Saturday, November 22, 2008

PAPs Let Daughter Go After Suspicious DNA Results

Please click on the title of this post to read the story.

Pearls of Wisdom by Dawn at 4:25 PM

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I am not real sure what I think about this. It is amazing that this couple did the ethical thing and should be commended for that. I wonder though if there might have been a better way. If they spent $70,000 while trying to get her into state custody in Guatemala (at least that's the way i read it), I think the money might have been better spent on private investigators to look into the situation themselves.

Is this girl better off in an orphanage where she is obviously not getting good care? Why not simply complete the adoption, take her home where they could care for her themselves and then start an investigation of their own? At least the girl would be well cared for while they searched on their own for the truth. If it turns out the girl was indeed stolen then they could return her to her birth mother once she is found if she wants the girl.

They have already had to let go of the girl, and their hearts are broken. Would it be more so after having her in their home? Perhaps. But I know how much it would break my heart to visit a child I loved and see them with cuts and wounds that they wouldn't have if they were with me.

They made a hard decision. One that was important on so many levels to the world of adoption and to the people involved. I am just not sure they handled the decision in quite the right way.

November 23, 2008 at 7:21 AM
Dawn said...

Hi Kim! I wish the article would have explained why it took they so much money to place the girl back into state custody because I think you would be shocked. There was another couple (quite prominent now in the anti-adoption world) that adopted a group of children )I believe from Peru) and the children were very hostile toward the couple. The children were finally able to express to their new APs that they were kidnapped. You would think once they were able to prove that - the state or the country's government would step in, but NO. This poor couple had to fight THEMSELVES to reunite these children with their parents! They hired a PI to find the birthparents and, indeed, the children had all been stolen! These governments, including ours, leave everyone out there blowing in the wind: the APs, the bio. parents, these poor children...it is sickening, but not shocking once you have been through anything related to adoption in nay country.

November 23, 2008 at 8:01 AM
Stacy said...

Kim, I think the reason they did this IS stated in the article. Because they were putting the CHILD first. In the world of "do whatever it takes to get your child home" it seems easy to overlook that the CHILDREN are always the true victims of adoption fraud. What happened to the Helmsleys, having to spend all that money AND lose their heart in the process, is by all measures a tragedy. What might have happened to the child and her birth family, that's just wrong.

On behalf of the children who had unexplained discrepencies in Guatemala and still made it to America (as well as those who were discovered while still "in process" and are now reunited with their birth families, one little girl in particular), thank you Jennifer!

November 23, 2008 at 6:16 PM
Unknown said...

Stacy,
I understand WHY they gave the girl back. I was just questioning if there might have been a better way to go about doing it. I think in putting the child first it may have been better to keep her in their custody while searching on their own for the bio family and returning her at that point. No child is better off in an orphanage. It would have put this family in the position of actually being more of a foster family while searching, but the girl would have been better cared for.

Dawn,
I don't understand the reason why it would cost so much to put the girl back into state custody. It should have cost nothing. But we all know that it costs to do anything, even the right thing in these situations.

November 26, 2008 at 1:18 PM

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