Background

WSMV 7 News Blast

WSMV News 7 issues a news alert on television after Anthony Crum fraudulently reports Khaila to the Child Abduction Unit.

Police Alert on “Kidnapping”

Rutherford County Sheriff Office bulletin for Missing Children “Endangered Children” showing images of Iris Crum and Khaila.

Iris testifies about abuse

In a 2023 video recorded by Iris’ maternal grandmother. Iris talks about the scars on her body and how she got them.

• Khaila had sole permanent custody of daughter Iris Crum in 2020.
• On a visit with father, Anthony Crum, in 2020, Anthony took Iris and never returned her.
• From 2020-2021 (8 months), Khaila sought help to get her daughter back without success.
• From 2021-2023, Anthony moved Iris to various states, resulting in legal issues in each state.
• In May 2023, Iris’ school contacts Christina, Iris’ grandmother, to say Iris had been abandoned.
• This is the first time they had any news of Iris since 2021.
• Anthony eventually picks up his daughter and reaches out to Christina, telling her that he cannot take care of Iris because he does not have any money or resources.
• Anthony returns Iris to her grandmother, Christina, with significant signs of abuse: cigarette burns, hair missing and frail.
• Christina records Iris revealing that Anthony gave her those scars.
• Khaila calls CPS in California to report Anthony.
• The California courts ignore the evidence of abuse.
• Khaila also calls DCS in Tennessee, where she had been living at the time. DCS did not show up to an evidentiary hearing. Tennessee also ignores evidence of abuse.
• Anthony retaliates by calling the Child Abduction Unit (CAU) on Khaila, saying she kidnapped her child and brought her to Tennessee.
• The system ignores evidence of violence. Instead of protecting Iris, they take Anthony’s side. He is white.
• Tennessee and California issues warrants for Khaila’s arrest.
• Several news and police agencies blasts out a kidnapping alert and mugshot of Khaila; winning support from some people on social media to talk about the case.
• The media has shown that it will bend over backward to depict white men as heroes and Black women as villains.
• Khaila who was 5 months pregnant was arrested, extradited to California and held for 5 months on a $1.1 million bail.
• Iris is returned to Anthony Crum. Her location is unknown.
• Khaila and her mother, Christina, hired attorneys, spending over $50,000, to no avail.
• January 2024, Anthony Crum and Iris, are in a motor vehicle accident. Anthony Crum dies on the scene. Iris is taken to Anthony Crum’s father.
• California Family Code 3010 (b) states that upon death, the child must go to the other parent.
• Khaila immediately goes to Family court and is awarded custody.
• Khaila and ANWO members go directly to the home of Dale Crum, Anthony’s father. He is not there. Iris is not there.
• Khaila calls the Sheriff’s office for help, as directed to do when she was awarded custody. However, the Deputy did not help.
• When Khaila asked the Deputy to do a welfare check, he refused.
• Iris is still missing. Possibly hurt from the motor vehicle accident. Neither Khaila nor Christina have seen Iris since 2023.

ANWO Gets Involved

ANWO got involved in 2024 at the family’s behest. We attended criminal and custody hearings for Khaila and Iris. All down the line we have seen the demonization and criminalization of Khaila Czereda Wilks without cause.

The ONLY reason Khaila is still dealing with a criminal case and does not have custody of her child is because the colonial state sided with Anthony Crum, a known criminal in several states, who abused Iris and admitted his ineptitude.

Meanwhile, Khaila, a married mother of three, is prevented from caring for her daughter even after his death. California Family Code 3010 (b) is clear that when one parent dies, custody automatically goes to the other parent. However, the state still will not return Iris to her African mother.

Family Support

Khaila’s family at a criminal court hearing in 2024 to free a pregnant Khaila from prison on false allegations of kidnapping and child endangerment.

We have decided to stand with Khaila and Christina and demand that Iris be returned to her mother. This case is not purely custodial, this is clear bias where an African woman caught a felony kidnapping case and is currently labeled a threat to her daughter, at the behest of a white man.

Take Action

Use the letter linked below to demand justice for Khaila and Iris. Or send personalized statements to:

Attorney General Rob Bonta  openjustice@doj.ca.gov
cc: Public Inquiry Unit piu@doj.ca.gov
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (916) 210-6276
For TTY/TDD, call (800) 735-2929 

San Diego County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit 
CASRU@sdcda.org
cc: SanDiegoDA@sdcda.org
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (619) 531-4040

Take Action

More ways to Help

1. Share the hashtag #WhereIsIrisCrum #ReuniteIrisCrum #JusticeForKhaila #ProtectBlackFamilies on social media.
2. Email and call the key officials demanding immediate action.
3. Engage with media outlets to amplify this issue.
4. Participate in Twitter storms and rallies

This fight is not just for Khaila and Iris—it is for all African mothers and families facing the colonial state. Take action today!

