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This is the third in a three-part investigation published as a partnership between The Assembly and WBTV in Charlotte. Read parts 1 and 2.
Christopher was nervous when he arrived at Raleigh’s Pullen Park to meet his biological father for the first time.
“I wonder if he likes Spider-Man, too,” the then-6-year-old told his foster dad, Ryan O’Donnell, as he pushed him on the swings.
Christopher had been in foster care in Durham County for three years at that point in 2021, and spent the last two with O’Donnell and his wife, Kelly. (This article refers to Christopher by his middle name to protect his privacy.) His biological father, Garnell Hill, had only recently learned his son even existed.
O’Donnell saw Hill approaching the park’s entrance and stopped pushing the swing. “Do you see your dad?” he asked.
“That’s my dad,” Christopher said. He bolted across a field and into Hill’s arms. They played together for two hours.
It was an “instant connection,” O’Donnell said. “I knew I was no longer the number-one dad in his life,” he said.
“I instantly, like at the drop of a dime, fell in love,” Hill recalled. “He gave me purpose.”
Hill, 41, uprooted his life once he learned about Christoper, relocating from the Washington, D.C., area to North Carolina. Being a father, he said, meant “having your presence known, being there for your child, teaching them right from wrong, and being someone he can look up to.”
Social workers assured him he’d have custody within a few months.
Hill is still fighting to bring his son home two years later. On December 14, the Durham DSS will ask a judge to move toward severing his parental rights, even as DSS records indicate that Christopher is struggling in what is now his fifth foster placement. (He left the O’Donnells’ home in January 2022.)
Hill had passed a DSS background check and has never been accused of abuse or neglect. But according to a review of confidential court records and DSS reports obtained by WBTV and The Assembly, social workers decided that he shouldn’t be Christopher’s father—though it’s unclear why.
North Carolina reunifies only 30 percent of children in foster care with their parents, well below the national average—and Durham County’s reunification rate, 22 percent, is among the lowest in the state. North Carolina spends more than 13 times as much on foster care and adoption as it does to prevent family separation, according to N.C. Department of Health and Human Services data.
“I instantly, like at the drop of a dime, fell in love. He gave me purpose.”
Garnell Hill
Despite recent federal legislation prioritizing reunification and prevention, many social services agencies are steeped in a culture that prizes adoption and finding permanent placements quickly, said Matt Anderson, a former executive at the Children’s Home Society, the largest nonprofit foster care agency in North Carolina.
“Our North Star needs to be the integrity of the family,” Anderson said. “The North Star needs to be the well-being of parents—and if parents are doing well, their kids are going to do well.”
Watch partner WBTV’s segment on this story.
This is the last installment of a three-part investigation into Durham County’s child welfare system. The first part told the story of a mother charged with neglect, by far the most common allegation in these cases. The second dove into the system’s slow-moving, secretive courts and how parents swept up in the system have the deck stacked against them.
Hill’s case shows a father’s quest to get his son out of foster care and the seemingly endless obstacles placed in his path.
“They want me to just quit,” Hill said. “I’m not giving up on my kid.”
The Gauntlet
In September 2018, District Court Judge Doretta L. Walker declared that Christopher had been neglected, writing in a court order that his mother “has a long-term substance abuse history” and had occasionally left him alone. His father’s whereabouts were “unknown,” Walker wrote, and “Durham DSS unsuccessfully researched its databases to locate” him.
It’s unclear which databases the DSS searched. Though Christopher’s mother gave social workers Hill’s name, no one from the department contacted him.
Hill says he left North Carolina in 2014 after his girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, told him the baby wasn’t his. He didn’t learn otherwise until six years later, when the mother told a relative about Christopher. Hill says he reached out to the DSS after learning his son was in foster care.
Hill had owned a D.C.-area catering business before the pandemic and helped raise two boys and a girl to adulthood. He moved in with his mother in Burlington and took a paternity test in October 2020. Social workers told Hill he’d probably take Christopher home by the end of the year.
Hill stepped into Walker’s courtroom that December expecting to “get commended for stepping up to the plate,” he said. “Instead, I get the complete opposite. I get treated like a criminal.”
Walker told Hill she believed he had abandoned Christopher and put him through a gauntlet usually required of parents accused of abuse or neglect. Hill had to find stable housing and employment in North Carolina, meet with Christopher’s therapist, attend parenting classes, and learn more about Christopher’s mild autism diagnosis.
He had to “prove that he’s good enough,” said O’Donnell, who was in the courtroom that day and became Hill’s most prominent advocate.
In November 2021, a social worker wrote in a report that “it is possible and in the best interest of Christopher” to be reunited with Hill within six months. “Mr. Hill had worked to establish a bond.” Christopher stayed with Hill on the weekends, and the report said the DSS planned for Christopher to live with his father on a trial basis.
But the department’s enthusiasm soon waned. In January 2022, the DSS halted Christopher’s weekend visits after learning that Hill had rented a room in a Burlington boarding house. Hill had stayed with his mother while he tried to gain custody of Christopher, but her small home didn’t have a bedroom for Hill and his son. The boarding house was a temporary solution, but the DSS deemed it unacceptable.
