Christian Russell is living her own Kafkaesque nightmare.
On July 3, 2021, she was “ambushed” by multiple federal agents who she described as SWAT and accused of kidnapping her own children.
The charge was not actually kidnapping but rather “interstate interference with custody”. Christian’s mother, Vicki Smith, told me it did amount to kidnapping. I briefly interview Vicki about this in the podcast.
Vicki would know she had physical custody at the time. That’s what multiple orders stated, and even the motion to detain Christian said so as well.
Vicki was buoyed by an extraordinary law, which is unique to Georgia.
In Georgia, grandparents enjoy custody rights to an extent I’ve never seen before.
“Fortunately, the laws in our state support a grandparents legal right to see and spend time with their grandchildren. Under the Georgia Code (O.C.G.A. 19-7-3),” The law firm Stearns, Montgomery, and Procter states on their website, “grandparents may file a petition seeking visitation in any custody action, including cases involving divorce, termination of parental rights, and adoption.”
On the surface, it may seem like a good idea to give grandparents the option to seek custody, along with both parents, but it’s not.
I have said any law which makes the system more complicated is a bad law, because corruption forms in the weeds, where things get complicated.
If both parents and four grandparents all have the power to file in court to seek custody, it’s not long before that sort of scenario will become quite complicated.
That’s what happened here.
Prior to January 2021, Christian was the primary caretaker and had sole legal and physical custody of her children, upon the breakdown of her marriage to Robert Russell. Their divorce was finalized in December 2019.
That would make sense, since Robert Russell has a criminal record, including beating Christian. Below are some more details on the domestic assault.
In fact, Jonathon Adams, the Monroe County District Attorney, told me his office prosecuted and convicted Robert Russell of those crimes.
His office would also eventually have Christian charged with interstate interference with custody.
His office recused itself because it had previously prosecuted Robert Russell, he told me. He told me that he was surprised that Robert was given sole custody, but that sole custody is in name only since he was also ordered to give the kids to Vicki and her husband.
It’s now being prosecuted by the Griffin County District Attorney’s Office headed by Marie Broder, who did not respond to an email for comment.
The reason that this SWAT team needed to swoop in on Christian in July 2021 is murky.
On February 5, 2021, Judge William Fears of the Monroe County Superior Court issued a temporary order changing custody from Christian to Robert while ordering him to give the children to Vicki and her husband.
But Christian tells me that she was never served to appear at the hearing which proceeded it and only found out days before, by then she was already living out of state, with no lawyer.
Furthermore, in 2020, she had filed to move the case to Florida, where she was then living.
She told me the Georgia order giving her sole custody from December 2019 did not bar her from moving out of state.
She provided the email below, complaining to court staff to move a hearing in January 2021.
She was then not served with the order she told me- possibly because they were going to her previous address- while at the same time, she was being accused of everything from associating with sovereign citizens, committing educational neglect, having no income, and being a nomad. Here is more from Judge Fears order.
She says none of this is true: she has always had work, was staying with friends in Tennessee, and her kids always went to school.
Furthermore, while the government claims she was a fugitive, they asked for her indictment to be sealed.
You can’t be a fugitive if you don’t know there is an indictment: which is what sealing an indictment does.
Initially upon being raided, the federal government charged Christian with federal interstate custodial interference, but those charges were dropped days later.
Shortly after the feds dropped federal interstate custodial interference charges, Adams office brought those same charges on the state level.
Christian was first picked up on July 3, 2021, spent nearly two weeks in a jail in Tennessee before being moved to Monroe County Detention Center; she was released on August 6, 2021, according to information the jail provided me.
The charges remain hanging but in limbo. It’s not clear what will happen to them even though she was charged more than a year ago.
Even worse, Christian told me that she’s been told no change in custody can be made until the criminal case has been settled. Here is part of what she told me in an email.
I am not allowed to see, contact, or have third party communication with my children. I do not even fully understand who actually has the custody (grandparents or father) as the orders are very confusing (I believe on purpose). I believe it was just the Grandparents until they switched custody again to the father once I was released from jail.
Judge said I can not seek any legal action until I get my criminal case past me yet the whole DA's office refused to prosecute me and recused themselves. It sat for 5-6 months at the Governor's office to be reassigned. It was reassigned in December and has been sitting there not moving forward ever since. I finally found out there is no case number and only an incident #.
I had full sole and legal custody of our children. After we left our home for our safety the courts somehow (supposedly) changed custody over to grandparents and never contacted anyone (which they knew how to contact me, or at least my family), never mailed an order to me, nor emailed me (like they have done in the past). I was also allowed to travel freely within the United States.
Her two children, now 10 and 8, have not seen their mom in over a year.
Correction: The order changing custody was written on February 5, 2021. It was originally erroneously reported as being written on January 15, 2021. That has been fixed. Also, Christian said there were two hearings in January 2021. The first which she found out about and tried to move and a second- about custody-which she told me she did not know about.
Woman has her life upended in another interstate child trafficking scheme