Assets

Short email to key officials :

Subject: Urgent Action Needed – Justice for Khaila Wilks and Iris Crum

Dear Attorney General Bonta and District Attorney Stephan,

I urge your immediate intervention in the wrongful prosecution of Khaila Wilks Czereda, a mother unjustly charged with child abduction due to fraudulent legal actions, perjury, and prosecutorial misconduct in San Diego. Despite holding sole legal and physical custody of her daughter, Iris Crum, Khaila has been criminalized through the misuse of outdated court orders and suppression of exculpatory evidence. I am requesting the immediate dismissal of all charges, a full investigation into Attorney Nancy Wilson and the Crum family for fraud, accountability for judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, and the swift return of Iris to her mother as required under California law. This gross injustice must be corrected immediately—I look forward to your urgent response.

Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Organization, if applicable]
[Your Contact Information]

Respectfully,
<signed>

Check back for additional assets.

The two white murderers were Sarah and Jennifer Hart, the adoptive parents to Devonte (15), Abigail (14), Hannah (16), Jeremiah (14), Markis (19), and Sierra (12).

The women, along with the bodies of four of the six children, were found floating in the water near the car while the other three children remain missing.

Among the missing children is Devonte Hart. Devonte Hart was the young boy photographed tearfully hugging a police officer in the aftermath of Mike Brown’s murder and the acquittal of officer Darren Wilson.

The officer Devonte was hugging was Sgt Bret Barnum. Barnum was the source of controversy when he came out in support of Darren Wilson on Facebook.

The more details that come out about this incident the more it becomes clear that this is another example of how Child Protective Services (CPS) does not care about the welfare of African children. CPS had been called before on the Harts.

The children were vocal about the fact that they were starved and abused, yet nothing was done.

In the weeks leading up to the murders, the neighbors had contacted CPS because Devonte and his siblings had taken to begging them for food and on one occasion Devonte’s sister, Hannah, showed up at the neighbors house with missing teeth claiming she was being abused.

The Harts had CPS cases opened on them in three different states: Minnesota, Oregon, and California, but the children remained in their care and they were allowed to move from state to state freely.

In 2011 Sarah Hart plead guilty to domestic assault when teachers found bruises on the girls body. She was given a slap on the wrist: one year probation and a suspended 90 day jail sentence. This is completely unethical and a testament to the carelessness with which the lives of African children are treated.

African Mothers Over-criminalized by CPS/DHS/DCF

Despite proof of the abuse going on in that home CPS did not remove these African children from their white abusers. Contrast this with the case Maisha Bright (Baltimore), an African mother, whose children were removed in 2013, after false unsubstantiated allegations of abuse were made. Maisha still does not have have custody of  her now teenage children, even though she has been fighting to get them back. The State, however, continues to keep them from her.

Compare this also to mother Nina Ford (Baltimore), who lost custody of her child as she was struggling to make ends meet. While she did the best she could, the State deepened her crisis by blocking access to the programs that would have kept her child with her. In a twist, Nina was charged with Felony Kidnap when she rescued her child from a dangerous situation while the child was still in the custody of the CPS appointed caretaker.

It is not uncommon for working class Africans to be in situations like these and have their children taken for any small or unsubstantiated claim. It is also not uncommon for these kidnapped children to then be placed in abusive homes.

Statistically children are better off in their homes

Statistically children are more likely to be physically abused when taken away from their families according to Richard Wexler, of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

Instead, children are shuffled around and, in some cases, ultimately end up dead or in far worse situations than if they were left with their families.

African children make up more than two-fifths of the foster care population despite the fact they make up less than one fifth of children in the United States.

For example, in Chicago the percentage of African children in foster care is 95 percent. In 2008 a young African girl from Ethiopia named Hana was murdered by her white adoptive parents Larry and Carri Williams. In this case a child was stolen from Africa and then murdered because of the so called “biblical beliefs” of the Williams’s.

This is kidnapping and genocide! Instead of providing help to poor working class families so that they may effectively raise their children, the state villainizes them, arrests them, and kidnaps their children. In many cases the parents and children are never reunited, effectively breaking up the household.

Recently, here in Detroit, a young mother who had just given birth was told, falsely, that if she did not take the Depo Provera shot she would not be allowed to take her newborn home.It goes without saying that newborns belong with their mothers, they need milk, and they need to bond.