A social worker then added a new demand: Hill had to drive to Durham to take a drug test within the next two days. (DSS reports don’t provide the department’s rationale; drug-testing decisions are made case-by-case.) Hill’s test came back positive for cannabis. But subsequent tests were clean, and Hill maintained steady work in a restaurant. O’Donnell also bought a house for Hill to rent, and Hill was participating in parenting classes.
“The evidence is clear that Mr. Hill is putting in the work,” Walker wrote in a court order following an October 2022 hearing.
In December, a court-appointed psychologist reported that Hill “does not present with any symptoms that would suggest a mental health or substance use disorder” and does not show “any significant cognitive impairments or judgment issues that would impact his ability to appropriately provide a safe and developmentally appropriate environment” for Christopher, according to a letter provided to WBTV and The Assembly.
But Hill’s case was delayed for months, and a March 2023 drug test was positive for cocaine, setting the process back again. (He claimed his drink was spiked.) Following positive results for cannabis and alcohol in June and July, respectively, Hill completed a voluntary substance abuse program in September. No DSS reports or court orders reviewed for this article allege that Hill was intoxicated while caring for Christopher.
An August DSS report still recommended reunification, albeit with reservations about Hill’s past marijuana use. Two months later, the department changed its mind, announcing that it wanted to put Christopher up for adoption. A report cited Hill’s “inability to be truthful” about his past drug use as an explanation. It also noted Hill’s “concerning statements” to Christopher—among them, “With me is where you need to be.”
Christopher’s guardian ad litem, appointed to represent his interests in court, also recommended adoption, arguing that the process had dragged on too long: Christopher “has been in care since 2018 and permanency has not been achieved.”
Walker scheduled a hearing for December 14.
“I feel like every time I go to court, I’m on trial for doing something wrong, and I don’t understand why,” Hill said. “Why am I getting railroaded like this?”
Walker did not respond to a request for comment. But in a 2018 candidate questionnaire, Walker said she decides “from the facts what’s in the best interest of the child.” (She ran unopposed in 2022.)
Acknowledging that judges “have broad discretion,” Walker said her responsibility is “to discern the truth and the credibility of witnesses and the evidence presented in any given situation. This requires patience and a willingness to listen to each side present their case.”
Breaking Point
The O’Donnells signed up to be foster parents after a presentation at their church. They didn’t yet have kids of their own when Christopher came to live with them in Cary in July 2019. He was their first foster child. They were his third foster family in a year.
Social workers told them he had autism, developmental delays, and behavioral issues, was “basically nonverbal,” and had been kicked out of preschool, Ryan O’Donnell said. But the DSS had provided limited speech and occupational therapy and no services for autism.
The O’Donnells bonded quickly with Christopher. “We were there to absorb a lot of trauma for him, to just be there, to hold him until he falls asleep,” O’Donnell said. “Socially, emotionally, he’s just been through so much.”
With a new preschool and a stable home life, Christopher improved. A month later, a social worker told the O’Donnells that if they wanted to adopt him, the department would seek to terminate his mother’s parental rights.
“Family will come out of the woodwork when we do this,” O’Donnell said he was warned. “We’ll handle them for you.”
But the DSS didn’t file for parental termination, the pandemic sent the world into lockdown, and Christopher’s behavior regressed. O’Donnell said he and his wife felt overwhelmed. By the time Hill emerged that summer, they were starting to wonder how long they could care for Christopher.
The DSS initially told the O’Donnells that as a “non-offending parent,” Hill could likely take Christopher home within months. But months became a year, and the couple grew increasingly frustrated with social workers’ resistance to letting Hill raise his son. In their view, Hill had done everything the department asked, and Christopher kept saying he wanted to live with his dad.
“What more do you expect from him?” O’Donnell said. “We kept pressing this. I felt like a broken record.”
Meanwhile, social workers had loaded Christopher’s schedule with mandatory weekly meetings and appointments, and by January 2022, the O’Donnells had reached a breaking point.
“We finally put our foot down,” O’Donnell said. “He’s only really with us for maybe an hour and a half a night. We’re like, ‘Y’all need to take a look at what you’re expecting from him, because this kid’s exhausted.’”
They told the DSS they were done, and suggested the department try to place Christopher with Hill’s mother. But Walker declared in a court order that Hill’s mother’s house was unsuitable for Christopher because a ditch in the backyard might be “dangerous” after a rainstorm. (O’Donnell said his own home had a pond in the backyard.)
The DSS moved Christopher to another foster home instead.
Support or Surveillance?
When he was a student at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in 2011, O’Donnell helped organize a food drive that still holds a Guinness World Record for largest 24-hour food drive, collecting nearly 560,000 pounds of food.
Now a tech entrepreneur, O’Donnell said he’s always wanted to “attack the root issues of a problem.” After fostering Christopher, he applied his skills to the child welfare system, which was still “a world of fax machines and snail mail.” He created a website that aggregates public data and people’s experiences with social services agencies, and launched an app to assist parents like Hill as they navigate court dates, meetings, and appointments.
