Guatemalan mom says she will seek help from US state court in effort to get back adopted girl
9:51 pm - 05/16/2012
A Guatemalan mother who says her child was stolen and later turned over to a U.S. couple for adoption said Tuesday that she will go to a Missouri court seeking to get her daughter back now that the U.S. State Department has said it doesn’t have jurisdiction to help return the girl.
The State Department confirmed Tuesday that it has informed Guatemala’s government that it can’t help return Anyeli Hernandez Rodriguez because the U.S. and Guatemala had not signed the Hague Abduction Convention at the time of the alleged kidnapping in 2006.
“We’re obviously deeply concerned about allegations regarding stolen children and inter-country adoptions wherever these cases come up,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. “We consider the appropriate venue in the United States for pursuing this case is in the state courts. They’re the competent organ for holding a full hearing on the merits and the best interests of the child.”
A human rights group that has pursued the case in Guatemala’s courts on behalf of the child’s biological mother, Loyda Rodriguez, said the next step will be to find a U.S. law firm to file a civil suit charging immigration fraud.
The group, the Survivor Foundation, doesn’t allege that the adoptive couple knew anything about the girl being kidnapped. It argues only that the adoption in 2008 wasn’t valid because of the abduction and the girl should be returned to her biological mother.
In a phone conversation with The Associated Press, Rodriguez said she still has hope she will be reunited with her little girl, now 7, who she hasn’t seen since she was 2.
“I’m looking for a law firm that will pursue this in the courts in the United States,” she said. “Even if she can’t come home, to at least be able to have contact with her.”
Anyeli was born Oct. 1, 2004, the second child of Rodriguez, a housewife, and her bricklayer husband, Dayner Orlando Hernandez. She disappeared Nov. 3, 2006, as Rodriguez was distracted while opening the door to their house in a working class suburb, San Miguel Petapa. She turned to see a woman whisk the girl away in a taxi.
The girl spent over a year at an adoption agency before being adopted by Timothy and Jennifer Monahan of Liberty, Missouri.
Rodriguez obtained a Guatemalan court order last July for the return of Anyeli, who left the country on Dec. 9, 2008, according to court records. The court ruled that the girl had been stolen from her family.
A public relations firm the Monahans hired said last year that they “will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child.” Their lawyer declined to comment Tuesday.
An attorney and the legal representative of the Guatemalan agency that handled the adoption were both convicted of human trafficking last fall. A third woman was detained and charged last month with trafficking, conspiracy and forgery in connection with the adoption.
“When Guatemalan authorities determined the adoption was illegal, it nullified all of the child’s fraudulent documentation that was used to process her adoption. This includes her Guatemalan passport, which she used to exit the country,” said Fredy Coti, a lawyer at the Survivors Foundation.
Coti believes that gives the case grounds for a hearing in Missouri state court.
source
The State Department confirmed Tuesday that it has informed Guatemala’s government that it can’t help return Anyeli Hernandez Rodriguez because the U.S. and Guatemala had not signed the Hague Abduction Convention at the time of the alleged kidnapping in 2006.
“We’re obviously deeply concerned about allegations regarding stolen children and inter-country adoptions wherever these cases come up,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. “We consider the appropriate venue in the United States for pursuing this case is in the state courts. They’re the competent organ for holding a full hearing on the merits and the best interests of the child.”
A human rights group that has pursued the case in Guatemala’s courts on behalf of the child’s biological mother, Loyda Rodriguez, said the next step will be to find a U.S. law firm to file a civil suit charging immigration fraud.
The group, the Survivor Foundation, doesn’t allege that the adoptive couple knew anything about the girl being kidnapped. It argues only that the adoption in 2008 wasn’t valid because of the abduction and the girl should be returned to her biological mother.
In a phone conversation with The Associated Press, Rodriguez said she still has hope she will be reunited with her little girl, now 7, who she hasn’t seen since she was 2.
“I’m looking for a law firm that will pursue this in the courts in the United States,” she said. “Even if she can’t come home, to at least be able to have contact with her.”
Anyeli was born Oct. 1, 2004, the second child of Rodriguez, a housewife, and her bricklayer husband, Dayner Orlando Hernandez. She disappeared Nov. 3, 2006, as Rodriguez was distracted while opening the door to their house in a working class suburb, San Miguel Petapa. She turned to see a woman whisk the girl away in a taxi.
The girl spent over a year at an adoption agency before being adopted by Timothy and Jennifer Monahan of Liberty, Missouri.
Rodriguez obtained a Guatemalan court order last July for the return of Anyeli, who left the country on Dec. 9, 2008, according to court records. The court ruled that the girl had been stolen from her family.
A public relations firm the Monahans hired said last year that they “will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child.” Their lawyer declined to comment Tuesday.
An attorney and the legal representative of the Guatemalan agency that handled the adoption were both convicted of human trafficking last fall. A third woman was detained and charged last month with trafficking, conspiracy and forgery in connection with the adoption.
“When Guatemalan authorities determined the adoption was illegal, it nullified all of the child’s fraudulent documentation that was used to process her adoption. This includes her Guatemalan passport, which she used to exit the country,” said Fredy Coti, a lawyer at the Survivors Foundation.
Coti believes that gives the case grounds for a hearing in Missouri state court.
source
It's hard and there are no winners in any of this, so my friends are in the process of adopting a girl from a Russian orphanage and a girl from china.
