Kristen Clark-Hassell had already endured plenty of loss before she appeared in Camden County Juvenile Court in early 2021. Her first husband, a diver for the Navy, was killed in a motorcycle accident; her second died in a standoff with police.
But nothing prepared the 44-year-old St. Marys mother for the moment when the Camden judge, acting on the recommendation of Georgia’s child welfare agency, removed her newborn daughter from her care to a foster home.
“They literally took her off my breast in the hallway with her screaming after the court hearing,” she told The Current …