The UGLY MESS surrounding #BabyVeronica

By Trace A. DeMeyer
 

Have you watched the TV program WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, a not-so-subtle sales pitch for the Mormon’s expensive website ancestry.com?  Apparently everyone wants to know who they are these days and solve a mystery. OK, let's have them solve an adoption case of identity mystery!

There is one little Cherokee girl about to become a mystery herself.  Veronica Brown is going to lose one family and join another.  Her life is about to become a lie and her birth certificate will make her adoptive parents her birth-parents on paper. Her amended birth certificate will leave out everything that's actually true.

Yesterday non-Indian judges ordered her father’s arrest and ordered this nearly 4-year-old child to be transitioned immediately to non-Indian adoptive parents, the Capobiancos in South Carolina.  

It blows the mind! Veronica only knows her family as dad Dusten, stepmom Robin, her older sister Kelsey and her grandparents.  How will the Capobiancos ever explain taking her away from the only family she's known for almost 2 years?

It amazes me how the adoption industry convinces infertile adoptive parents to buy babies, like babies are too young to remember anything and we won’t have any desire to know who we really are. It’s ridiculous! Babies are not blank slates.  We have our own blood, ancestry and DNA memory. 

For as long as I can remember I tried to question my adoptive parents about why I was given up, where are my parents, who am I?  Veronica will do this, too.  Baby adoptees do become adult adoptees who search for their history, who ask questions, who speak out.  If I could have opened my file at age 12, I would have, believe me. I had to know the truth. Instead I waited and opened my adoption at age 22 with a judge in Wisconsin. I read my file, got my name. Much later I found out my dad would have raised me but just like Veronica's biological mother, my mother Helen didn't tell my father Earl.

For many adoptive parents, they still do not get it: you do not OWN us, nor will you ever own us, make us your own or become our ‘real’ parents.

As I expected, very few in mainstream media were asking adoptees like me how we felt about being adopted or this particular case.  Did you see any adoptees on CNN or Dr. Phil? Absolutely not.

I gave a statement to Suzette Brewer of Indian Country Today published on July 19… Months ago, I spoke with a producer at CBS and he said my story is so much like this Veronica case but 50 years later.  Later, producer Tim Howard at NPR didn’t use my comments or adoption story or my search for my birthfather for his Radio Lab story. Howard interviewed two more Native adoptees I told him about. Not one word we said hit the news. 

Why? For far too long, adoptees were not on anyone’s radar, not until Baby Veronica Brown made headlines.  Adoptees are supposed to be living with their forever families happy as clams, invisible and silent. Media won't ask about what adoption will do to Veronica physically and emotionally.

The adoption industry has made it their mission to make adoptive parents the focus, the heroes who “save” children (and pay out big money for the privilege). The adoption industry has convinced the public that adoptees are happy (add grateful) being adopted.

This is how this case is messed up: Veronica doesn’t need to be saved.  She’s not an orphan.  She has two living parents:  a mother who abandoned her and got paid and her dad who fought to keep her and raise her. 

In Veronica’s case, both birthfamilies could have decided who would raise Veronica, and not place her in a stranger adoption.  If Christy Maldonado needed money, all she had to do was tell Dusten Brown the truth and hand Baby Veronica over.

This is where it’s get fishy: A pregnant Maldonado signs a contract with the Capobiancos, ends all contact with her ex Dusten Brown, and the Nightlight Christian Adoption Agency brokers the deal. The Capobiancos paid the agency, paid Maldonado’s expenses, paid the hospital, paid lawyers and took Veronica shortly after birth.  (read this: a very revealing yet disturbing update on Christy Maldonado, the birthmother:  https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/12/selling-christy-maldonado-150831)

That was one eager adoption agency who cared little about Veronica’s Cherokee tribal status or federal law.  Nightlight lawyers skirted ICWA by submitting error-filled paperwork about Dusten to the Cherokee Nation. That way the adoption could proceed. The adoption agency paved the way and laughed all the way to the bank.

This adoption never should have happened. Those devious lawyers must have waited on pins and needles knowing how the Indian Child Welfare Act prevents child removals like this one from happening.  Then Dusten got into the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

It is an ugly mess, an ugly truth, cruel in the extreme and one which Veronica will not be able to escape. Experience tells us that it will not end well for the adoptive parents and in the end there will be no winners, only a great deal of loss and trauma for everyone involved, especially Veronica. 

How does adoption "save" Veronica? It doesn't.

In the end, it’s about money, an infertile couple who expects to raise the baby they bought, and a corrupt billion dollar adoption industry.


UPDATE: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/11/dusten-brown-returns-oklahoma-evades-south-carolina-150829

AP STORY:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/biological-father-of-cherokee-indian-girl-ordered-to-leave-iowa-return-to-oklahoma/2013/08/11/8a3b25f0-02ab-11e3-bfc5-406b928603b2_story.html 

UPDATE: TULSA WORLD: http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/Baby_Veronicas_family_says_arrest_of_her_father_wont/20130811_11_A12_ULNSho116787 

GREAT POST: http://abortedadoption.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/80-dear-baby-veronica.html 

ANOTHER GREAT POST with great comments! http://theadoptedones.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/dear-adoptive-parent-community/