Editor’s Note: This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund. Initial reporting was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Carmel Swann moved to Texas in June 2021 looking for a fresh start and a chance to leave bad decisions behind. But, within weeks, she was in the Harris County Jail after an altercation with the man she’d moved in with. Then, she discovered she was pregnant from a prior relationship.