All the African women I’ve mentioned were over-criminalized by the state and had their children taken from them, whereas the Hart’s who portrayed the “harmless” liberal hippy white woman lifestyle, were CLEARLY a danger to these African children and no one did anything to help them. Everyone failed them, including the system that purports to deal in the welfare of children.

This is why ANWO has started the ArrestCPS campaign. No longer can we sit by and allow the State to get a hold of our children. We are African mothers who charge DHS, CPS, and the Family Court system with the kidnapping and genocide of African working class children.

African mothers like Maisha Bright, whose children were removed for false unsubstantiated allegations and Samantha Johnson (DC) who after trying desperately to get help to pay for expensive medication for her young daughter,ended up having her daughter removed from her home because she was seen as unfit to take care of her. This cannot stand. The state should not be able to remove children from loving homes only to be bounced around with no stability or being placed where they will likely be abused or killed.

Devonte is still missing and presumed to be dead. As a mother of an African boy I mourn his death but I also see it as a call to arms. We must fight for our children. Indeed it does take a village to raise a child up. We need to rally and protect our children from the State.

Join the African National Women’s Organization’s Political Action Committee to be part of building this work.

Tamara first came into contact with DHS approximately three years ago after her landlord of her building shut off her water, then called DHS.  Although her children were not removed for two years, DHS remained an ever-present overseer in her affairs.

After two years DHS’s Community Umbrealla Agency (CUA) escalated the case which resulted in Tamara’s chidren being removed from he rhome.  This decision came after  Tamara refused to submit to their ongoing tests and orders only to be told to do them again. Since she was never accused of abuse or harming her children, she refuses to go any testing that forces her to admit guiilt, namely  mental health evaluation and anger management classes.

She says she , “has a right to be angry, but under the circumstances  is handling it very well.”

Tamara has been struggling to expose the system but also to find support base so that she and other mothers will not be vulnerable to their attacks.

DHS first entered Nina’s life in retaliation for a lawsuit she brought against the Philadelphia School District. The suit charged the school district with not providing her learning disabled son the services and education he needed.

Her son received an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) that Nina, believes actually helps the school district target families for DHS intervention.

ANWO call-to-action puts DHS worker on defensive

The community forum came on the heels of a few very emotional days. On July 20^th Tamara informed ANWO that DHS worker, Elisha Ramberan had threatened to recommend to the court that her parental rights be removed.

ANWO quickly organized an email-based call-to-action that  targeted  Elisha, so that she would know that Tamara had community support.

After receiving dozens of emails from our supporters, Ramberan  responded by sending her internet goons to ANWO’s facebook page to berate Tamara in the comments section of the post.

Tamara responded to each of the belligerent accusations– some of which came from DHS workers. She demanded that DHS produce any documentation to confirm their claims of abuse – which is what most of the comments insinuated.

The comments continued for a few days.  Finally, ANWO intervened by inviting everyone who commented on the post, to the community forum for an open discussion. Not one of them showed up.

Not one of them showed up.

Mothers expose DHS as a colonial tool of repression

During the forum, both Nina and Tamara produced packets of documents that proved their cases.

Tamara accused DHS of creating false reports, collaborating with doctors and other agencies to criminalize her and other parents, denying her human and parental rights, and forced medical treatment.

Nina also accused DHS of falsifying reports, terrorist threats, denying her the right to speak on her own behalf in court,  child abuse – her children have been harmed in care, making up laws, forced mental health evaluation, and denying her parental rights.

They both highlighted the ineptitude of their court-appointed attorneys who have done little to nothing to put up a defense during their hearings. They also shared the lack of support they have received from organizations like National Action Network (NAN) or the NAACP, who they’ve reached out to for help.

The forum ended with helpful discussions and the beginnings of a strategy.

The following day, on Sunday, July 24^th Parent’s Day; the mothers, along with their supporters, held a small but strong demonstration in downtown Philadelphia in the midst of the fanfare that was happening in preparation for the Democratic National Convention which was starting the next day.

We marched through the sea of white people,  chanting  “DHS you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “Stop kidnapping black children, DHS out now.”  We marched to the DHS building and then set up in front of the family visiting center, where parents undergo supervised visits on Sundays.

Retaliatory hearing further isolates our mothers

The day after the protest, Tamara was ordered to appear in court for an impromptu hearing to address  threat allegations made by Ramberan and the status of her case.   She went but had support from Uhuru Movement. Philly organizer, Nana Yaw Grant stayed in the courts the entire day, ensuring that she had constant support.   The outcome of the hearing was that the Judge essentially issued Tamara a gag order preventing her from talking about the case at the risk of going to jail.

