Bring Bella Back Home

Today, my cousin's daughter Bella turns 10 years old. As of today, Bella has not seen or talked to her mother in over 6 months. Without the help of a qualified family lawyer, Bella might not be allowed to see or speak to her mother until she turns 18--eight years from today. 

Earlier this year, while on a President's Weekend trip to see her father and half-sister, my cousin Christina Marsh was arrested in Georgia, in front of her two children. She was charged with kidnapping. Bella and John were sent back to Florida: Bella was released to an unknown relative of her father's, and John to his biological father, with whom he'd had little contact since he was small. The two family dogs, also along for the weekend, were placed in a pound in Georgia. After being extradited to Florida, Christina drove back to reclaim the dogs. She has been living alone with them since early March.

"How could this happen?" you're probably thinking. "This doesn't sound possible." I don't have children, and thankfully have never been involved with family courts, let alone Florida family courts. So here's a bit of background:

Christina has had full custody of her 15-year-old son since she and his dad split when John was a toddler, and shared 50/50 custody of Bella with her father. The weekend Christina was arrested was her assigned custody weekend with her daughter. Yet the kidnapping charges are still pending, and Christina  is set to be tried on those charges later this year. 

In addition to being charged with kidnapping her own children of whom she had legal custody, a Chapter 39 injunction was filed against Christina on behalf of her two children, their fathers, and their south Florida-based grandmothers--including Christina’s own mother. A Chapter 39 injunction is a restraining order meant to keep children safe from abuse. When deployed legally, it's a good thing. When deployed without cause against a mother, it keeps her entirely away from her children. Shortly after Bella was placed with her father, COVID-19 caused closures of schools nationwide. She now had nowhere else to go.

The injunction was in place early in March, less than two weeks after Bella was taken from her, when Christina got an email from a local mental health facility saying that Bella had been admitted. Because of the injunction, Christina couldn't go to see Bella; if she did, she risked being arrested. Without the medical identification number for Bella's intake, Chris couldn't even find out why Bella was admitted or what happened. We still have no idea why Bella was admitted In March, or how she is doing today.

My parents, longtime friends of Christina’s mom Frances, who let Fran live with them when she was going through tough times, called to inquire about Bella. After demanding to know who had told them Bella was hospitalized and what they had heard, Fran assured my parents that Bella was fine. Actually, she said Bella was "great." My mother expressed relief and asked if she could have Bella's father's phone number (we've never met him) to give Bella a call, but Fran wouldn't give her a number for her or for John. Fran claimed John was with his father, but doctor's records and delivery confirmations show that he has often been staying with Fran. That concerns me, because Chris has told me she was abused by Fran's husband while she was growing up. As soon as she could, Christina  left her mother's house to go to college and live away from her nuclear family. 

I have reason to be concerned that Bella is might be neglected or at risk while in her father's family's care, as well. Children admitted to the mental health facility where Bella's father checked her in are often there for overdoses of medication or acts of self-harm. 

I knew that, without a lawyer representing her in the civil (restraining order) case and criminal (kidnapping) case, Christina would lose any access to her children and perhaps even go to prison. Again, you would think such a thing could not be possible without evidence, even scant evidence, of child abuse on Christina’s part. However. 

Christina’s mother Frances worked most of her adult life for a south Florida sheriff's office, from which she recently retired. She is well-connected with local law enforcement. Fran is white, while Christina is bi-racial. I believe Fran employs her privilege and position in the community to get local police and DCF to comply with dubious and even falsified orders. I have sat in Zoom court with Christina and seen the despicable prejudice with which she is treated. DCF works a pervasive narrative that Christina is "combative" and "erratic," but she has stayed calm and collected in court, and the sole evidence of her "erratic" behavior, as supplied by a junior DCF worker, was that Chris had "bags under her eyes." I have bags under my eyes right now, and I have zero kids and got seven hours of sleep last night. We know family courts are routinely contemptuous of mothers in general, and of Black mothers especially. All of this, we know.

