Baby Raymond's Story

This is a story about a 2 ½ year old baby boy named Raymond Liu who currently lives in Houston, Texas. Eighteen months ago, baby Raymond was taken from his family by Child Protective Services (CPS) and placed into a foster home. Raymond’s mother, Sally Liu suffers from mental illness and has been hospitalized intermittently due to her condition. When CPS took Raymond away from his immigrant family (the Liu’s), he was in the care of his maternal grandmother who has been is primary caregiver since his birth. Because Grandma could not speak English, CPS was unable to communicate to her why he was being taken away. Raymond did not show evidence of being abused, abandoned, malnourished, or neglected. In fact, he was healthy, happy, and well cared for by family members and even up to date on all his immunizations – he was in no apparent danger.

CPS took Raymond from his relatives and placed him in a foster home where he has been for the past 18 months. CPS is supposed to place children with family first but this did not happen. The family was at a loss; they were unfamiliar with the social system and turned to a local social service agency, the Asian American Family Services, for help. The AAFS placed numerous calls to the local CPS to no avail. Their phone calls were not returned and when they finally got in touch with CPS – they were told it was too late. Baby Raymond’s case had been turned over to the court system.

The family was getting nowhere with CPS, so they contacted Raymond’s father (Raymond’s father and mother never married) who lives in Arizona to help get baby Raymond back. After all, he was baby Raymond’s biological father and had to take a DNA test to prove it. Even his own father was turned down for “fear that Baby Raymond would be returned to his mentally ill mother”. No longer able to financially afford traveling between Phoenix to Houston to attend all the court hearings, baby Raymond’s father terminated his parental rights hoping that baby Raymond could be adopted by his aunt and uncle who also lived in Phoenix (Sally’s twin sister, Connie and her husband, Tony Diep). The family still had hope that CPS would return baby Raymond back the family. Why not? He was not an orphan, and the Diep’s and the Liu’s, including baby Raymond’s mother, complied with all of CPS’s requests (parenting classes, psychiatric evaluations, and home studies).

Due to case overload and high turnover rates, baby Raymond’s case was handled by a total of four different CPS caseworkers. Baby Raymond’s case was essentially “lost in the system”. No one seemed to return any of the family’s phone calls inquiring about Baby Raymond. He simply fell through the cracks of our social service system. For CPS to say that they did not know about baby Raymond having family is totally untrue; they simply did not want to acknowledge that the family was available (keep in mind that CPS took him away from the grandmother’s care). In fact, visitations with baby Raymond were made by Raymond’s mother, Sally, and her family members at the CPS offices! CPS just did not want to deal with the language barrier (the family speaks Hoi-Ping, a type of Cantonese dialect), cultural differences, and a mother with mental illness.

Now the Liu’s and the Diep’s are in a custody battle with CPS and the foster parents. A few weeks ago, the court terminated Sally’s parental rights due to her mental illness and granted managing conservatorship to the foster family. Clearly, our social service and judicial service failed the Liu and the Diep families. It is a shame that something like this happens in the United States where a child can be stripped from its own family. The family has not given up and will continue to fight for baby Raymond.

Disclaimer: This website was created and is maintained by supporters of the Raymond Liu case.
The families do not have any control of content on this website.