ANWO is committed to supporting Tamara, Nina and all other parents by building mass support around this issue. We want to make it impossible for the state to continue to carry out subjective policies, that isolate and criminalize mothers which facilitates the kidnapping of our children.

We call on you to organize with us around this issue.  It may not be called DHS, maybe it’s called CPS , NSPCC, DYFS. Whatever it’s called  we understand that  it is not there to help resolve contradictions in our communities, instead they are there to deepen the crisis. We encourage you to contact us so that we can raise this issue together making the case for the dismantling of these agencies in our community, and to  build the Black Community Control of Child Welfare.

We encourage African women to Join ANWO!
And African men to join the committee!

She made repeated phone calls to their offices only to be met with rude agents and dropped calls.

Frustrated and upset by the clear disregard for her desperate situation, Samantha posed the question, “What the fuck does it have to be, do I have to leave the baby in the house by herself to get you motherfuckers to realize I need help?”

This is a statement that Samantha has come to regret because it led to CPS coming to her home and removing her daughter that same day.

Samantha, since that time, has been through a series of struggles with the State that resulted in Samantha winning back custody of Tae’Lor and the State removing her twice more.

Tae’Lor now resides with Rochelle Brewer, her paternal grandmother.

Brewer, according to Samantha, does everything possible to keep her away from Tae’Lor.

Child Protective Services serves colonialism

Samantha is a product of the foster care system. She and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody when she was 7-years-old.

Her mother was addicted to crack cocaine and Samantha was told (she can’t remember) that she was a victim of sexual abuse from close male family members.

Drug use and sexual abuse are contradictions that colonialism imposes on African people.

Samantha was moved between different homes from Washington D.C. to Prince Georges County to Baltimore County while her brother remained in D.C.

This constant movement made it difficult for Samantha to stay close to her siblings or form personal connections with others.

She became a survivor, making her way through different obstacles until she became emancipated from foster care at age 21.

Samantha was then entirely on her own.

She had to figure out where she was going to live, how she was going to get a job and ultimately how to be a mother.

Like many of us subjected to colonial conditions, Samantha gets angry sometimes.

Samantha admits she felt disconnected from her child and lacked a full understanding of motherhood, acknowledging that it took years to really grow into the role.

Samantha, with tears in her eyes, remembers a time in the hospital after giving birth, when Tae’Lor started coughing.

She didn’t know what to do so she left Tae’Lor in the bed and went to find a nurse.

She returned to the room to find that the mother in the next bed soothed the baby and instructed her on what to do if that happened again.

Samantha thought that she “almost killed [Tae’Lor]” by leaving the room while the baby seemed to be in distress.

Samantha remembers a few more situations where she questions her own judgment, but insists, “I just wanted to protect and provide for [my] daughter…I would never hurt my child.”

All Samantha needed was guidance and support, which was robbed from her when the State separated her from her family and put her in the care of dozens of strangers.

The foster care system is a modern day slave auction

This is the reality for many African parents and their children, who languish inside a foster care system created under capitalist colonialism.

In 2014, African children, only three percent of the U.S. population, represented 24 percent of all children in foster care in the United States.

This is second to that of white children who are 11 percent of the population and make up 42 percent of children in foster care. The numbers don’t add up.

The foster care system—which provides financial incentives for each state—is only slightly more sophisticated in stealing children than the auction blocks of chattel slavery or the native schools of early U.S. settler colonialism.

It functions to deepen the crises in poor working class families and communities.

CPS has proven time and again that the rights of African parents to protect and care for their children comes second to the colonizer’s wish to have access to those children.

It doesn’t matter if you ask for medical help like Samantha or refuse medical recommendations like in the cases of Maryanne Godboldo and Ahmed and Kathy Giwa, who were charged with medical neglect and had their children taken—the State will always find a way to intervene.

The fight for Tae’Lor continues

Samantha has never given up on getting her daughter back. Over the past five years, she has gotten her Bachelor’s degree and gained intimate policy knowledge of CPS and the injustice system that protects it. She wants to be an advocate, not only for herself but for other parents who experience similar situations.

She has joined the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) in D.C. and is currently working on a plan to organize African parents.

When asked her if Tae’Lor, now 7-years-old, wants to come back home, Samantha says, “I don’t know what my baby wants, I haven’t been able to speak to her, so I don’t know.” She continues, “I’m just going to keep fighting to get her back so I can have the opportunity to be a mother to my child.”

Join the fight against the oppressive CPS system!