Jailed for using fake documents in Missouri, a Guatemalan mother entrusted her son to her sister—and he was taken away and adopted by strangers. Encarnación Romero tells her harrowing story to Constantino Diaz-Duran.

Before Encarnación Romero left for work on May 22, 2007, she kissed her 6-month-old son goodbye. It was a day like any other, and she thought she would see him again after her long shift at a poultry processing plant in Barry County, Missouri. Instead, she found herself in jail that night, and she has not seen her boy since.

“I haven’t been able to see Carlitos at all,” says Encarnación. “I haven’t seen him, and I so wish they would let me see my boy, because, imagine, it’s been so long. For a long time I knew nothing about him, when I was in jail, and now I still haven’t seen the boy. And all I can do is pray and ask God to please let Carlitos be with me soon. I ask God to please let me see him soon.”

A citizen of Guatemala, Encarnación entered the U.S. illegally and used fake documents to secure her job at the poultry processing plant. She was arrested during a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was sentenced to two years in jail followed by deportation. The jail time was for federal identity theft; she used a false Social Security number when she applied for employment, a charge that would no longer be applicable today because the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected its use in immigration cases in May 2009.

Encarnación, who like many legal and illegal immigrants lived with her extended family, asked her siblings to take care of her son. Eventually, one of Encarnación’s sisters became his primary caretaker, but she had three children of her own, including a baby Carlitos’ age, and a full-time job. Overwhelmed, the sister looked for someone to help her care for the baby. As a result of that decision, however, Encarnación’s parental rights were terminated and the baby was adopted by a couple the family had never met.

An acquaintance of Encarnación’s sister had taken Carlitos to the home of the minister of a local Hispanic church. The minister and his wife then got in touch with Seth and Melinda Moser, a young couple who wanted to adopt a baby. By this time, says Encarnación, she lost track of who had her baby, and she began to worry about how she would get him back. “As Carlitos’ mother,” she says, “I just felt so sad. I have to repeat it, because as a mother, you need your children to be near you, so you can look after them.”

Unable to speak English and without access to proper representation, Encarnación agonized during her two-year sentence, wondering who had her child and if she would ever be able to see him again. She has now been out of jail for nearly two more years, and while she at least knows where Carlitos is, she still has not been able to see him or hold him in her arms. “I spent two years in jail, in anguish because I couldn’t reach out to him,” she says. “And now, well, it’s the same, I still can’t see him. But God willing—this is my hope—God willing, Carlitos will soon be with me again.”

“All I can say is that the adoptive parents are not the true parents of my boy. I am his true mother and I, as his mother, have the right to raise my child, and have him with me.”

Encarnación’s parental rights were terminated by a Missouri court, on the grounds that she abandoned the child. This, according to her, is false, because she didn’t choose to leave the child, and she didn’t leave him with strangers. She was arrested, and she left the child with her siblings. “I always communicated with my sister,” she says. “I always asked her how my baby was doing.” She becomes excited when she talks about hearing his voice on the phone once. “I heard him say ‘Mama,’ and I asked my sister who was talking, and she told me it was Carlitos, it was my boy!” After a pause she adds, “But that was the only time I heard his voice.”

After her release from prison, Encarnación sought the help of the Guatemalan Embassy. They got her in touch with attorneys Christopher Huck and Omar Riojas, who agreed to take her case pro bono. Through them, Encarnación was able to track down Carlitos. Her attorneys are now seeking to have the adoption reversed and her parental rights reinstated. They won a major battle in July, when the adoption was overturned by the Missouri Court of Appeals in Springfield. Last week, the case was argued in front of the Missouri Supreme Court.

The Mosers, Carlitos’ adoptive parents, argue that they did everything according to the law and that Encarnación did abandon her child. “She did the opposite of what you might expect someone to do who’s trying to stay in touch with her child,” says attorney Joseph Henley, who represents the Mosers. “She went by different aliases, and therefore all the correspondence that the court sent her, and that I sent her, even that her attorney sent her, all came back refused.”

Despre nevoia de echilibru ?i justa m?sur?0

Senate calls inquiry into forced adoptions

Posted Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:30pm AEDT

The Senate is to inquire into the Commonwealth's role in the forced adoption policies from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has won support of the Senate for the issue to be considered by the Community Affairs References Committee.

There have been calls for a national inquiry into the practice of forcing unwed mothers to give up their babies.

Western Australia's Parliament has already issued a formal apology to women affected by the practice.

Tags: community-and-society, family-and-children, adoption, history, government-and-politics, federal-government,20th-century, australia

Call for inquiry into Magdalene laundries

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE IRISH Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has called on the Government to set up a statutory inquiry into treatment of women and girls in Magdalene laundries. It also said financial redress should be available to survivors.

The Government said it had “asked the Attorney General in consultation with relevant departments to consider the IHRC’s report”, but expressed regret “that relevant departments were not offered an opportunity by the IHRC to contribute to the commission’s considerations of this matter to facilitate a fully balanced evaluation of all the facts”.

Possibly anticipating this question, commission chief executive Éamonn Mac Aodha said at the press conference that an inquiry by it could not deliver the apology and redress sought from the State for the women and girls involved. “We do not have those type of powers,” he said.

As to the costs of such an inquiry, commission president Dr Maurice Manning said issues at stake were so fundamental that an inquiry should go ahead. “There is no reason why it should be lengthy, as a great deal of the evidence has been gathered,” he said.

Fianna Fáil TDs Tom Kitt and Michael Kennedy, Labour TD Kathleen Lynch and Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan attended the IHRC event.

Speaking during the adjournment debate in the Dáil last night, Mr Kitt said he strongly supported the commission’s stance. Survivors “should receive an apology from the State” and a distinct redress scheme for them “should be established”, he said. “The survivors of the Bethany Home should be treated in the same way.” He asked the Conference of the Religious in Ireland (Cori) and the four religious congregations that operated the laundries to meet the Justice For Magdalenes group “to deal with the issues of records, compensation and other related matters”.

Last June, the Justice for Magdalenes group asked the commission to inquire into treatment of women and girls in Magdalene laundries. The commission agreed to do so, and to examine the human rights issues arising.

The principal findings by the commission’s inquiry, on which it based its recommendations yesterday, were that “for those girls and women who entered Magdalene laundries following a court process, there was clear State involvement in their entry to the laundries”.

It found questions arose “as to whether the State’s obligations to guard against arbitrary detention were met in the absence of information on whether and how girls and women under court processes resided in and left the laundries”. It found the State may have breached the 1930 Forced Labour Convention and Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Of the Magdalene laundry in Drumcondra, Dublin, it said: “The burial, exhumation and cremation of known and unknown women from a Magdalene laundry in 1993 at High Park raises serious questions for the State in the absence of detailed legislation governing the area.”

Olive Braiden, of the commission, said: “We are dealing with a small and vulnerable group of women who the Government admitted as far back as 2001 were victims of abuse.” Dr Manning said: “The State cannot abdicate from its responsibilities in relation to the treatment of women and girls in the Magdalene laundries.”

Prof James Smith of the Justice for Magdalenes group said “the Government must move beyond its ‘deny ’til they die’ policy.”

Maeve O’Rourke, co-author of the group’s submission to the commission, said the State “must convince the church to acknowledge its part in this scandal, and to open up its records”. It should also call on the church “to pay its share of compensation to survivors”.