Medical Kidnapping in Kentucky: Mother Coerced to Give Up Daughter to Adoption in Order to Keep Son

When Brenda Maney of Richmond, KY, walked into her Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) hearing on May 7, 2015, she was not prepared for the impossible choice the Family Court would present to her. About 2.5 years earlier, in the winter of 2012, a series of unfortunate events in Brenda’s life led to a friend naïvely calling Kentucky's Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) for help. DCBS social workers showed up at Brenda’s door, and despite the children being well taken care of, removed her children after “diagnosing” her as having Postpartum depression and demanding that she check herself into a psychiatric hospital for treatment in order to get her two children back. Brenda would never get her baby daughter back, despite the fact that she did what DCBS required and checked into the hospital. At Brenda’s TPR hearing, the judge called a recess which lasted about 40 minutes. Brenda’s attorney came back and said that the court was offering Brenda a choice – to choose between having her 14-year-old son Aaron come home by giving up her 3-year-old daughter Tanaieah voluntarily to adoption, or lose both children. The attorney explained: “Your daughter does not know you, she has bonded to the foster family and she is happy. She thinks they are her family. DCBS is going to use her attachment as the ‘Best Interest of the Child’ and if you continue with the TPR hearing, you will lose. Your son wants to come home. He’s miserable in foster care. He’s not thriving in foster care. Every potential adoptive home he’s been placed in has fallen through. You should take this offer, for Aaron. If you go ahead with the TPR hearing, you will lose. You will lose both children.” Faced with an unbearable likelihood of losing both children, Brenda could not allow Aaron to suffer any longer. Brenda chose to get Aaron out of the foster care system that was destroying him, by relinquishing her rights to Tanaieah. Even though the Family Court required that Brenda sign her rights away “willingly,” she did so out of coercion and feeling that she had no other choice.