Cherokee mother fights for her freedom and babies

My name is Katie Koller and my four children and myself have been grievously harmed.

You hear every day about how abused children are being rescued from evil circumstances. This is another of those stories.

I am a single mother who is a member of a small Cherokee group called the United Cherokee Nation-Aniyvwiya. A couple of months ago I was visiting people who I thought were friends. Taking care of 4 small children is exhausting so, believing I could trust these “friends”, I took a small nap at their house. When I awoke, the eldest child had been injured and had bite marks on him. The “friends” claimed to be ignorant of the cause. However, after asking their other friends and neighbors, the man was a known abuser and had bitten several of his acquaintances!

Some time went by and the child was not getting better. Finally, reluctantly, I gave in and took the child to the hospital. Turns out he had a damaged liver as well as the bites. The hospital immediately called Child Protective Services (CPS). They brought in police, separated me from the child and began accusing me of hurting him. Before the night was done, my child was in police custody and I was not allowed to see him.

CPS very quickly started investigating me as the culprit. I told them about the young man who was the known abuser but that information was ignored. Suddenly, I was being summoned to various court hearings where I was painted with very broad and black strokes because I resisted their attempts to catch me in their legal (more like illegal) tricks.

In October, I came to one of the hearings but, instead of a hearing, I was arrested. Kings County (the entity behind all this) sent me to a mental facility. My family, my support, was completely denied access to me. At one of the later hearings I attempted to speak to the court. One of the guards grabbed me, slammed me against a wall and then down on a desk, in full view of the entire court. During that exchange, my shoulder was injured. To date, nothing has been done about that.

In the meantime, CPS and the Kings County police took the other 3 children into custody, even though they were with their aunt, who had no record with the Court or with Kings County. Even their grandmother, who is Cherokee and a licensed foster care parent, was barred from taking the kids. These are Indian children who should have been allowed to stay with an Indian family. Instead, the kids were immediately farmed out to a couple who spoke no English. When issues began to become apparent with the children, enquiries to CPS were met with the dismissive response of “Don’t ask me what’s going on. I don’t speak Spanish”. When it became obvious that the Spanish speaking foster family was abusing the children (more unexplained marks and bruises) I again complained, asking again why nothing was being done about the abusing male from the “friends”. The CPS lead at that time informed me that CPS did not care about the abuser and only wanted to remove all 4 of my children from my custody. My deepest fear at this point is that they will move to have my kids adopted by other people.

My only “crime” was to stand up for myself and my little ones. Yet, I am being treated as a hardened criminal. Our Tribe has been told that they are not welcome in the Kings County courts. The lawyers who might be able to help want 10’s of thousands of dollars to represent us. We need $50,000.00 to even have a chance at justice against this evil and corrupt system.

As I wrote at the beginning, my children and I have been grievously harmed. This is a modern day “Trail of Tears”. Won’t you please help? If you are an attorney who could help either on contingency or pro bono, I would be grateful for your services.