#StandWithSophie: Father of Texas girl, 9, who accused mom's boyfriend of sexual abuse wins full custody
The father of 9-year-old Sophie Long from Texas has won full custody of his daughter after she was seen screaming for help in a shocking viral video. On Wednesday, September 9, a judge awarded full custody of Sophie and her two younger brothers to her father Michael. The video had led to the #StandWithSophie campaign after the child, Sophie, was heard accusing her mother Kelly's fiance of sexually abusing her when she was dragged out of her father's car by her grandma during a custody exchange.
The video had gone viral across social media with the campaign urging her father, Michael Long, to take full custody of her. The father even tweeted, addressing President Trump to intervene. Michael's lawyer Jamie L Graham spoke to Heavy and revealed that they are thrilled at the decision and said that the judge had decided to "err on the side of caution" while giving Michael custody.
Michael and his wife Kourtney had spoken to Daily Mail and said that they are full of guilt over the abuse that the child has allegedly gone through and is unable to sleep when she is at her mother's house over fears of what could happen to her. The pair also revealed that they are super scared of what could happen to Sophie and her younger brothers if they were handed back to the mother this week. They shared that they have spent their savings on the legal battle and have also been forced to give up their dream of owning a home as a result of the expenses.
They added how a once bubbly and lively child had become a shadow of her former self and said that both the young boys are also very affected. The younger boy had even told his stepmother Kourtney that he tries to stay awake until dawn because "they get them in the dark".
"It's really, really hard. There's a lot of guilt — you try to think if there was a sign you could have seen sooner, if they were trying to tell you in some other way," Kourtney said. "It felt just awful [to hear what she said] and you feel disgusted all the time, especially with everybody telling you right and left that it shouldn't be this hard to remove a child from an abusive situation."
"I just don't understand why everybody just keeps throwing them back to the wolves," she continued. Michael said that he has done and put everything he has into trying to find a legal means to keep Sophie with him but says he was always put through the ringer by the system.
At one point, Michael had even been ordered to send Sophie to her mother's house for a 48-hour visit. It was during that incident that Sophie was filmed screaming and begging her father while being grabbed by her grandmother. "What happened was I unlocked the car, her grandma showed up and it looked like an abduction in the back of my car. Thank God I was filming. But this is the most helpless feeling I've ever felt in my life — my daughter was screaming for her life while I was holding a video camera and that's all I could do," Michael said.
"This world is broken if that's all a father can do to protect his daughter. I'm having to film my daughter getting assaulted in the back of my own vehicle and if I do anything wrong, my parental rights are going to be gone," he added. "They completely took her innocence away. But they didn't take her power away and they didn't take her will. In terms of how I feel towards them, I hope they pay for what they've done. I don't believe in violence, I don't believe in death threats but justice needs to be served."