Mornings are busy at the Hennepin county juvenile courthouse in Minneapolis. Here, judges decide some of the most difficult of all child protection cases -- whether to permanently remove children from their parents custody. One of those parents is Janet, a woman in her early 30's who waits for her attorney to arrive before going into court. She's trying to regain custody of her two children -- a five-year-old boy and four-year-old girl. She's given birth to seven children; all but these two have been taken away by the county.

Janet's road to this court date has been one intertwined with childhood incest, a series of relationships with abusive men, prostitution, theft and narcotics; most recently crack cocaine. For the last 10 years, Janet has put drugs and her partners before her children.

"I'd get up, feed and bathe the kids. Do some laundry. Cooked meals. Around dinner time I'd start getting dressed to go out to prostitute myself and I'd work at that for a couple of hours and then I'd come back home and get high and then I'd go back out there and keep making trips back and forth to work. I'd come back and they'd be upstairs sleepin' while we were gettin' high."

Janet is a Caucasian woman with light brown eyes rimmed in heavy black liner. Her sandy hair offsets a strong, full face. But when she talks about her past, she takes on the look of a vulnerable child.

12 years ago, Janet's first husband introduced her to hard drugs. The drugs were t's and blues -- a combination of painkillers and decongestants which, when mixed and injected, produces a high similar to the combination of heroin and cocaine.

"I had just got married, pregnant and my partner used and I didn't know at first. He was in the bathroom and I walked in on him. I asked him how he felt when he was gettin' high and he said it feels different every time; experience it for yourself. And I was gettin' high from then on."

Janet and her husband used drugs for several years until child protection intervened and removed their four children. Janet's mother reported them to Hennepin county authorities after Janet's brother found the children home alone. At the time, Janet was in jail on a prostitution arrest.

"I expected my four-year-old to take care of my newborn so I could take my drugs and escape from everything else."

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