What I saw in Durham County courts and why it haunts me

This commentary was written by Jacob Chin for the Triangle Tribune.

“For a parent, nothing is more terrifying than the thought of your child being ripped from your arms.

This is why, for nearly a decade — as a public defender and now as a clinical teacher at Harvard Law School — I represented parents threatened with family separation by Child Protective Services. I have become accustomed to the racism, classism and trauma that pervade family court. I’ve seen evidence ignored, parents intimidated, and I have watched them weep as their families were legally erased. I’m prepared each time I enter dependency court proceedings to observe injustice. But after a recent trip to Durham, I was shaken by what I witnessed.

I was invited to Durham for a convening hosted by Movement for Family Power to work on strategies to keep families safe. That plan was disrupted when one of our colleagues, Amanda Wallace, was served with a no-contact order by Durham County on behalf of Maggie Clapp, director of Social Services. County attorneys alleged Wallace was terrorizing the director of a powerful government agency. They claimed using chalk and the language of impacted families would constitute trauma, and DSS needed protection from a Black woman. They admitted there was never violence yet still claimed to “fear” her.”