What a lot of people don't realize is that there *aren't* a lot of healthy, neurotypical children up for adoption in the US (or other developed or even developing countries). In general, healthy, neurotypical children are *wanted* by their parents. So when a parent *doesn't* want a healthy, normal child...well, there's a waiting list. This is true almost everywhere. (Although there are some exceptions. The one child policy in China, for instance, means a surplus of girls.)
Of course, people could adopt severely disabled and emotionally disturbed children in the US. (Or other countries.) But most people don't want to take on all the problems associated with that. (Which I don't blame them for.)
It makes adoption very thorny. People want healthy, neurotypical kids. (Can't blame them myself.) But there aren't any (typically) in their home countries, or if there are, there are waiting lists and the possibility that birth parents will change their minds at the last minute, leaving the adoptive parents with the check. But international adoptions are often thorny. Even in very poor countries, most parents want to keep healthy, neurotypical children. And there are less than ethical adoption agencies as well as linguistic and cultural differences that can make it hard to tell whether the kid you're adopting is from a family that really wants to give him/her up...or whether the kid was kidnapped or purchased somewhere. (By an agency that wants a large adoption fee.)
Adopting older children or sibling groups, especially out of foster care, can be incredibly difficult. Many of those children have been severely neglected by their families of origin and have been abused/exposed to drugs and alcohol while in the womb. These children may have intense psychological issues (i.e. Reactive Attachment Disorder, due to being shipped from home to home), behavioral problems, and/or serious physical and mental disabilities.
And, as others have said, adopting a healthy infant in the US is difficult- propective adoptive parents can be on waiting lists for years, and it can cost upward of $30,000. sAnd while it would be lovely if everyone would adopt from the foster care system, a lot of those kids come with issues most people are not equipped to handle. I have a sister adopted from foster care and I know absolutely I could not handle her behaviors if I were her parent.
+1
So, if someone were to kidnap her back, and forge documents to get her back to Guatemala, and let her real mother adopt her, they'll consider that a "legal adoption" too?
I smell bullshit. Lots of it.
AAAAND off to Google
If this is to be believed:
The Monahans’ adoption was a slow, tangled process that began in 2006. By July 2007, a failed DNA test revealed that a fake birth mother had relinquished “Karen Abigail.” According to emails the Monahans sent to Guatemalan private investigators, they were distressed and confused. They’d already waited seven months for the adoption to move forward, with almost no progress.[i] On August 1st, Jennifer Monahan wrote in her personal timeline of the adoption that agency head Sue Hedberg had planned to ask LabCorp, the primary DNA testing facility in the US used for adoptions, to “bury” the results of the mismatched test. But “LabCorp can’t do that anymore,” Monahan noted, because of newly tightened regulations. She’d grown suspicious about what was unfolding in the adoption, and took careful notes of everything that transpired, including, her notes say, recording conversations with Sue Hedberg. When Monahan asked Hedberg what could be done after the child’s failed DNA test, aparently seeking alternative ways to push the adoption through, Hedberg responded that Marvin might bring the child to an orphanage, where she might eventually become declared abandoned. Or, Hedberg said, Bran might dump the girl “somewhere where nobody could find her.” In subsequent emails, Monahan said she was “terrified.” [1]
seems like they, at best, just didn't care either way
Sounds like they knew quite a bit about the kidnapping.
the fuck, Missouri?
And while i know for a fact that i do not have in any way, shape, or form the mental fortitude to care for a 'special needs' kid, it does kind of bother me that people only want *newborns, newborns!!* What's wrong with a kid who is four or six or ten? They still need a family. I'd rather skip all the diapering and bottle feeding and whatnot, anyway. Wasn't that fun.
With reference to "the best interests of the child," it is AMAZING how often that privileges the adoptive parents. International adoption is in many ways a way for wealthy countries to take away the children of poorer countries. People say "best interests of the child" as though it's some kind of tragedy to grow up in Guatemala (or India, or China, or any country that's not the U.S.) or to grow up in any class that's not "middle-class." (For which read, "upper middle-class, even international adoption is not exactly cheap.)
Yes, this!
seriously. I am still of the mind that it is in the kid's best interests to be returned to their first parents, rather than get raised in some WASP household. I don't really... care if some bunch of WASPs gets mad because the kid they bought gets taken back, because children are not property ffs.
Also, all the people talking about why someone would go out of country? Let's not play like race doesn't play a huge factor. There is a reason China and Russia are so fucking popular, despite lower adoption fees and what appears to be a much more ethical system in some African countries. FFS, we're shipping black kids from the US foster care system off to Canada.
I recommend checking out ethica.org, their mission is about helping us move toward a world with ethical adoption.
But then there's the extreme sketchiness of Madonna's first adoption.
Another friend of my mother's was adopted. When she had some life-threatening health problems at 50, she wanted to find her birth parents for help with the diagnosis. Her adopted mother refused to let the records be released. Somehow, that was up to the adopted parents.
On the other hand, my cousin chose a wonderful family for her child. It was incredibly difficult for her relatives because we wanted to be part of the girl's life. My cousin chose really well. She's very involved with her daughter and has become really close friends with the adoptive mother. The adoptive family is completely open to us having a relationship with the girl.
tl;dr I think people have good and bad experiences and there needs to be closer scrutiny of the whole adoption industry. I think it's too easy for abuse in situations where there isn't economic equality.
Or something. Maybe I'm being naive. I'm not sure what my point was anymore...