“No one’s really helping parents,” O’Donnell said. “No one’s building things for them. There’s very little investment.”
O’Donnell says the home he bought for Hill to rent illustrates this dynamic, and provides a model that social services agencies could emulate.
Durham’s DSS was prepared to terminate Hill’s rights because he didn’t have adequate housing. Hill “wasn’t looking for a handout,” O’Donnell said. “But he couldn’t afford the type of place that DSS would actually approve.” (Hill pays $700 a month in rent.)
Critics say that despite a federal law that prioritizes keeping families together, the child welfare system subjects parents to scrutiny rather than finding ways to assist those in difficult circumstances.
“This is one of the fundamental flaws that we’ve not come to grips with yet with the child welfare system,” said Anderson, the former Children’s Home Society executive. “We are intervening in the lives of families every single day that [face] challenges they need help to deal with. And instead, they’re getting mandated requirements placed on them that if they don’t comply with, the court system is going to turn against them, and they may never get their kids back.”
Last year, Anderson left to found Proximity Design Studio, a media production and consulting firm that works to keep families together.
Reform advocates point out that the federal government spends $8.4 billion per year on foster care and adoption, but only about $700 million on programs that prevent families from being separated. In the most recent fiscal year, North Carolina spent about $450 million per year on foster care and adoption and $34 million on prevention.
DHHS spokesperson Kelly Haight noted that North Carolina has historically had one of the country’s worst-funded child welfare systems, though this year’s state budget makes “key investments” in behavioral health and initiatives to improve outcomes for children in foster care. She said the department “makes every effort to ensure that children and families have the services they need to keep their children at home safely and reduce entry into foster care.”
“What more do you expect from him? We kept pressing this. I felt like a broken record.”
Ryan O’Donnell
Haight also said the DHHS supported a reform package that unanimously passed the Senate earlier this year. Among other things, the legislation would give the DHHS greater oversight of county social services departments, require DSS attorneys to undergo training in child welfare law, make it easier for fathers like Hill who didn’t know about their kids to seek custody, and tighten some criteria for terminating parental rights.
State Sen. Sydney Batch, a Wake County Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, said she wants to shift the child welfare paradigm.
“You can prioritize safety without eliminating parental rights,” said Batch, a lawyer who has represented parents in child welfare cases for almost two decades. “They are not mutually exclusive. You’re actually doing more harm than good by creating legal orphans by terminating rights instead of putting services in place that would prevent people from being in that situation.”
The state House had different ideas. In May, it passed a bill on a near-party-line vote requiring courts to terminate parental rights more quickly and in more circumstances. Neither chamber considered the other’s bill this year.
While statewide changes appear stalled, critics say local social services departments can make meaningful reforms. A decade ago, Mecklenburg County’s child welfare system focused on “support rather than surveillance,” as a 2021 report from The Annie E. Casey Foundation described it.
Between 2014 and 2019, Mecklenburg cut the number of children entering foster care nearly in half, according to the report. And DHHS records show that Mecklenburg’s 40 percent reunification rate is almost double Durham’s.
“Their leadership set a vision around, ‘We’re going to support families. We’re going to keep families together. That’s going to be our priority,’” Anderson said. “That’s going to change the culture over time, and that’s going to change outcomes.”
1,978 Days
Recent DSS reports say Christopher—now in his fifth foster home—is “regressing without clear cause” and was hospitalized in August following a mental health crisis. The DSS wouldn’t let Hill see him. Social workers said Christopher, who turned 9 on Halloween, is upset that he “could not be good long enough to go home” and questioned why it’s taken so long to be reunited with Hill.
The two are currently allowed supervised visits for one hour a week.
At a December 14 hearing, Walker will decide whether to accept the DSS recommendation to move Christopher toward adoption. On that day, Christopher will have been in DSS custody for 1,978 days—and for more than half of that time, his father has been trying to take him home.
Hill won’t go into the courtroom alone. Since WBTV and The Assembly began publishing this series, the Durham-based Operation Stop CPS has started advocating on Hill’s behalf, rallying supporters on Instagram to “pack the court” by arguing that “the family policing system in Durham has villainized and criminalized this Black father.”
Walker seems unlikely to appreciate this scrutiny. She previously imposed a gag order blocking Operation Stop CPS founder Amanda Wallace from discussing a different case and has ejected legal observers from her courtroom.
But Hill says he needs all the support he can get.
“I just can’t imagine they give him up for adoption,” Hill said. “I know God’s got a plan for everybody, and I think we’re going to be reunited. I can’t think any other way.”
Jeffrey Billman reports on politics and the law for The Assembly. Email him at jeffrey@theassemblync.com.
Whitney Clegg is an investigative reporter and producer. She has previously worked for WBTV, Reveal, ProPublica, and CNN’s investigative unit, as well as worked on books on Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and Turning Point USA. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the City University of New York.