What I didn't know until Christina started sending me texts and messages from her son was that he (and perhaps also Bella) do not know that Christina  has a restraining order against seeing either of them. John, at the very least, thinks his mother is voluntarily ignoring him because she is "mad at [him]." The messages from John broke my heart. He begs repeatedly for Christina to answer the phone or call him back, or to call his father if she doesn't want to talk to him. Can you imagine your child calling you, begging you to answer, saying that he misses you and wants to come home, and being unable to answer because you'll be sent to jail? I know in my heart that Fran is probably hoping that Christina will break and pick up the phone so that she can send cops directly to Chris's home so they can arrest her daughter. Honestly, I often feel as if her ultimate goal is to get Christina to take her own life. It seems unthinkable, but anyone who has ever had a toxic parent or caretaker would understand the kind of person I'm talking about. Christina  worked so hard to raise her children in a safe, loving, tolerant home free from abuse. Because she sought to protect her children, her mother is punishing her by making it impossible to see or even talk to them. If someone doesn't think it's important to protect her only child from abuse in her own home, I don't have the confidence to believe she will do any differently for her grandchildren. I worry about Bella and John every day. I can't even begin to imagine the pain that Christina is feeling, not being able to see her children, or to even have assurance that they are okay. 

Even though I was unemployed until recently due to the pandemic shutting down my job in New York, I got together with a relative and hired a local lawyer to represent Christina in her civil and criminal cases. Christina organized a binder full of evidence of DCF's falsified reports, and many allegations of abuse that DCF found to be unfounded, which she gave to this lawyer. I had hope, because it seemed so easy: there is not even the slightest evidence that Christina was abusive to Bella or John; all false claims had been closed out. With a lawyer representing her I had hope that she wouldn't be pushed around, dismissed, or ignored as she had been by the DA and judges and public defenders. This lawyer seemed good. He filed for visitation with Christina’s kids. He filed a motion to receive Bella's records from the health facility. But then he started to negotiate with Bella's father's family's lawyer (a top-notch, pricey attorney), despite Christina never asking him to do that. His office received Bella's medical records on a Monday morning, the day before Christina’s civil hearing. The motion for visitation was denied. The day before the civil hearing, the lawyer dropped Christina as a client and withdrew from her cases. He would not show Christina her daughter's medical records he'd received from the hospital. 

I was at the hearing where this lawyer appeared briefly at the beginning to ask the judge, like a child headed to the potty, if he could be excused. He implied that he and Christinahad a terrible working relationship, and that she had fired him! I would have been shocked, but I realized this is how the "combative" narrative is perpetuated in the absence of any actual combative behavior. We had paid this man $8500 in total; after many exceedingly polite asks (it wasn't easy), he finally gave us back $3500. 

I turned to my college friends for advice on finding a GOOD local lawyer, and found a woman who seemed to be a great fit, and who Christina felt comfortable working with. Christina gave her the $3500 we'd gotten back from the Lousy Lawyer, and this new lawyer worked with her to set up a payment plan. Chris needs to pay this lawyer $1500 no later than September 26; the lawyer requires half of the $10,000 criminal court case fee before she can file for this case. Though it's difficult to find employment with a pending felony to your name, Christina is working two jobs full-time.  As many of us know, it's expensive to be poor; soon, Christina will file for bankruptcy so that her house she bought for her and her children thirteen years ago, when she became a single mother, doesn't go up for auction. 

A big part of me--a naive part, probably, and a hopelessly optimistic part, definitely--hoped that this would be "solved" somehow before Christina’s son turned 16 (it wasn't; the day passed without Chris being able to see or even call or write to her son), and certainly before her daughter turned ten. But that day is here, and Bella will pass into double-digits without her mother by her side. I will give her a call but I'm not sure I will be allowed to talk to her. If I am able to talk to her, I can't risk saying anything like "your mommy loves you," because even contact through a third party can send Christina back to jail. 

I know there are so many things, big and small, that are wrong with the world right now. I know there are so many places your money could go. If I or my partner had gotten a paycheck anytime in the last 7 months, I wouldn't be posting this. If you know me, you know I am a private person, and that shedding light on the broken parts of my family is extremely difficult. Writing this is painful. Sharing it is painful. But at the end of the day, I don't know if my cousin's daughter is okay. I don't know what happened to her in March, or April or May or June or July. I wish for Bella to know that there were adults in her life who did see that something was wrong and did try to protect her, even though doing so might have been awkward and uncomfortable. If Bella or John don't want to see their mother, that should be their choice and their choice alone. And when they desperately do want to see their mother, no court should be allowed to keep her away from them without cause. 

Happy Birthday, Bella. We love you and we are fighting for you.