Monday, August 29, 2011

Three: Holy Crap, Really?

This.is.horrifying.  (And now the icon actually links to the site..sigh...I'm technically challenged).


The author of the post is an adoptive mother..of a girl from Guatemala. 

Let's break the post down, shall we?

"Earlier this month, a family’s world was destroyed. A Liberty, MO family received notification that a
Guatemalan judge had ordered the return of their seven-year-old adopted daughter.
This story caught my eye because I have a six-year-old Guatemalan daughter, and Liberty is only 40 miles away from where I live. So, it was hitting rather close to home. When I first read about the case, my heart went out to the family. For five years, they have loved a little girl they had adopted. I am sure they had official paperwork, and had jumped through all the hoops required in an international adoption. They hadn’t done anything wrong."

Holy crap, really?  First of all, a family was destroyed the instant that the little girl was taken from her mother's arms.  For five years, the family from Liberty, MO was taking care of a kidnapped child.  Not a child that had been put up for adoption...a child who was kidnapped.  Admittedly, to some of the adoption community, the lines between adoption and kidnapping are blurry anyway but this seems pretty clear cut.  And how the hell can the family have "official paperwork"?  It's paperwork based on lies and omissions...and it's pretty sick to support the hoops that were required in this case...since they were lies too.


But, a judge 1700 miles away ruled differently. According to CNN International, the little girl was walking home with her mother when she was snatched and disappeared into a taxicab. The mother exhausted every effort to find her child, ending in the review of 2000 international adoption case files. Once she found her daughter, DNA tests confirmed the little girl in Missouri was hers.  And she wants her back.

Holy crap, really?  "And she wants her back."  Yeah, annnnnd?  If my child was snatched from my grasp and given away by kidnappers I'd want her back too.


After reading stories about Baby Richard and birth mothers changing their minds and wanting their children back, my husband and I decided to adopt internationally. We assumed that once the adoptions were final…they were final, and we needn’t worry that one day, someone would come back and demand the return of our daughters.
When I read about the family in Liberty, I had a disconnected feeling about the case. It was happening to someone else and it had no effect on me personally. But, then I thought…wait…I have a Guatemalan daughter and she is six. Could something like this happen to us?
I get sick at the thought.

Holy crap, really?  You know what they say when you assume, right?  How does this adoptive mother know that the girl she's raising as her own doesn't have a mother and father back in Guatemala who are weeping tonight because their daughter was taken illegally?  Answer:  She doesn't.


I keep wondering what is in the best interest of the little girl. I realize she was kidnapped at the age of two. But, she has been in the US for five years. She has a family that loves her. If she was returned to a birth mother she probably doesn’t remember, she would be taken away from her family, to a country where she probably doesn’t speak the language. What effect would that have on her development? On her emotional health? Would it destroy her?

Holy crap, REALLY?  She had a family that loved her in Guatemala.  She wasn't given the chance to grow up with her natural mother...she was KIDNAPPED.  Who is anyone to say what a two year old remembers about her mother...and why does that matter at all anyway??  She was taken away from her family...taken away to a country where she didn't speak the language.  I'm sure that had a huge effect on her development..both physical and emotional.  I can't speak for the little girl in this case, but I can tell you that as an adoptee, the thought of anyone supporting her staying with people who had a part in taking her from her homeland destroys me and hurts my heart.




5 comments:

  1. Oh dear oh dear! So kidnapping is fine unless it happens to you and if the person expressing their views is esteemed by others we all have to swallow down their views however wrong and misguided? Think not.

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  2. Gross. I tried to comment "nicely" but it killed me to even try.

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  3. All the reasons she listed for not returning the child are reasons that IA should be completely banned in the first place.

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  4. There has been a lot of 'discussion' about this case on various adoption list serves. It really sounds like the a-family had some clear signs that the little girl was not legitimately available for adoption (as legitimately as they are suppose to be-- I realize all of that is questionable as well). They pursued the adoption anyway.

    Many children are adopted IA at an older age. You really don't hear aparents talk about all the language and culture difficulties in those situations, which are even greater because the kids are being adopted by people who look very differently into a country where they will become a minority and be subjected to racism. Definitely a double standard.

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  5. She did not come to the US until Dec 08...

    There was a really good reason this country closed. Sssshhhh we aren't supposed to talk about corruption and adoption in the same sentence.

    http://findingfernanda.com/

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