When you reach out to help someone out of the goodness of your heart, you don’t expect it to backfire so spectacularly that you could end up in trouble with the authorities; but that is exactly what happened to one kind-hearted couple in a very bizarre case.

 

An unnamed couple have gone public with their story after being unwittingly dragged into a battle with social services relating to the two young children of strangers.

 

The couple, from Harnett, were on Facebook when they came across a plea for help from a homeless woman, who was looking for a tarp to sleep on. They decided to help her out and got in contact, arranging to meet the woman at the home of her ex-husband.

 

They were in for a shock, however, when they arrived. Not only did they meet the woman but also two children, nine and four, who were playing in the yard. Touched by the kids’ circumstances, the couple decided to take them out for ice cream – but they were to make some startling revelations during that car journey to the store.

 

Speaking to local media, the unidentified woman recalled: “In that car ride I heard so many things I never thought I’d hear a child tell me. We were very afraid, so when we got back we just asked if we could give them a night with a warm bed.”

 

 

The homeless woman agreed, and once the couple got the kids back to their own home, they called social services. An operator assured them that they would be out to them the following day, and the situation would be sorted very soon.

 

Social services did make it out to the house shortly after, but as they didn’t have a place for the kids, they asked the couple to keep the children at their house. Suddenly finding themselves responsible for the children of complete strangers, the couple began to ring different departments for help, but ended up in a complicated jurisdiction battle.

 

Each representative they spoke to said that it wasn’t their jurisdiction to step in, so the couple felt they were left with no choice but to ring social services and tell them they were returning the kids to their parents. This is where the truly shocking and bizarre part occurred.

 

 

“We were told that if we brought them back now that [social services] was involved, we’d be charged with child abandonment,” explained the woman, adding, “How can you leave two children with a couple that legally has no custody?”

 

At this point, the couple knew that they had to take dramatic action to get social services moving, so they contacted them to inform them that they had shared their story with several news outlets. As expected, this got the ball rolling.

 

While privacy laws have prevented the social services departments involved from commenting, they released statements confirming that they take the safety of children “very seriously”. Meanwhile, the father of one of the children is working to get his child back.

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