CPS Stole My Children

I celebrated my son Kimoni’s first birthday under surveillance. I brought him cake, gifts, and party favors—I wanted to make it as special as possible considering the fact that he was in foster care with strangers and I was being watched like a hawk by a social worker who acted like a police officer.

Kimoni had just learned to clap. When I cheered him on and said, “Yayyy,” his face would break into a huge smile. My other son, Mansa, was three years old at that point. We had spent every day of his first twenty-two months of life together; he did not understand why I had practically disappeared. He would leave the visitation room screaming and crying every time. I tried to ease the trauma of our separation by reassuring him that I would return.

During one visit in September 2019, I kissed his hand goodbye, told him I loved him, and promised I would see him again in just a few days. But hours later, the judge overseeing my CPS case terminated my visitation rights—forever. Since that day, I have not seen either of my sons.

In November 2018, I was arrested and falsely charged with child abuse. My bond was set at a staggering $250,000. Because I could not afford it, I spent more than eight months in the Durham County jail away from my family. I was never convicted of any crime, but I lost my job, my apartment, my car, all my belongings—and, ultimately, my two children.

Although I was eventually released from jail when the Durham bond schedule was reformed in Summer 2019, and all charges against me were dismissed in August 2020, I still have never had my parental rights reinstated or been reunited with Mansa and Kimoni. I have no legal right to see my children unless their adoptive parents allow me to do so.

I have dedicated the past five years to raising awareness about the harms of CPS’s family separation policies as an organizer at Emancipate NC. I hope my kids find me one day, and I want more people to understand that our family policing system does not protect children, but inflicts needless trauma that destroys familial bonds.

The system that CPS uses to justify taking children from families is unjust. It is designed to vilify parents—especially Black mothers like me—by prioritizing an abstract notion of a child’s “best interests” over demonstrated evidence that we are fit to care for our own kids.

During my trial, the judge and CPS repeatedly rejected or ignored evidence that I was a good parent. CPS told me to do undertake things like parent coaching, therapy, drug testing, and a forensic evaluation, and they led me to believe that doing so voluntarily would help me get my kids back. I never failed a drug test and I completed all my services as quickly as the waitlists would let me. The parent coach, my therapist, and the psychologist all testified at my trial that I was an attuned, loving, skilled, and capable mother. At that point, because of CPS social worker turnover (the final social worker was the fifth one assigned to my case), the parent coach was the only professional witness at the trial who had ever seen me interact with my kids. My family members and friends also testified about what a good mother I was.

I did everything the family policing system told me I was supposed to do so I could reunite with my children, but CPS and the judge still did not care. From the start of my trial, I never had a chance. On July 5, 2021, the judge terminated my parental rights. Even though she seemed to recognize the harm this would cause—and my attorney and I even recall her crying during my virtual hearing—she insisted that terminating my rights was necessary for the well-being of my children.

Termination of parental rights is the complete legal severing of ties between a biological parent and her child. They even took my name off my children’s birth certificates. To justify this extreme action, the state simply has to prove this is in the child’s “best interest.” Approximately 1 in 100 children in the United States have their parent’s rights terminated by age 18 according to a 2019 analysis by Cornell and Rutgers Universities. Low-income parents, and especially those who are Black, brown, and Indigenous, disproportionately lose these rights. The state often construes a parent’s poverty as a form of neglect, and people of color are more likely to be demonized in court as unfit parents.

It is unjust that the state even has the power to terminate a parent’s rights—that this is one of the weapons in its arsenal of family separation policies. As my PaPa testified during my trial, we are no longer living under slavery, and the government should not be able to steal Black babies away from their families. I was in a state of disbelief after my own rights were terminated. Hadn’t my family already suffered enough?

The state actors who participate in our family policing system do not appropriately account for the harm and suffering that family separation inflicts. I appealed my case all the way to the state Supreme Court. In the decision upholding the ruling, the appellate court admitted the “trial court was not inferring Mother participated in or condoned abuse and it need not have” because “termination of parental rights proceedings are not meant to be punitive against the parent.” This is absurd. I was obviously punished by the court. Worse, my children have been punished. We have been separated for six years and counting.

The family policing system does not act in the best interests of the children it claims to protect. Mansa and Kimoni were both traumatized by my criminalization—they did not understand the concept of glass during their visits while I was incarcerated, and were so upset by jail that I ultimately had to make the difficult decision to stop seeing them until I was released. And although I had multiple family members who volunteered to care for Mansa and Kimoni, the court refused to place them in the custody of their kin, and they were both adopted by foster parents. Their foster parents later ended up divorcing.

Our family policing system places children with strangers who lack information about where the children come from or who they are. Roughly 40 percent of children in foster care experience some form of abuse, which is significantly higher than children who remain with their families of origin. The court declared that terminating my parental rights was in my children’s best interests and not a form of punishment, but was wrong on both fronts.

When I was released from jail, I struggled to rebuild after so much had been taken from me, but I had a deep sense of resolve: I was going to turn my pain into purpose, and tell everyone what the state had done to me. They put me in jail and they took my kids away.

At the time my rights were terminated, nobody in Durham was talking about the harms of our family policing system. But with Emancipate North Carolina, I have engaged in advocacy and storytelling work to raise awareness about the injustices occurring on a daily basis in our state. I want to make sure fewer children are separated from their parents.

Instead of a system that takes children away from their families in the name of their safety, we need a system that invests in families of origin and provides parents with the resources we need to thrive. I know that this kind of society is possible.

Since losing Kimoni and Mansa, I have been fortunate enough to build my family outside of the reach of North Carolina’s carceral system. I now have a baby girl: Journi. She is such a happy baby and we are together every day. I gave birth with a Black OB/GYN and it was such a great experience.

Whenever I care for Journi and I see her joy, it is obvious what kind of society would serve the “best interests” of my child: one where parents and children stay together, where Black families remain whole. Journi’s name represents the distance I have traveled since my incarceration, but our journey will not end until we are reunited with her brothers. Right now, they do not even know she exists. My court case may have ended, but I will never stop fighting for Mansa and Kimoni. I will never stop being their mom.

_{Image: Kasem Sleem / Unsplash}

Contributors

Toia Potts Toia Potts is a grieving mother and an activist in North Carolina. She is the Cofounder of Carolina Parent Defenders, the Founder of Thrive Tribe NC, and Family Advocate/Organizer for EmancipateNC.

Topics

• Institutions & Practices

Tags

• child welfare system
• family policing
• family separation
• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors