It would have been easy to judge Diana Elliott. She took her teen son, who is nonverbal, has Down Syndrome, and showed signs of being malnourished, to Grady Memorial Hospital and abandoned him outside the building in downtown Atlanta, according to Atlanta police. As a result, Elliott was charged with child cruelty and a police officer spoke about how she had failed her son at a Dec. 12 press conference.
“She went to the hospital with him. She walked around inside, and then she decided to go outside and leave him outside abandoned, knowing that he couldn’t speak, knowing that he couldn’t articulate himself,” Atlanta Police Lt. Jeff Baxter, who is also a father, told reporters days after making a plea to the public to help identify the child. His abandonment seemed cruel, but there is more to his mother’s story than how her decision on Dec. 4 appeared. For a group of mothers, and for one mother specifically who had run a figurative mile in Elliott’s shoes, judgment was the furthest thing from their minds.
Those women, who are nonprofit workers and members of the bond aid organization Black Mama’s Bail Out, filled two benches at a bond hearing Thursday to determine whether Elliott was fit for release until her next court date, according to local news station 11 Alive. When prosecutors asked where Elliott would live if released, one of the mothers raised her hand, the news station reported.
“She will live with me," Carla Griffin said. "We are family now.” See, 10 years ago, Griffin, also the mother of a son with Down Syndrome, had abandoned her son in an emergency room when he was 17 years old, she told the news station. Griffin admits that she was frustrated with a lack of support when she left her son for seven months.
Elliott, a single mother of four children, was living out of a hotel room when she left her son, a local TV reporter said in a Facebook post. Although she doesn’t know Elliott and is unfamiliar with her struggles, Griffin said when she left her own child, she thought she was leaving him somewhere he would be safe.
Georgia legislators obviously thought so too, and they passed legislation saying as much. But that law overlooks parents of older children. Georgia’s Safe Place for Newborns Act allows parents of newborns who are 30 days old or younger to take their babies to a state-approved medical facility, fire station, or police station. But for Elliott and other parents of children with disabilities, there are few legal protections and scarce state support. “There’s a waitlist that is miles long, and a parent runs out of strategies,” Griffin said in a TV interview.
About a dozen parents who could understand Elliott’s struggle prayed for her and wished her well in court, local news outlets reported. “I watched one Mom pray the entire time we were in court,” 11 Alive reporter Kaitlyn Ross said in her Facebook post. She also said Elliott was in fact released, but it’s unclear what will happen next for her.
Tom Rawlings, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution while some residents think of his office as an agency that works to separate families, the opposite is actually true. Of the more than 100,000 hotline calls the agency receives, caseworkers only take about 15 percent of children into state custody and the agency spent $38 million to keep families together in 2018, Rawlings told the newspaper. “The philosophy is: Children ought to be raised by their parents,” he told the AJC.
It’s the same principle that the organizations that showed up to court for Elliott were founded on. Black Mama’s Bail Out fundraises for imprisoned mothers and other caretakers, and the Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta connects families with resources and raises awareness about Down Syndrome. Sheryl Arno, executive director of the Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta, told 11 Alive after attending Elliott’s hearing that she wasn’t just showing up to support the woman for one day. “We are not leaving her,” Arno promised. “We are not leaving this family. We are in this for the long haul.”
Elliott is expected back in court on Dec. 26, the AJC reported.