A Pyrrhic Victory for Embattled Father
We've previously discussed the injustice of the Mark Huddleston adoption case. In my co-authored column Anna Nicole Dispute Shows System's Flaws (Chicago Sun-Times, 3/10/07, Detroit News, 3/20/07) I wrote:
[I]n the highly-publicized Huddleston case in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mark Huddleston’s baby boy was adopted out when he was three days old, but Huddleston didn't know the baby existed until two months after his birth. A New Mexico court later found that the private adoption agency hadn't properly notified Huddleston, and had needed to get Huddleston’s permission before giving his son away.
Nonetheless, the stall tactic worked--by the time the case was finally legally adjudicated, the boy had been with his adoptive parents for over a year, and the judge ruled it was in the child’s best interests to remain with them.
Huddleston won a pyrrhic victory the other day. From "Who Is the Loser in Custody Battle?" (Albuquerque Journal, 11/21/08):
The little boy turns 5 on Valentine's Day, his birth date something of an irony, given the bitterness and contempt that rage around him all in the name of love.
On one side is Mark Huddleston of Albuquerque, the biological father. He says neither the boy's natural mother who decided to give the child up for adoption, nor the adoption agency told him he was the father until it was too late to stop it.
On the other are Bobby and Rosario Romero, who became Mommy and Daddy three days after the boy's birth when the agency delivered the bundle of joy and legal papers to their Los Lunas home.
Neither side has been willing to split the baby, so it has come down to the courts to render the wisdom of Solomon again and again in a heart-wrenching series of reversals and remands over the past 4 1/2 years that has charted the unwieldy course of this boy's life and those who want to call him "Son."
A year ago this month, the state Supreme Court appeared to put an end to Huddleston's quest for daddydom when it reversed an appellate court decision that reversed a state court decision keep up with me, I'm giving you the condensed version and gave the Romeros the go-ahead, finally, to complete the adoption.
The court ruled that Huddleston had done too little, too late to establish himself as an "acknowledged father" and thus his consent to the adoption was unnecessary.
"Mark knew for months about the pregnancy and took no steps to establish paternity until more than two months after his child's birth," Justice Richard Bosson wrote for the unanimous court.
Now comes the latest decision this time by the civil court that appears to confirm Huddleston's claim that he had not known "for months" about the boy because Gutierrez and the agency didn't want him to.
"It was spitefulness," said attorney Louren Oliveros, who represented Huddleston in his successful lawsuit against Adoptions Plus. "They deliberately did not notify Mark until it was too late." (more...)
ITIO a Child
The words ITIO a Child, or In The Interest Of a Child, routinely appear at the top of legal documents that deny children fair access to their fathers. Through the documents quoted in this book, and under these very words, divorce industry psychologists, attorneys, and a judge, show the reader how they profit from the suffering of children. To order the book, click here.
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