Guatemalan mom says she will seek help from US state court in effort to get back adopted girl

[lovedforaday]

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

Comments

[kaowolfie]

...oh my god. This is the second case I've seen, in the last year and a half, where a Latina has had her child stolen and "adopted" by a family in Missouri. Followed, of course, by the "adoptive parents" refusing to return the child to their rightful parent.

the fuck, Missouri?

[thecityofdis]

I haven't seen others with these specifics, but yeah, human trafficking in the adoption industry is sadly A Thing, way past the minimum point it would need to be at in order to retain faith in humanity.

[kaowolfie]

The first part describes the other case I was thinking of.

The more I learn about the ways adoption is used to subjugate minority groups and strip them of their heritage - hello, stolen American Indian/First Nations/Indigenous Australian children! and white people who adopt kids of color! - with a side of human trafficking, fraud, bribery, and general asshattery... the more difficult it becomes to even support adoption in theory. Its current form is *so* abusive...

[tabaqui]

This just makes me sick, because however this falls out, someone will be miserable. The birth mother if she never gets her daughter back, the child if she's uprooted and returned to her birth mother. Ugly situation.

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.

[akycha]

Guatemalan adoptions were closed and are still closed after a national investigation came to the conclusion that they could not guarantee that any of the children adopted about had not been kidnapped ("child laundering" is one term commonly used. "Child trafficking" is another). The entire adoption system was corrupt.

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.)

[ebay313]

"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!

[kaowolfie]

With reference to "the best interests of the child," it is AMAZING how often that privileges the adoptive parents.

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.

[bellichka]

What the fuck is this comment.

[pandaseal]

Given that young girls were being kidnapped at one point to make babies for the adoption industry in Guatemala, this is not surprising.

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.

[roseofjuly]

Yeah, I was surprised at how long this went on without a mention of how race plays a big factor in international adoptions. There are many healthy, neurotypical children available in the United States - they're just often black or Latino, and sometimes not infants.

[pandaseal]

There I go, always making it a race thing. /s

[kaowolfie]

Think it's Ethicanet.org actually.

[magli]

I used to volunteer at an Guatemalan orphanage, and at that time (2003-ish) we were told no children were adopted out of Guatemala because the Guatemalan government couldn't guarantee that the children at the orphanages were actually orphans. Some of them probably were, but a lot of them had parents who were just too poor to actually feed their children. The orphanage I volunteered at had "parent days" when the parents could come inside and be with their children for a while. Shame the government have opened up for adoption without gaining the necessary control. What a terrible situation this is.