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.Interesting that Missouri is where the courts are dealing with the Encarnacion Bail Romero case, where an undocumented worker from Guatemala lost her son to adoption while she was in jail for immigration violations. . . .
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."
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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."
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4 comments:
At this point in the game, although I agree children should NOT be stolen. The courts should consider what is best for the child, not what is best or right for the bio parents or the a-parents. I know that's not a popular thought when it comes to these types of scenarios, but I think it's an important one to consider. It's definitely a difficult and sad situation on all angles, regardless.
At this point in the game? What does that mean, since the adopters have had enough time since the child was kidnapped they should be allowed to "keep" her? Your line of reasoning is severely deluded and I am not understanding how anyone can say that she should not be returned to the mother she was stolen from!!
Anyone who is harboring a KIDNAPPED child and refuses to return the child should be held accountable to the highest extent in a court of law. This is wrong and sickening!
My good god hold on tight to your children. People can just snatch them off the street and if the self entitled people who "adopted" them have been in possession of them long enough, your SOL. What a society we live in...
Amen, Stephanie. No one thought what was in the "best interest" of that little girl when she was KIDNAPPED and sold into adoption. Anyone who thinks this child should stay in the US is NOT thinking about what's in the "best interest of the child". There are no "adoptive" parents in this scenario, only caregivers, and in my opinion, they are at this point, criminals.
This is a complex and painful story with no happy ending.
For a balanced look at the Guatemalan international adoption system, which was shut down in 2008, check out "Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl's Journey through Adoption" (http://www.amazon.com/Between-Light-Shadow-Guatemalan-Adoption/dp/0803233620)
"In Between Light and Shadow veteran journalist Jacob Wheeler puts a human face on the Guatemalan adoption industry, which has exploited, embraced, and sincerely sought to improve the lives of the Central American nation’s poorest children. Fourteen-year-old Ellie, abandoned at age seven and adopted by a middle-class family from Michigan, is at the center of this story. Wheeler re-creates the painful circumstances of Ellie’s abandonment, her adoption and Americanization, her search for her birth mother, and her joyous and haunting return to Guatemala, where she finds her teenage brothers—unleashing a bond that transcends language and national borders."
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