, 14 years later, the Family Courts remain essentially, almost defiantly, closed to the general public.

Recent visits to the courts across New York City revealed officials and security officers routinely disregarding the open-courts rule in ways both large and small, direct and implied, insistent and even hostile.

Some courtrooms were locked, and many were marked with “stop” and “do not enter” signs. Court officers stationed at courtroom doors repeatedly barred a visitor, sometimes with sarcasm or ridicule, frequently demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. Armed court officers at times appeared so rattled by a visitor’s efforts to enter courtrooms that, in several instances, a group of them nervously confronted the visitor, their holsters in easy reach.

On the fifth floor of Family Court in Downtown Brooklyn, where people waited in bleak assembly areas for their cases to be called, an officer was asked whether a member of the public could attend — as is permitted in other New York courts. “Not allowed, not in Family Court,” he said flatly. Outside Judge Susan Larabee’s courtroom in Manhattan Family Court, an officer flashed his badge and said disdainfully, “You don’t just walk in.” In Staten Island Family Court, three officers challenged a visitor even as they stood beneath a sign that took official note of the 1997 rule:

“The court is open to the public.”

During one week in particular, a reporter tried to enter 40 courtrooms in the city’s five Family Courts as a member of the public or a civic group monitoring the courts would. Entry was permitted to only five of the courtrooms, some where no case was under way — a closing rate of nearly 90 percent. In those cases, the reporter did not identify himself. In other instances, officials insisted that, even for reporters, free access to courtrooms was not permitted.