Baby Veronica, the case that changed the world's views on adoption. Veronica Rose was born September 15th, 2009. She was placed for adoption by her birth mother, Christinna Maldonado and given to Melanie Duncan and Matt Capobianco. Should have been a fairy tale ending, right? Wrong. What they didn't tell people, was that Veronica's birth father, War Veteran Dusten Brown did not consent to this adoption. He had no knowledge that his daughter had been taken out of the State of Oklahoma until she was four months old. Why didn't he? You may ask. Because he was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma waiting to deploy. Anyone with family who is or was military, knows that once Deployment orders are handed down, your spouse/boyfriend, son/daughter, etc, rarely leaves the base/post. Dusten contends he tried to contact Christy, and could not get in contact with her. He finally, at some point, sent a text message after repeated demands from her to sign over his rights, that he would, to try to placate her so they could talk face to face.
It didn't happen, and not until Veronica was four months old, living in South Carolina with the Capobiancos, did he find out where his daughter was. He was cornered in a Mall Parking Lot, six days away from deployment and asked to sign an acceptance of service. He signed, not realizing what he was signing. When he learned of it, he went straight to the JAG office to find out what to do.
Fast Forward Four years, He'd been fighting since 2010, and got custody in 2011, only for the US Supreme Court to overturn one point of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and because of that, South Carolina Supreme Court automatically granted the adoption without a Best Interest Hearing. Keep in mind, by this time Veronica had been living with her birth father for almost two years. She barely, if at all, remembered the Capobiancos, and was now going to be forced to go live with them forever.
She was returned to their custody September 23rd, 2013. Those who support them, claim Dusten was a deadbeat, a bad father, and all sorts of other things. I ask you this, how is one a deadbeat when he fought for FOUR years to raise his child? I don't know about you, but to me that seems like the complete opposite of a Deadbeat dad.
The root of this, is Raymond Godwin and Nightlight Christian Adoptions. They claim a misspelled name and wrong date of birth, which because Dusten is a member of the Oklahoma Cherokee Nation, would have prevented this from happening to begin with, was a mistake. Maybe so, but somehow, after looking at Godwin's track record, I sincerely doubt it. Baby Desirai, an Absentee Shawnee baby, in the middle of a custody battle right now, is a five month old baby who was spirited out of Oklahoma just days after her birth, without ICPC paperwork in place and placed with a family whose grown biological children claim were abusive. Coincidence? I don't think so. Indian Country Today has an article for the abuse claims, and many other articles about the unethicality of this adoption. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/10/16/adult-son-couple-adopting-deseray-says-they-were-abusive-parents-151775 We must ask our legislators and everyone who can, to investigate these unethical adoptions and make sure that whomever is circumventing the law is prosecuted.
