J.D. Lott and his wife Britney were eating lunch with their eight kids on April 30 when he missed a call on his cellphone. The family was three years into a cross-country, home-schooling, Instagram-documented road trip in a bus they refashioned into an RV. A day earlier they had been staying at a Florida campground. The next day, they were in Georgia on their way to meet friends—or so they thought.
Half an hour later, the missed caller sent a text saying that they were from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Florida. It continued: "Please respond we need to follow up and verify the children are safe. If we cannot complete this we will have to see an Order To Take Into Custody which is enforceable nationwide. Please work with us so we do not have to do that. Thank you."
A nationwide manhunt? With the possibility of having their children taken away?
"It's like a knife to the heart," J.D. Lott tells Reason.
The Lotts quickly pieced together what was happening: Online trolls had figured out how to weaponize child protective services.
The Lotts' Instagram account, @AmericanFamilyRoadTrip, has over half a million followers. On Reddit there's a group, FundieSnarkUncensored, that makes fun of people it believes are Christian Fundamentalists. The Lotts are often the target of the group's criticisms. Lately, the snark had been getting darker.
When Britney had her eighth child, Boone, two weeks earlier and posted a video with him, the Reddit group started armchair diagnosing him. They said the healthy newborn had "severe sunburn," "was lethargic," and had "jaundice."
Participants on the Reddit group whipped themselves into a frenzy, convinced that Boone was in grave danger and his parents were to blame. They used a screenshot of a video the Lotts had posted from their Florida campground stay to geolocate the family. Then someone called the local Florida DCF office and repeated, verbatim, the accusations posted on Reddit: The newborn was sunburnt, lethargic, and jaundiced.
A county caseworker drove to the campground and was upset the family wasn't there. She reached the Lotts using a phone number the campground supplied, and J.D. Lott explained the strange situation to her.
"We have a group of people on Reddit that we've discovered are dedicated to defaming us," he said.
The caseworker seemed to take this all in, and the Lotts, though shaken, thought everything was fine—until another call came in at lunchtime.
A supervisor at the DCF office decided the case was critical. According to J.D. Lott, he threatened to issue a nationwide order to take the kids into custody.
"We have you in our system, and you have to report by the close of day," said the supervisor, according to J.D. Lott. "And if you don't tell me when you are going to meet with me, we're going to consider you on the run."
At that point, J.D. Lott asked if he could get back to the supervisor before the end of the business day. The supervisor said OK. Britney Lott decided to call her relatives in Texas, telling them to pack their bags and book a flight to Georgia. If the authorities were going to take the kids, she wanted her relatives on hand to assume custody.
Meanwhile, Lott called the Family Freedom Project (FFP), a Texas nonprofit that helps families wrongly accused of abuse by child services.
"We were trying to scramble to find an attorney in Florida who could clear their entire work day and solve this emergency in the space of a couple hours," says Jeremy Newman, the FFP's vice president for policy and engagement. "So I started calling all the different attorney networks I knew."
The lawyer he found agreed with the Lotts' desire to have a professional doctor conduct the investigation. A nearby hospital was located and DCF agreed to have the child welfare evaluation take place there. As soon as the Lotts pulled into the parking lot, a cop car pulled in behind them, lights flashing.
A doctor at the hospital took a look at baby Boone and determined that he did not have jaundice, severe sunburn, or lethargy. The other seven children were examined and found to be in good health as well. The doctor informed the family that the cops would not be taking the kids. The police officer also tried to defuse the tension by giving the little ones a tour of his vehicle and handing out stickers.
But when the state threatens to take away your kids, it's not exactly no harm, no foul, sorry for the inconvenience. The experience still gives some of the kids nightmares, the Lotts said.
That's why they have decided to go public with this case. They realize many people don't have the family and legal support that they enjoyed. The Family Freedom Project in Texas—and other organizations, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Let Grow—have worked to narrow the neglect laws in Texas so that fewer families are subject to such investigations and fewer children are placed in foster care.
The Lotts would like to see that happen across the country. They would also like to see anyone who weaponizes child services to be held criminally accountable.
"The government has such loose standards that they let people weaponize them," says J.D. Lott. "There needs to be some moderating force."
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