This is the second part in a three-part series I will be writing on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, or “The Baby Veronica Case.” Part 1 presented the actual case that was heard before the Supreme Court as well as the responses of the Supreme Court Justices. Part 2 reviews the history leading up to the case, as well as provides an overview of common misconceptions presented in the media and how that has impacted the case. Part 3 will provide input and perspectives from stakeholders and individuals with child welfare experience.
Credit must be given to Addie Smith of NICWA for her helpful overview of this case at the 2013 NICWA conference.
The Baby Veronica case has received major media attention over the past couple of years. Because the media can play quite a powerful role in influencing public perception and knowledge, responsible and accurate reporting should be a top priority for the media. Unfortunately this practice is all too often ignored or information is presented with limited in-depth knowledge of the situation or full context. In this particular case, the human element of this complicated and contested situation overshadowed a lack of facts about the case.
It took me a while to fully understand the events that led up to Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, due to the “he-said/she-said” and one-sided reporting by the media. I’d like to share what I’ve discovered in this blog post.
Clearing up a common misconception
One of the main misconceptions found in the media surrounds the legal relationship between the pre-adoptive parents and Veronica. The adoption of Veronica by the Capobiancos was never finalized, meaning they never actually adopted her. Mr. Brown filed a stay of the adoption immediately upon learning of the adoption action via notice of intent to adopt papers four months after Veronica’s birth.
Because Mr. Brown was set to deploy shortly after receiving notice of the adoption, the adoption hearing had to wait until after he returned home. He attempted to have Veronica placed with his father (Veronica’s paternal grandfather) during his deployment by invoking power of attorney to him, but the courts ruled in favor of placement with the Capobiancos.
Both the family court and the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled
- that ICWA was applicable in this case,
- that Mr. Brown had both acknowledged and established paternity according to state law,
- that the Existing Indian Family Exception was not valid under ICWA,
- that Mr. Brown did not voluntarily consent to give up his parental rights to Veronica*, and
- that placement with Mr. Brown would not cause Veronica serious emotional or physical damage.
*Contrary to recent media coverage saying otherwise, Mr. Brown could not have voluntarily terminated his parental rights via text message as this is not considered a legal method of doing so.
And so Veronica was returned to her father.
From the beginning
Several advocates have expressed concern over the conduct of the adoption attorneys in the beginning:
Likewise, the mainstream media has failed to explore the misconduct that led to Veronica being removed from Oklahoma and taken away to South Carolina when she was barely a week old…Had the Oklahoma Interstate Compact Commission been provided accurate information about this child’s Native American heritage, the South Carolina adoption attorneys would never received permission to take her out of Oklahoma and all of this heartache for Dusten Brown and for the South Carolina family could have been avoided…
[I]n many ways, the story of the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is about two increasingly common trends in the adoption services industry: First, attempts to purposefully circumvent ICWA through legal evasion, and second, attempts by adoption lawyers to take advantage of active duty service members in the process of being deployed to combat, or in active deployments.(Source: Jacqueline Pata, Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI))
Overall, it would appear that had Veronica’s Indian heritage been represented accurately, and ICWA and state law been followed, perhaps none of this would be occurring today.
“Credit must be given to Addie Smith of NICWA for her helpful overview of this case at the 2013 NICWA conference.” Yes, credit must be given. Astonishing (and embarrasing) that an accredited institution of higher education purporting to write objectively about “what really happened in this case” would uncritically adopt the arguments of one side of the case (ie, NICWA, which filed a brief supporting the Tribe and the biological father). If any of the contributing authors had read the record, they would know that Veronica’s Indian heritage was never concealed at any point during the adoption process. It was listed on the ICPC form (see JA 27) and Oklahoma nevertheless approved the transfer of Veronica to South Carolina. And there is no law–state or federal–that required Veronica’s birth mother to tell the man who abandoned her and her unborn baby anything about her adoption plan. Nor is it correct to say that “Mr. Brown could not have voluntarily terminated his parental rights via text message.” The Supreme Court has held for decades that a biological father has to take affirmative and consistent steps to support (to the extent he is able) the mother/child during pregnancy and in the first months of the child’s life, or he does not *acquire* a right to object to the mother’s adoption choice in the first place. This point is well explained by the amicus brief file by leading adoption scholars (Joan Hollinger et al). The question is not whether a text message is a “legally valid” method of terminating parental rights. The question is whether this person had earned the status of someone entitled to object to adoption. He had not, as is evident from his own undisputed trial testimony that he refused to pay a dime in medical bills and never attempted to contact mom or baby until he learned of the adoption proceedings. In short, had Mr. Brown been of any other race/citizenship status, he would have been laughed out of court.