When New York City’s Children’s Services (ACS) took my children three years ago, I was refusing to comply with mental healthtreatment and was getting into violent fights with my husband. I needed a lot of help. But I was assigned a lawyer who said he had never represented anyone in a child welfare case before.
My husband, on the other hand, was lucky enough to get a lawyer from Bronx Defenders, an … Read More
My mother grew up in South Carolina with about 11 siblings, maybe more. When I was a child, she’d tell me about her mother’s heartache; she had to bury four of her sons. But the stories that really rattled me were the ones about the abuse her mother took from her dad.
“He used to beat her,” she’d say as a matter of fact. No emotion, no sorrow. No anger or judgment. … Read More
In February, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that a positive drug test alone, with no other evidence of harm to a child, is not enough toprove that a child was abused or neglected. The court said that, before a mother can be charged with abuse or neglect in the state of New Jersey, the state has to show in some concrete way that the baby was harmed by the mother’s drug use … Read More
It was July 1997, on a hot, humid day. All the neighborhood children were outside. Teenagers were playing in the fire hydrant spray to cool off. Younger girls were jumping rope and boys were playing handball. A few young men were playing stickball in the street.
My birthday was approaching and I had gone out the day before and bought bikes for my two children, Raven and Shai. I always liked … Read More
When my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant, I believed that the baby she was carrying wasn’t mine. I didn’t have confidence in ourrelationship. Sometimes she didn’t pay attention to me. I would say to her, “Come at 6 pm,” and she would come if she felt like it, but if not, she wouldn’t show. She almost never called me. It was me who called her all the time.
But when I went … Read More
