We asked women in prison what happened to their kids when they were arrested.
Leslieann Griffin
The 12-year-old girl came home from school one day in Garland and her mom was just gone.
Leslieann Griffin was in jail. Her daughter had no idea that months before, her mother had pleaded guilty to criminal charges for stealing from her employer.
Griffin had stopped making restitution payments for nearly $50,000 worth of clothing, Coach purses and jewelry she’d illegally charged to a company credit card while working for a transportation firm in Grand Prairie. She had violated her probation and was now being held without bond.
Neither police nor child welfare workers checked on her daughter while she was in jail, according to Griffin.
“If I had been living alone, I’d have had no way to contact her,” Griffin says. “She could have been alone for days.”
In fact, Griffin’s boyfriend was living in her home and broke the news to her daughter, who lived with him for at least a week. The child’s father (who lived in a different city) had learned what happened and came to get her. He did not respond to requests for comment.
During the boyfriend’s one visit to the jail, he told Griffin what happened to her daughter — and then broke up with her.
[This story was originally published by Dallas News.]