Missouri Couple Silent on Order to Return Adopted Daughter to Guatemala
By RESHMA KIRPALANI and CHRISTINA NG, Aug. 5, 2011
A Guatemalan judge has ordered an American couple in Missouri to return their 6-year-old adopted
daughter to her birth mother in San Miguel Petapa, Guatemala.
There are major questions about whether the judge’s ruling is enforceable in the U.S. and whether the
couple who adopted the girl, Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan of Liberty, Mo., will comply or simply ignore it.The Missouri couple has remained silent since the judge’s ruling.
Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez ruled on Monday in favor of the child's birth mother, Loyda
Rodriguez, who is represented by the Guatemalan human rights group, Survivors' Foundation. The foundation claims that the child was kidnapped from her mother in 2006 and was illegally put up for
adoption by traffickers who financially benefited when the child was adopted by the Missouri couple in
2008.
The foundation does not allege that the U.S. couple knew the girl had been kidnapped, according to the Associated Press.
Court Rules Missouri Couple Adopted Stolen Baby
Court documents released by the Survivors' Foundation lists the adoptive parents as Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan of Liberty, Mo., a suburb of Kansas City. Calls to Monahan, an orthopedic surgeon, were not immediately returned to ABCNews.com.
Hernandez ordered the cancellation of the child’s passport, made out to Karen Abigail Monahan Vanhorn when she was adopted out of the country.
The court order says that the American Embassy should coordinate efforts with local agencies in
Guatemala to help locate the child in the U.S. and return her to Rodriguez. If she is not returned within
two months, Interpol will be solicited to help locate and return her, the court stated.
Nine Guatemalans, including a judge, have been charged in the case.
Survivors' Foundation said in a statement, "The resolution is considered historical and it's a light of
hope for all the Guatemalans, because the justice in Guatemala, despite all of the obstacles, is changing
not with giant steps but hopefully case by case."
In 2008, Loyda Rodriguez told ABCNews.com, "My daughter... was kidnapped as I was entering my
home. A woman appeared in my backyard and grabbed her out of my arms. There was nothing I could do."
At the time, the child was known as Anyelí Liseth Hernández Rodríguez. Her birth mother said that local police were indifferent to her case and offered virtually no help in finding the kidnappers.
The foundation said that Rodriguez and other mothers whose children have been victims of rampant
trafficking have endured "fear" and "desperation" in their constant search of their children for the last five years.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/missouri-couple-silent-order-return-adopted-daughter-guatemala/story?id=14234379
I write about Guatemala and the crisis of child kidnapping in my book "One Small Sacrifice." If you want to read the e-book version, email me: tracedemeyer@yahoo.com. I will send it FREE!
Thank you for reporting this tragedy. Here in Liberty we are shocked to learn about the plight of this child, Dr. Timothy and Jennifer Monahan knew for more than 2 and a half years that the child had been stolen. The lawyer they hired in Guatemala is now behind bars charged with conspiracy and human trafficking, including this case. The child's mother pleaded with the Monahans to return her child for more than two years. The Monahans' response was to hire another lawyer and refuse communication. This caused the trauma of a court case. The verdict is now in: the adoption was never legal, the child was stolen, and the Monahans have been ordered to return the child to its family. They continue to refuse. They went to Washington, DC, and hired a lobbyist, Peter Mirijanian. The police will not act to protect this child or the two other children in the Monahans' house. What will the Monahan's tell this stolen child when she grows up: We loved you so much, we kept you from your mother's love.
ReplyDeleteUPDATE: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/08/guatemalan-court-order-rattles-foreign-adoption-community/41514/
ReplyDeleteAdoption has been a tumultuous issue for the U.S. and Guatemala over the last few years. Guatemala closed its doors to U.S. adoptions in 2008 because of rampant fraud. They were reopened in 2009, but not without controversy. According to an Aug. 6 Associated Press story, that's what happened with the girl, who was adopted under the name Karen Abigail López García, but whose real name is Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez, according to a website set up to help search for her. Her mother claims she was snatched from her arms in 2006. The court ordered the PGN, the Guatemalan equivalent of the attorney general's office, to work with the U.S. embassy on retrieving the girl, who has been living with Timothy and Jennifer Monahan in Missouri since 2007. The Monahans have two months from the July 29 order to return the girl, under the latest order from the Guatemalen court.