Sister needs help

my sister is using drugs again and is a single mother of 3. she lives in alabama and i live in south dakota. the oldest child is 7, than 3, and 2. i care lot of the children and what happens to them, my sister best friend said she has a criminal record. she is currently dating two different men that are both users and one of the men is married and has 6 children of his own and he got stabbed a couple of weeks ago in an alley at 3 am, he is fine. she denies everything. my sister was back up here to see us a couple of months ago. and the kids all cried and didn't want to go back to alabama. i am willing to take all 3 of the kids in and would like to get my sister some help. when she lived in south dakota she had death threats. all three of the children have different dads and the fathers are not part of their lives, i know that 2 out of the 3 dads are not allowed back in the state again and have been in and out of jail and prisons. she doesn't collect any kinds of child support. and we have seen were she has become very abusive with these children, my sisters best friend has seen her take hair brushes and hit the children on the head. i know that the oldest is deathly afraid of her. when they were here last the oldest went next door and never told me where he went and i was looking all over for him after about 10 minutes, he came out of the neighbors house and i asked he to come here and he put his hands over his head and started to talk really fast, are you going to give me a wopping, and i told him no and i just wanted to talk to him, after about 15 minutes of trying to convince him that i was not going to hit him he came over to me and i grabbed him and gave him a hug and told him that next time i wanted him to tell me were he was going first and i gave him a kiss and told him that i loved him. this is not the first time that my sister had a child taken away from her when the 7 year old was 3, my parents had a lawyer write up papers and took him away from her and than she just went and got pregant again. she says now she got her tubes tied, but she lies so much, we don't know if we should believe her. this time i want to take her children from her because my parents can't afford it, my parents only live 2 blocks away and they said they will try to help me. i have been married for 9 years and both my husband and i work full time. we have 3 children of our own. one that is 7, 6, and 2. could you please help me help these children and let me know who i need to contact to help get these children in a safe environment and they need to be with family right now. please let me know as soon as possible. thank you for every thing. i do have my sister's ssn and her address rhondah

Not lawyer - but been through similar experience

Just a suggestion - have you asked the mother if she would let you adopt the kids? We did that with my sister-in-law. She really didn't want the kids and signed the consent form. Its pretty simple and inexpensive if both parents consent - especially with a family adoption. Only thing is, with your situation, you have three different fathers to contact. And once they realize the situation, one of these crazy guys might decide he wants to play daddy. The same thing could happen if you try to prove she's unfit though. Once she's proven unfit, that also opens the doors to the fathers to regain custody. I don't envy your situation. I know how painful it can be to love children so much but have no control over how they're taken care of. My prayers will be with you. Just as an encouragement, we adopted our two nieces two years ago and they are both doing great. They have minimal contact with their biological parents, but are really happy! Good luck!

Melanie gave you some good advice just remember anything you do will open up an investigative process that you should be prepared to follow through with.
If your sister isn't inclined allow you to adopt the children you could ask her if she would allow you to take legal custody until she gets herself straight.
If that fails your next recourse would be to report her to the division of family services. I know this is a tough thing to do and will probably cause some hard feelings between you and your sister but the children need some intervention, ABUSE of any kind cannot be ignored. If you have to resort to this process, make it clear to DFS that you will take custody of the children. Also, be prepared to spend some money to get all of this accomplished.
The other problem you have is your dealing with two states, Alabama and South Dakota. They may have different laws concerning how to deal with this.

Hope this helps, you have a tough road in front of you but if you stay on top of everything your good will is bound to be paid back with positive results. Keeping the children safe is the important issue.

Good luck