© Reuters
. It took them months of legal battles with the state to get their children back. Details of this social services horror story would have stayed inside the family of Jennifer and Scott Berry, had it not been
uncovered by the Biloxi-based
Sun Herald.
Over two years after winning a case against Mississippi Department of Human Services, the couple and their children are still struggling to get back to life as usual. "All I could do was replay their leaving in my mind and see their crying faces and hear their voices, confused and afraid," Jennifer Berry
said. The Berrys' five children - one mutual son and four kids from their previous relationships - were taken away and split up between foster families in March of 2014,
for what the state officials called was "isolation or mental maltreatment".
The DHS started making visits to the Berrys after receiving an anonymous report. Social workers said they had to investigate it to prove that children were not victims of child abuse or neglect.
"They never actually said what the actual accusation was," Scott Berry told the newspaper. The Berrys later learned that someone complained that the family had no food at home and made their minor children cook their own meals.
Having conducted a thorough search of the house, the DHS workers interviewed children one by one - all of whom are minors - behind closed doors, without parents' consent and supervision.
Though the DHS had given the family positive recommendations in an adoption case just months prior, following that visit, the agency was now ordering the Berrys to hand over their six-year old daughter to a relative.
Comment: Update, with more details from RT: