My sister, Danielle, and Nick,
are not capable of raising my niece.
They are absentee parents.
I've done a lot for my daughter and I've done
pretty damn well.
Since the beginning, their drug addiction
was their first priority.
My niece was born addicted to heroin and methadone.
As a result, my niece was hospitalized for three months.
Nick wasn't around because he was incarcerated.
Nice and Danielle were not good parents.
I consider myself a good mother.
Even though I was using drugs and I was never neglectful.
They barely fed her at home.
She went most of the day without being fed
until like 10:00 at night.
When I first got my niece, at six years old,
she was 37 pounds.
My sister would only bathe my niece once a week
when she felt like it.
At six years old, my niece wasn't even fully potty trained.
That is totally ridiculous.
I always made sure she ate, she was dressed properly.
I made sure my daughter went to bed on time.
Last year, my niece missed over 70 days of school.
One time, my sister and Nick left my niece
unattended in her bedroom with the door locked.
My sister and Nick just left her there
so they could score and get high.
Ultimately, the courts did not see them as fit parents.
As a result, I ended up getting custody.
That's absolutely not true.
There isn't a single document stating that
Kimberly has full custody of our daughter.
This is all Kimberly's doing.
After that hearing, she went missing and disappeared.
Kimberly classified us as missing persons.
Kimberly started this Facebook frenzy.
Broadcasted to everybody that we were missing,
sick, and mentally unstable.
It was ridiculous.
After more than a month, I found my sister
and Nick on the streets in Boston.
This is methadone mile.
This is where most of the druggies live.
I'm looking for my sister.
The police officer is with me
and he showed her picture.
As we're coming back down the staircase,
she came right around this corner
and they placed Nick under arrest right here.
Danielle was high.
She was literally shooting up in my car.
At that point, she told me,
"I think I'm pregnant."
When Nick got outta jail, my sister immediately
went back to him on the run.
Til this day, Nicholas and my sister have not tried
to get my niece back.
They have done nothing.
OK, I'm glad that you've got this child
at this point and I think you are too, right?
Yes.
You were asked to take the child, correct?
I was asked.
It wasn't like you came in during the night
and stole this child out of its bed.
No.
What you have is custodial guardianship, correct?
Correct.
Until her 18th birthday.
Until her 18th birthday.
Most law is based on what's called
good public policy, right?
We have laws that follow from just what
works well in our society
and in our society, it's just good public policy
for children to be with their parents, right?
Correct, yes.
I mean, wouldn't you agree?
I would agree.
It's a normal order of things that children
be with their parents.
So, when they're not,
something dramatic usually has happened
for a court to say, "I'm taking this child
"away from their parents and putting it over here."
Now, your niece was actually born addicted
to heroin and methadone, correct?
That is correct.
And spent between two and three months in the hospital
before she could be
sent home.
Discharged, yep.
'Cause she was in withdrawal.
Correct, she got discharged two weeks before Christmas
of 2010.
And that's very difficult for an infant.
I mean, they're very fragile at that point,
so that's a tough thing.
But her parents were allowed to take her at that point
until six years old.
Correct.
OK and you said, at that point,
she wasn't even potty trained.
She was not potty trained at six
when I got custody of her.
OK now, I actually kinda made a list of the things
that you found particularly appalling
and I'm gonna give them a chance to respond to these.
She was born addicted.
And you said, often times, she wasn't fed until
like 10 o'clock at night.
Just once a day, 10 o'clock at night.
She treated her more like a dog,
like let me buy her nice things,
and ya know, put her hair up.
To me, as a parent, that's the last thing
you should be worried about.
