MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Kristi Hooper called her husband's cellphone on a mild January morning eager to hear her 3-year-old twins squeal with laughter as they gave her a rundown of their morning with their dad. It was the Saturday morning routine that she and the girls, Caroline and Madison, and her estranged husband established after the couple separated four months earlier. This time, he … [Read more...]

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, VT — Vermont’s Attorney General Bill Sorrell last week filed a lawsuit to revoke funding of Emerge Family Advocates, Inc., a nonprofit supervised visitation center. The petition for an injunction also seeks to remove the board of directors. The center is operated by a state legislator, family court judges and some of the professionals who appear before them. This is … [Read more...]

A task force examining Minnesota’s child protection system spent its first meeting Monday discussing what critics say is its chief failing: a general reluctance to investigate reports of child abuse and neglect. The task force was created by Gov. Mark Dayton last month, in the wake of a Star Tribune report about a 4-year-old Pope County boy who was killed by his stepmother despite repeated … [Read more...]

BATTERED, BEREAVED, AND BEHIND BARS Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend Alonzo Turner beat her for months and murdered her child — so why was she sent to prison for 45 years? A BuzzFeed News Investigation. The first thing Latricia Chance saw when she walked up to the apartment that October morning was a toddler, alone and shoeless, eating cereal on the doorstep. It was her friend Arlena Lindley’s … [Read more...]