Click here for the full story.
Here it is in summary. Young boy, taken from his horrible situation at the age of four months and placed in foster care in my state. His birth mother has lost her parental rights--they are terminated. His birth father is sentenced to prison for drug charges, and he is a convicted, not alleged, but convicted sex offender. He is also an illegal alien in America.
This little boy, Gabriel, is now two and knows no other family. His foster parents have been pursuing adoption and were on the verge of finalizing it.
Aside--in this state, in the foster/adopt system. Your application to adopt a child is put to a committee, who then decides if you get to adopt this child. By the time your application is at a committee, you have had the child in your home and you have a relationship with them. You have also been put through the adoption application which includes: federal fingerprinting/background check, sex offender and criminal background check, financial check, several personal references have been checked, your employer has been contacted to see if you are a good employee, and you have had a thorough physical. If you fail any of these, you will be turned down. I have a friend who's husband, back in like the early 80's urinated in public and a young girl saw him. It is considered a sexual crime and he cannot adopt a child because he is a sex offender. It's a pretty serious application process in the state I live in, and it should be! Gabriel's foster family are stellar people. He is a state patrolman, and they have several adopted kids on a huge piece of property.
Okay, back to the story....
Family is going to committee! Let's adopt this kid! OOoops! The state just realized sex offender birth father is being paroled soon. The state decided to send Gabriel to Mexico released to his paternal grandmother's care. Guess where sex offender father has indicated he will go once he is paroled and deported (get him out of here!)? Mom's house in Mexico. Gabriel is going to Mexico with complete strangers, in a country he has never known, with a man he doesn't know, to a woman he doesn't know, to be with sex offender dad. Oh my gawd!
The state committee indicated that they give preference to blood relatives. Really? What about the birth mom's family? What about sending this kid out of the jurisdiction of the USA to be with a known sex offender? If this man were a US citizen, would we still send Gabriel to grandma's house? No. This little boy was born in Oregon, he is a US citizen. His rights?? This is preposterous, and absolutely gives adoption a bad name.
So the state of Oregon has paid a bunch of money to house this loser in our prison system for at least two years. My tax dollars have also paid for the foster care Gabriel has received. My tax dollars have paid for the huge adoption costs to get this boy to committee for this family. Nope, send him to Mexico.
When I talk to people who, in recent years, have had a bad experience with adoption. It's a state adoption like this. It's a situation where there is huge preference given to blood relatives, forget that the relatives don't have a roof over their head, but send the kid there anyway. It makes my blood boil.
Why? Remember the hoops that we, adoptive parents, have to jump through, yet, if a little of my DNA matched the kid's, all those serious hoops go away. It is aggravating.
This family did something so cool. They went to the press. They yelled at the top of their lungs, "Look here! We need somebody to start making noise!" I give them huge credit for screaming loud.
Why? Because this has made national news, and the child protection services in Oregon can't handle the phone calls at this point. Keep doing it! I also emailed the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and John Walsh. No luck there, but I was hoping one of his no-nonsense sound bites might help.
At this point, a new committee of completely different members are being assembled to reconsider the decision, based upon this family's request for an immediate appeal. Please pray that wiser heads prevail here.
I have always said, if you plan to adopt, be prepared to defend your family. Not all adoption workers are on your side. You need to really know who to trust.
I called our state's adoption line recently to find out what we would need to do to get that process going again. We had an incredibly horrible experience with them back in 2000, which is why we switched to a private adoption. That is a future post. Suffice it to say, I have grown a spine since then on this issue. When I called recently, I relayed my previous story to them and finished with, "Let me make it clear. If I am treated like that ever again by your agency, I won't roll over again. I will get mad. I will get loud. And I will go up the ladder." Amazingly, the person on the other end of the phone was horrified by what happened, and said she would personally investigate the person involved.
You have to be prepared to do that, folks. Just as if you had given birth and some nurse in the hospital was trying to jerk you around. Your momma bear instinct kicks in, and you get a bit ferocious. I will never apologize for anything I say that defends children. If a rational adult doesn't speak for them, who will? I certainly don't want Gabriel's whacked out adoption committee thinking they have the final word.
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