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Molly Cordell outside of her home in Cherokee County.
Murphy – Molly Cordell has come to terms with much of what has happened to her since she was illegally separated from her family as a 15-year-old girl.
Cordell, now 21, has a solid understanding of how emotional and physical trauma affected her health and behaviors as a teenager. She said she holds no hard feelings toward anyone involved in Cherokee County’s illegal foster care system that upended her life for three years, and she has practical plans for how to use the multimillion-dollar financial settlement she’s set to receive from the county’s insurer.
There is, however, a seemingly genuine sense of bewilderment that comes through her voice at one point, when she reflects back on a specific element of her story – the idea of being a forgotten child.
“I think what stands out to me the most is I feel like they just kind of ... forgot that I existed for three years,” Cordell said. “That is just the weirdest thing to me.”
Cherokee County’s insurer agreed to a $4 million settlement with Cordell on Dec. 6, avoiding a trial that was expected to begin early next year. The agreement closes a chapter of her life that began when she and her younger sister, Heaven, were illegally separated from their family by Cherokee County Department of Social Services workers in 2016.
The girls were living with their grandmother at the time, months after their mother died due to a bacterial infection in late 2015. Molly’s mental health spiraled downward to the point where she attempted suicide in January 2016.
DSS opened an investigation to determine whether Molly and Heaven were being abused or neglected, eventually removing both girls from their grandmother’s home using a custody and visitation agreement that had been signed by their father.
It would take years for the Cordells to learn that a CVA is not a valid legal document. Both girls had been scuttled into what is sometimes labeled a “hidden” foster care system.
They had no legal representation and no judge was involved. CVAs and similar types of documents are designed to help an understaffed and underfunded agency save time and money by skirting the legal foster care system.
Worse yet, Molly and Heaven were separated from each other.
Molly went on to live in a variety of places over the years, ranging from staying with her brother, Isaiah, to a home where she endured a sexual assault. At one location, Molly was forced to maintain a job and pay rent for a room that she described as a pantry off of the home’s kitchen. The room wasn’t big enough to fit much more than a mattress, and it was cold during the winter.
Those situations took a toll on her mental health and behaviors.
“I honestly had to do a lot of reading about how trauma reshapes someone’s brain,” Molly said. “I started looking into the way I acted because I hated myself. I was so mean and so mad all the time, and I wanted to figure out a better way to handle everything.”
That type of self-awareness only came after years of suffering in silence, in large part because Molly had no access to traditional services offered by the legal foster care system or even health care. She becomes the latest individual to receive a settlement from Cherokee County for what she went through.
Earlier this year, a jury issued a combined $4.6 million award to a father and daughter who were separated through the use of CVAs. The jury determined that former DSS director Cindy Palmer and former county and DSS attorney Scott Lindsay acted in a “grossly negligent manner,” and violated the father’s and daughter’s due process rights.
Heaven Cordell also agreed to settle all claims against Cherokee County and DSS personnel earlier this year, reportedly for $450,000.
Palmer pleaded guilty to one count of felony obstruction of justice, receiving one year of unsupervised probation. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dismissed several other charges, including willful failure to discharge duties, perjury and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Former DSS supervisor David Alan Hughes also pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors earlier this year. Meanwhile, Lindsay remains charged with 20 counts of felony obstruction of justice, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and willful failure to discharge duties.
Molly said her case was about more than just money.
“It’s not everything that I wanted to come out of this case, but it’s a big help and I appreciate it a lot,” she said.
“I really just wanted someone to be held responsible for what I went through. Not only that, but I wanted someone to see what they put me through, those documents they were pushing and how they were training their social workers wrong and everything, what all that led to.”
Molly’s life began to turn around once DSS’ practices gained attention and she was moved into legal foster care. She credits her placement in a program for 18-21-year-olds for helping her process everything she’s gone through.
“It taught me a lot of life skills,” she said.”The guy I had for a majority of it, his name was Justin, he was actually very helpful in helping me learn reasons why I was the way I was.”
Molly recently became a mother herself to an infant son, Jackson. She has grown close again with her sister, who helped her purchase a safer car after Jackson was born. She and her grandmother also mended their relationship before the latter passed away two years ago.
The multimillion-dollar settlement that Molly is due to receive should soon remove some of the worries she faces, such as being able to buy healthy food for her family. She eventually wants to go back to school and possibly become a teacher.
Molly never imagined that her life would become a national story, featured in publications like The New York Times Magazine. While she initially felt embarrassed at the idea of millions of people knowing so many personal details about her struggles, she hopes it can be a learning tool to help more people understand the behavioral problems young people often experience.
“I was definitely embarrassed to have a lot of my personal life put out there because I wasn’t the best teenager,” Molly said. “I struggled a lot emotionally and with coping, so I lashed out and acted out a lot.
“It was embarrassing to have that put out there, but I would much rather it be put out there so other people can see that there’s a reason that (teenagers) act the way they act sometimes. There’s a reason we’re labeled hard to put in homes ... because the trauma we’ve been through reshapes our brains.”