Our Story

I am a U.S. military veteran, rated 50% disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. I am also, right now, living with lung cancer. But the hardest thing I have ever survived did not happen overseas, and it is not the cancer. It happened in a Wayne County, Michigan courtroom, and it is still happening to my children.

This is our story, as plainly as I can tell it.

It started with my son being strangled

In 2020, my son Bilal -- then a young child -- was strangled by his mother, Tenisha Hampton. Michigan's Child Protective Services investigated and found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that it happened. Hampton was placed on Michigan's Central Registry for Child Abuse and Neglect, the state's formal record of confirmed abuse. That same investigation looked at allegations made against me and found nothing to substantiate them.

Four years later, in June 2024, Bilal was strangled again. This time it was Hampton's boyfriend, Douglas McClain, while Hampton was in the room. My other children, Jameel and Maryam, watched it happen.

I did what any father would do. I tried to protect them. I went to court.

The judge who wouldn't look

The judge presiding over our case, the Honorable Yvonna Abraham of the Third Circuit Court, would not let me put the evidence in front of her. At one hearing, she said on the record that she was "not a mandated reporter" and did not have to allow child-abuse evidence into her courtroom. I had documentation. I had a CPS finding. It did not matter.

A Personal Protection Order had been placed on my son Jameel's behalf against Douglas McClain, entered into Michigan's law enforcement database. On December 19, 2024, Judge Abraham terminated it herself, ruling that Jameel -- a child who watched his brother get strangled -- "is not the alleged victim." Later, McClain's prosecutors did not call my children as witnesses. He was acquitted.

The raid

December 20, 2024 -- the day after that PPO was torn up -- Judge Abraham ordered the Wayne County Sheriff to raid my home. Deputies came into my house, arrested me, and took all three of my children. They were placed with Douglas McClain and Tenisha Hampton -- the same two people my children had just watched commit a strangulation.

I was jailed for six weeks. There was no trial. I had missed one court date.

While I sat in that jail cell, I was denied phone access for the first two and a half weeks -- the same weeks I was being diagnosed with lung cancer. I found out I had cancer while locked in a cage, unable to call my own children.

Within a day of that raid, Tenisha Hampton placed Bilal in a psychiatric facility, after having him in her care less than 24 hours. I believe it was punishment for him telling the truth about his own abuse. The day after that, she gave my daughter Maryam away -- not to keep herself, but to my mother.

At a later hearing, when the weight of all of this caused me to have a panic attack in that same courtroom, Judge Abraham did not call for medical help. She ordered me jailed, during the panic attack, without a single medical evaluation.

My daughter told her therapist she wanted to die

This is the part I need the world to understand most.

My daughter Maryam is twelve years old. Starting as early as August 2025, her therapists began documenting that she was experiencing suicidal thoughts -- and that those thoughts were tied to one specific thing: the possibility of being sent to live with her mother. Not general sadness. Not a phase. A named, specific trigger, written down by licensed clinicians, over and over, for months.

By October 2025, her therapist put it in writing: Maryam had told her she had thought through how she might carry out a plan to hurt herself if she was forced to go live with her mother, and that she felt safe with me. I sent that letter directly to Judge Abraham's courtroom myself. I marked it Exhibit A. I told them I was informing the court and Child Protective Services. The response I got back was an instruction to file it through the normal paperwork process ahead of trial.

On December 1, 2025, while I was in the hospital, unable to attend and without the accommodations I was legally owed, Judge Abraham held a hearing anyway. She suspended all of my parenting time and ordered law enforcement to go find my daughter and take her. This was after two separate mental health agencies had already told the court, in writing, that this exact transfer was the one thing putting Maryam's life at risk.

My son Jameel

I have not seen my son Jameel, or heard his voice, in about a year and a half. Not one phone call. Not one visit.

Bilal and Maryam are not allowed to see him or hear him either, because they told the truth about what happened to them. The only version of their brother they are permitted is a screen name on Roblox -- an account they believe might be him. That is what has been left of my son, for a child who is still growing up somewhere without his family.

A history older than this courtroom

What happened to my family is not new, and it is not colorblind. Black families in this country have a specific, documented history of having their children taken from them by force -- from slavery, through the courts that came after it, into the child welfare system that exists today. I've written a full page on that history, the research behind it, and how it connects directly to what was done to Bilal, Jameel, and Maryam. Read it here.

Why I am telling you this

I am not a lawyer. I am a father with a heart and lung condition and PTSD, who has spent the last two years fighting a system that had every piece of evidence it needed to protect my kids and, over and over, chose not to look at it.

I have filed federal lawsuits. I have filed a formal complaint with the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission. I am not asking anyone to take my word alone -- every fact in this story comes from signed court orders, official CPS findings, and documents written by my children's own therapists. I have all of it, organized, dated, and ready to show anyone who asks. See the documents here.

What I want is simple. I want my son's voice back. I want a system that does not let a judge decide a documented suicide risk to a twelve-year-old is less important than a court calendar. And I want people to know this happened, because silence is what let it happen in the first place.

I am still here. I am still fighting. I am living for the day I get to hug my son again.

-- Gregory Charles Jones