Three YEARS after adopting, you could lose your children. No, not because of some ruling in another state... because of some international organization called INTERPOL.
I'm *serious.* See, here I thought INTERPOL was some bogus warning that was always posted on the old VHS tapes to discourage copying. Apparently it's a real organization and they do take children away.
A nearby family has two months to say goodbye to the child they adopted. The story is that the birth parents in Guatemala let their two-year-old play outside in the front yard, and she got stolen. And not to locate the kid for several years? Suspicious. Several comments allude to the idea that the parents just sold her and then changed their minds.
I dunno. But I guess the courts in Guatemala seem to buy this story. I'm afraid to think about it. Maybe it is true and the commenters are just poo-poohing the story because it's too horrid to contemplate. Things must be awful if the cops can't find your kid for years on end and you have no idea whether your child is alive and what is happening to her.
I can understand that as a parent, you'd want your kid back. NOW. But honestly. Should adoptive parents have to worry throughout their kids' childhoods that they have a "stolen" kid they may have to return? Is there never a point at which the child is "theirs" and can't be taken away?
I don't know. It just seems wrong to send her back. And it also just seems wrong to keep her here.
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Look Out, Dad!!
My father is the purple dot above the blue weather station. He's juuust outside Milton's evacuation zone. Well! My brother and I jus...
And what about the child? Shouldn't she be allowed to stay with the people she knows as mum & dad, with the standard of living she's now accustomed to? Visit the other perhaps? This is just wrong on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteI read this story too. You can imagine what I thought. I felt the same way as Ganeida. How horrible to take away from the parents she's known. She spent time in orphanage before she was adopted. It all sounds very strange to me. I just thank God that our kid's birthmothers chose us or at least chose the agency. Because it was their action I assume it is something they can never undo. I used to worry about it, but now I just don't allow my brain to go there. What a tragic story--there just isn't really an answer.
ReplyDeleteCorruption--or the suspicion thereof--was the first thing to bar our adoption. The horror stories (and horrible on both sides) are pretty brutal when it comes to adoption. Ugh.
ReplyDelete~Luke
I saw this story on CNN a few days ago and from what it said in that article was that it was situations like this that made the US ban adoption from this country. From what I got from that article the family was trying to get into the house when the child was taken and that the mom has been searching ever since but the police there are not the same as they are here and she had to fight really hard to even get to the paperwork that allowed her to find her daughter, plus the DNA did not match the person who brought the child to the orphanage and when that person never showed up she was labeled abandoned. It is hard though no matter how you look at it, you have a family that wants their child back and a family that is losing a child because their adoption was not legal as they adopted a stolen child. It is hard to think about though and just a bad situation all around.
ReplyDeleteExcept, Guatemala for years has had the reputation of having quick adoptions (you can adopt and infant) because there is little regulation and oversight. And, adoption experts, the US State Department, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and UNICEF have been warning people not to adopt from Guatemala.
ReplyDeleteI am not anti-adoption. My kids are adopted. But, I am not so naive to think that kids are not bought, sold and trafficked under the guise of adoption. Parents are tricked into signing their children over to unscrupulous agencies... They are told that with a child (family member) in US, they will be eligible to immigrate. They are told the child will be cared for in country. They are told that the child will return to their native country upon completion of their education in America. They are taken from women and sold to agencies by baby brokers.
I tried to make sure my adoption was ethical. At the time Haiti wasn't a "sending" country. The director had been doing adoption in Haiti for a long time and had never had a child denied entrance into the US because of unethical or questionable adoption practices. I got to meet the children's mothers.
But, there was a language barrier... I can only hope.
What a horrendous and heart wrenching story. All things considered, I think the child should be left where she is and have the agency that allowed this adoption to go through should have to foot the bill the bring the bio Mom to see the child once a month to establish and mainain contact.
ReplyDeleteAfter fostering a very troubled girl for several years, my parents decided to adopt her. (I was in college and my mother brought home a girl from the school she worked in... it was for troubled children.) Her mother who abandoned her years leaving her with abusive people showed up and showed records showing that she was older than we thought... to old to adopt.
ReplyDeleteAs a result, even though I can't have more kids, I have only had fleeting thoughts of adoption. Decided to be happy with the two I have and avoid the heartbreak.