Some cuts go deeper than others. For Secaucus resident Christina Nyakundi, the pain began in November 2005 when her daughter-in-law Ashley Kaufer, 19, went to the hospital with her 3-year-old daughter Hannah after badly cutting her foot.
“They called the police, the police come, they transport [Ashley and Hannah] to the hospital,” she said. “When she gets there, they tell her not to worry about the baby; everything is going to be fine. Then they discharge her from the hospital and the baby is not there.”
Hannah, 3, was somewhere.
The hospital authorities had alerted caseworkers from the New Jersey state child welfare agency known as the Division of Youth and Family Services, or DYFS. DYFS took the child into custody.
What then unfolded is not just the story of a local family’s nightmare. It is a story of a bureaucratic bad dream involving a part of state government that in recent years has seemed to hurt as many people as it has tried to help.
DYFS no stranger to controversy
The overworked case managers at DYFS have been criticized in New Jersey in recent years because of apparently botched cases involving abused children.
In January 2003, Faheem Williams, 7, was found dead in a dank Newark basement after having been abandoned there with his two brothers. DYFS had previously had an investigation opened on the boys, but had closed it before the boy was found.
The resulting outrage led successive governors Jim McGreevey, Richard Codey, and Jon Corzine to all declare that they would implement plans to overhaul and reform DYFS.
Corzine recently announced that he wished to create a state cabinet level agency that deals only with child issues.
Confusion over Hannah
The issue of why Hannah Kaufer became a DYFS case leaves many of those involved confounded.
“I still don’t know why they took her,” said Nyakundi. ‘”They claimed that Ashley has issues with anger management based on how she behaved at the hospital. But you don’t want to talk about issues with anger management when you take a child away from her mother. Ashley and Hannah had never parted. [Ashley] also has a record of treatment for anxiety and depression. Lots of people have that problem, but that doesn’t make them bad mothers.”
Nyakundi believed that Ashley encountered another problem at the hospital.
“If you take a good look at her, without makeup she looks like she’s 12 years old,” Nyakundi said. “Ashley and my son George had just moved north from Florida, and Ashley had only Florida identification. Maybe they thought something funny was going on. It doesn’t look good. But every time you asked [DYFS officials] why the child was removed, they gave you another story. It went in a circle.”
Ashley, who had had Hannah as a result of another relationship, and George proceeded to try to clear their parental records and get their child back.
“They went for drug testing,” Nyakundi said. “They went for psychiatric testing. They went to family court. They did what they were told to do.”
Second chance taken away
In December 2005, the young couple received custody of Hannah, with the understanding that they would go and try to start a new life near family in Florida.
But in January 2006, they received a visit in Florida from a New Jersey DYFS caseworker who had previously worked on the case. The case worker called child welfare authorities in Florida and then flew all the way to Florida.
That caseworker, armed with a court order, took the child back to New Jersey, apparently because the couple were not allowed to take the child out of state, a fact that the couple claims that they were not informed of. After three months in foster care and further legal wrangling, Hannah was briefly given back to Nyakundi pending a final hearing on this past May 25.
The result of the hearing was that Hannah was placed in Florida with her biological father. Ashley and George are in Florida appealing the decision over a case whose roots they still don’t understand.
DYFS desires and decisions questioned
Nyakundi had a theory on DYFS’s taking the 3-year-old girl back.
“This is a placeable child,” she said. “DYFS deals with problem kids that nobody wants. That’s why they often have to send them back to the moms who are on drugs. This child makes their statistics look good. She’s not a drug baby. She would be adopted. DYFS could win.”
DYFS officials in Trenton stated last week that they were not permitted to comment on the case.
However, DYFS spokesman Andy Williams made a general statement about cases like the one centered on Hannah.
“We don’t remove a child from a home lightly,’ he said. “Around 80 percent of DYFS case children wind up staying in their original home. If the safety of the child can be ensured at home, that’s always the preferred option.”
Pastor William Henkel of the First Reformed Church in Secaucus, where Nyakundi is a congregant, questioned the decisions made by DYFS so far.
“I think that they have overreacted in this case,” he said. “What they’ve done is an example of the stress that they are under and how it affects their decision making. They should at least lower the caseload.”
Although Henkel has dealt with sensitive family problems before, he was appalled by this particular situation.
“Who is wronged in this situation is the child,” he said. “To treat a child the way DYFS has, who is supposed to be there for their benefit, is just amazing to all of us. They have been very unfair to that child.”
Results and resolve
Ashley Kaufer, the mother of Hannah, has gone to Florida in pursuit of her child. She spoke out from the Sunshine State in a gloomy mood about what happened and what happens next.
“I went to the hospital with my child and left without her,” she said. “I can’t believe this, but I’ll just keep trying to get her back.”
Nyakundi is also feeling the impact of what has happened.
“It’s made me want to become an activist and an advocate for children,” she said.
But she is even more concerned about the impact on 3-year-old Hannah.
“She has separation anxiety,” she said. “She woke up in the middle of the night crying for her mother. I always said [when Hannah was visiting me] that my friends are coming to visit me late, because otherwise when somebody came in the door, she either thought that I was leaving or that somebody was going to take her.”
For now, somebody has taken her.
“I miss her,” Nyakundi said. “She’s a little girl lost.”
Reporter Mark J. Bonamo can be reached at mbonamo@hudsonreporter.com.