Single mothers get recognition. We raise them in praise every Mother’s day. Single Ladies get a song. What exactly do ‘thwarted fathers’ get? Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Well unless you consider the scripted ridicule. And then they get ‘deadbeat’, ‘loser’, ‘serial impregnator’, ‘sperm donor’, etc… According to the Meriam Webster dictionary, to thwart is to: run counter to so as to effectively oppose or baffle : contravene oppose successfully : defeat the hopes or aspirations of pass through or across You see, the gist of what you are about to see is that according to Judge Malphrus of South Carolina in her ruling of Sept. 2011, Dusten Brown was a THWARTED FATHER. That means he was effectively opposed, that adoptive couple effectively violated his rights. It means they defeated his hopes and aspirations of being a father. They passed right over him, ignoring his rights and stealing his child with trickery of the law much like some fairy, adopto-land magicians. I realize many have been told for a long time that Mr. Brown abandoned his child and is a horrible person but that simply was not the truth. It makes the entire tragedy that has become Baby Girl’s life much more palatable if we believe this couple were SAVING her. After all, they even named their cause SAVE Veronica Rose. They are saving her right? But a deeper read and some thought lets you get a glimpse of adopto-world tactics, into what happens when an couple is so desperate to adopt that they are willing to ‘thwart’ the father to do so. They find birth mothers in unfortunate situations. They offer inducements. They get her support and permission. She often has an axe to grind with the birth father. Adoptive couples and attorneys are often very eager to help birth mothers solve this little issue. They often forgo some part of the paperwork. They cut the father out of the picture. The list goes on. But here we see, Mr. Brown still won his case on more issues than simply ICWA. They found his rights were intact and had to be terminated first. They found terminating them was NOT in Baby Girl’s best interest. They would not terminate them. They found birth mother lied. They found adoptive couple to be untruthful when seeking to terminate his rights based solely on lack of support for six consecutive months. They found Adoptive Couple was trying to use a loophole to get around him. They found he tried to be there but wasn’t allowed to be. They found adoptive couple to be impeding contact between Mr. Brown and his daughter. But somehow, on appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the only issue before them was ICWA and whether that applied. And in another unfortunate leap, South Carolina (on remand) seemed all too eager to forgo Baby Girl’s right to a best interest hearing and various other procedural safeguards and simply hand the prize over to the highest bidders, the Capobiancos. They were able to ignore every other legal ground on which Mr. Brown won his case. They simply said ICWA did not apply so therefore, regardless of his rights and any other legalities, these people, as well-to-do South Carolina consitituents should have his child simply because as Mrs. Capobianco stated, they wanted her more. How did we get from there to here? How can our justice system allow this to happen to a legal birth parent in this country? What if this were your father? Your son? Your child? How do we fail a child like this? I’m hoping it’s a question we all will be asking ourselves. I hope it’s something that doesn’t allow one to sleep at night. I hope it’s something that outrages others as much as it’s outraged me. I hope it’s something that compels one to scream and yell and write letters and tell the world this just isn’t even humane! -THWARTED FATHERS
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:52:08 +0000