“Do you know how hard this is? I love you! I mean it!”
This is what nine-year-old Hannah Vaughn wrote in a desperate message to her mother, Loren Vaughn, after being placed in foster care in New Hampshire.
The state’s Division for Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) claims it is trying to protect the child. But to Loren, the agency’s actions amount to state-sponsored kidnapping.
The Vaughns’ troubles began in March 2023 when police arrested Loren at home after a domestic incident with her boyfriend. She had just gotten Hannah off to school when she returned home and, in a fog of grief, trauma, and overmedication, slapped her boyfriend during a heated argument.
Loren’s mother had recently passed away, and she was still in mourning.
“It was a Scarlett O’Hara type slap too,” she recalled. “We were both shocked. I’ve never put my hands on anybody a day in my life.”
That single slap—during what Loren calls a mental health spiral triggered by the sudden death of her mother—set off a series of events that would ultimately culminate in her daughter being taken into foster care based on erroneous drug test results and what she describes as “lies, cover-ups, and incompetence.”
After being held in booking for two hours, Loren was released. She found temporary housing at Lydia’s House of Hope, less than a week later. On the first night in the facility, after reading the Bible with her daughter in bed, Loren was called downstairs.
She was met by three police officers, and a DCYF worker. They removed Hannah from the home and placed her into state custody.
Vaughn was desperate to get her daughter back. She agreed to a “safety plan” that prohibited her from being alone with Hannah. The mother also consented to drug testing — and that’s when things took a turn for the worse.
“They said the drug test I took that morning came back positive,” Loren told Townhall. “I never even saw the result. Nobody did. They don’t keep the sample, just write on a piece of paper and throw the urine away. Then they said, ‘We’re taking your kid.’ I swear, my soul left my body.”
The test allegedly showed methamphetamine and amphetamine in her system. The authorities labeled Vaughn as a drug user and used this as justification for keeping Hannah in state custody. They accused Loren of neglect, but never actually stated which aspects of her behavior constituted neglect.
But there was a serious problem with this assessment.
Some of the medications Loren had been taking, including Wellbutrin, are known to create false positives in drug tests. “Wellbutrin has a chemical structure similar to amphetamines and methamphetamine,” she said. “That checks out.”
Among tests that present false positives, 41 percent of individuals had a prescription for Wellbutrin.
What followed was an intricate labyrinth of hearings, new caseworkers, missing documents, and changing drug tests. Loren said she was frequently denied access to her own test results. In one instance, she was forced to wait almost two months to see the outcome of a drug test that showed she was clean.
Still, DCYF insists that Loren is not fit to parent her daughter.
“I ask all the time—what are the conditions I need to correct to get her back?” she said. “They don’t have an answer because she was never neglected. I was in full compliance with the safety plan they gave me. It says so in their own affidavit.”
Another issue with the drug testing was that those administering the tests were not informed of Loren’s antidepressant use and how that could trigger false positives.
“The CPSW never put my med list in because she ‘didn’t know how’ and didn’t think she had to. Those were her words,” Loren emphasized. “That’s why this case is still going.”
Amid her battle with DCYF, there was one investigator named Morgan who went to bat for Loren and Hannah. “Morgan was the only one who looked me in the eye and told me what was really going on,” Loren said. “She was straight up. She told me this case had no legs.”
“She saw way before I did how bad this was going to get,” Loren added.
Morgan reviewed one of the drug tests and knew about Loren’s Wellbutrin prescription. During a team meeting, she brought it up. “She said right in front of everyone that my positive result could’ve come from Wellbutrin,” Loren recalled.
Loren never saw Morgan again. “And then suddenly, she was gone. They fired her—or transferred her—right after that,” she said.
Since then, Loren has been allowed a level of visitation with Hannah. In January 2024, a judge stated that reunification should be the goal and said it would be “a tragedy to sever this bond” between the mother and her child.
Yet, despite having clean drug test results, and the complicating factor of Wellbutrin, DCYF has refused to reunite Loren and Hannah. By March 2024, the agency began seeking to terminate Loren’s parental rights and adopt Hannah out to another family.
Nevertheless, Loren is still fighting.
Meanwhile, this experience has been taking a serious toll on Hannah, who clearly wants to be back with her mother. “They call it ‘resilience,’” Loren said. “But resilience only comes after the trauma stops. She’s not resilient. She’s surviving.”
Hannah has written letters for her mother in her notebook. “I want to be with you for good,” the child wrote. “I never know when I’m going to see you again.”
In other writings, Hannah expresses how much she loves her mother and wants to be reunited with her. “I’m doing the best I can,” she wrote.
In a particularly heartbreaking moment, Hannah wrote, “I feel like everybody hates me” and “I feel like I’m being taken away because I did something wrong.”
The mother and daughter developed this system of communicating because Hannah’s foster family goes through her belongings, according to Loren.
New Hampshire, like all other states, receives millions in federal funding each year to support foster care, adoption, and child welfare services. The state receives reimbursement for eligible foster care and adoption-related expenses.
Under this program, the federal government pays states a bonus for every adoption facilitated over a set baseline number. These amounts include $4,000 per adoption, $6,000 for each special needs adoption, and $8,000 for children who are adopted when they are over the age of nine years old.
New Hampshire reportedly saw a 53 percent increase in Title IV-E Reimbursements between 2012 and 2016. This increase was linked to a drastic increase in adoptions facilitated by the state.
Loren is still fighting to be reunited with her daughter despite the setbacks. “She’s not for sale,” Loren said. “And I’m not quitting. I’m only going to get louder.”