Nine-year-old Hannah Vaughn’s scrawled note to her mother could break the hardest heart: “Do you know how hard this is? I love you! I mean it!”
It is the desperate cry of a child torn from her home by New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) — and a mother who insists the state has no right to keep them apart.
The saga began in March 2023, when Hannah’s mother, Loren, was arrested after what she describes as a single, grief-driven lapse in judgment. Still reeling from her own mother’s death, overmedicated and emotionally spiraling, Loren slapped her boyfriend during an argument. “It was a Scarlett O’Hara type slap,” she said — shocking, but far from the picture of an abusive parent.
Within days, DCYF intervened. Police and a caseworker showed up at Lydia’s House of Hope, the transitional housing where Loren and Hannah had sought refuge, and took the little girl away. The justification soon became clear: a drug test Loren allegedly failed.
But the test was never preserved. The urine sample was discarded, results scribbled on paper. Loren never saw them. Worse, she was taking Wellbutrin, a common antidepressant known to produce false positives for amphetamines. “They said it was meth,” she recalled. “But Wellbutrin has a chemical structure similar to meth. That checks out.”
Even when subsequent tests came back clean, DCYF didn’t back down. Instead, the agency built a labyrinth of hearings, affidavits, and changing caseworkers. At times Loren was denied access to her own test results for months. One investigator, Morgan, dared to acknowledge the truth — that Wellbutrin could explain the supposed positive — and shortly thereafter, she vanished from the case.
By January 2024, a judge acknowledged the obvious: reunification should be the goal. “It would be a tragedy to sever this bond,” the court wrote. But DCYF pressed forward anyway, moving to terminate Loren’s parental rights and adopt Hannah out.
Why? Critics point to the federal incentive structure behind foster care and adoption. States like New Hampshire receive reimbursement for foster placements, plus bonuses for every adoption finalized — $4,000 per child, $6,000 for “special needs,” and $8,000 for children over nine. From 2012 to 2016, New Hampshire saw a 53 percent increase in federal reimbursements, a jump tied directly to a surge in adoptions.
For Loren, the policy math feels like a cruel explanation for the unthinkable. “She’s not for sale,” she says. “And I’m not quitting. I’m only going to get louder.”
Meanwhile, Hannah suffers. In her journal entries, she tells her mother she feels hated, blames herself for being taken away, and pleads: “I want to be with you for good. I never know when I’m going to see you again.”
