A child: lost, found, and lost again.

[Dr Strangelove]

the kid thinks the adoptive parents are the real parents, giving it back to the biological parents would be cruel, I agree with what Elok said, the child will have 4 parents from now on, and decide on what do with his life as a teenager

Does she think the adoptive parents are her real parents? I think the trend these days iis to tell a kid that she's aodpted at some point. Also I beleive that she was around 3 or 4 at the time of her adoption. She may not remember her adoption, but she may remember living in the orphanage.

[Elok]

While she may know that she is not the biological child of her parents (it may be obvious, depending on their respective ethnicities), she's been with them and their family for five years, while she is unlikely to remember more than tiny traces of her birth mother. Returning her means uprooting her from her entire life as she knows it; it's quite likely she'll come to regard her birth mother as "that woman who took me away from my family," IMO. No matter how kind she is, that's how it's going to seem, especially if she's going away to a whole other country. This seems like it would create not one but two broken families.

[Uncle Sparky]

She has siblings in Guatemala. She should be with them and her parents. Also, the adoption agencies responsible should be closed down and charged. Someone should have been responsible for due diligence.

[Elok]

I'm with you on the latter point, US.

[Proteus_MST]

While she may know that she is not the biological child of her parents (it may be obvious, depending on their respective ethnicities), she's been with them and their family for five years, while she is unlikely to remember more than tiny traces of her birth mother. Returning her means uprooting her from her entire life as she knows it; it's quite likely she'll come to regard her birth mother as "that woman who took me away from my family," IMO. No matter how kind she is, that's how it's going to seem, especially if she's going away to a whole other country. This seems like it would create not one but two broken families.

I agree.
The child has been with his adptive parents for years, it regards the children of his new family as his own siblings, has made friends in the new country and speaks its language fluently, while probably not being able to communicate with the inhabitants of the country in which his biological parents reside.
It would be rather cruel to the child at this age if it is suddenly taken out of his normal surroundings and put into a foreign country with a family it doesn´t know.

[Dinner]

the kid thinks the adoptive parents are the real parents, giving it back to the biological parents would be cruel, I agree with what Elok said, the child will have 4 parents from now on, and decide on what do with his life as a teenager

I'm pretty sure the kid looks in the mirror and knows his adoptive parents aren't his real parents even if they think of them as their defacto parents. Still, the real parents are the ones who suffered a kidnapping, the adoption therefor was never legal, and the kid should go back to it's real parents.

[The Mad Monk]

She has siblings in Guatemala. She should be with them and her parents. Also, the adoption agencies responsible should be closed down and charged. Someone should have been responsible for due diligence.

IIRC nine people are charged, including a judge. I'll see if I can find more.

[Nikolai]

The answer can't really be anything other than the mother, as long as she's fit to take care of the child.

[giblets]

Yes it can. You want the child to suffer as well as its adoptive parents so that the mother doesn't suffer. How is more suffering better than less suffering?

[Dinner]

The answer can't really be anything other than the mother, as long as she's fit to take care of the child.

Agreed. Any thing else just compounds the crime and makes it worse. She must get her child back which was stolen from her.

[Dinner]

How about you ask the kid?

Children are not consider to be competent to make adult decisions especially on legal matters. Yes, an advocate/representative for the child must and should be appointed to make sure the child's interests are upheld but that doesn't mean a child is the same as an adult. Also children tend to want what they know even though they are unable to understand complex concepts such as legality. Someone has said that the child no longer speaks Spanish and that this would cause an undo hardship but a young child can adapt and she would have had Spanish language skills had this horrible crime not been committed.

Lastly, some judges, especially (IMHO) American judges from rural areas are filled with nationalist or even racist beliefs feeling that central America must be horrible there for the child is better off in America. Such paternalistic beliefs must be avoided. The child, even if they live a poor life, is better off with their real family as long as their real family is not abusive which no one has claimed is the case. The adoption is clearly not legal so if the adoptive parents did not adopt her then certainly she belongs with her real parents.

[Elok]

You realize, I hope, that we're talking about a human child, and not, say, a collector's-edition He-Man lunchbox? Nobody has (or should have, anyway) ownership rights on a human being. As a parent, I do not own my child; I am merely responsible for bringing him up and teaching him what he needs to know to survive as an adult. Which is not to say that I should have no rights at all, but the important thing is that that job gets done, and it gets done right.

[Elok]

Thank you, Dinner, for reminding us that believing in ugly, asinine stereotypes about whole classes of humanity is A Bad Thing. Is this one of those "only Nixon could go to China" things?

[giblets]

Children are not consider to be competent to make adult decisions especially on legal matters. Yes, an advocate/representative for the child must and should be appointed to make sure the child's interests are upheld but that doesn't mean a child is the same as an adult. Also children tend to want what they know even though they are unable to understand complex concepts such as legality. Someone has said that the child no longer speaks Spanish and that this would cause an undo hardship but a young child can adapt and she would have had Spanish language skills had this horrible crime not been committed.

Lastly, some judges, especially (IMHO) American judges from rural areas are filled with nationalist or even racist beliefs feeling that central America must be horrible there for the child is better off in America. Such paternalistic beliefs must be avoided. The child, even if they live a poor life, is better off with their real family as long as their real family is not abusive which no one has claimed is the case. The adoption is clearly not legal so if the adoptive parents did not adopt her then certainly she belongs with her real parents.

You've already demonstrated a relative lack of interest in the welfare of the child when you asserted that this should be decided on the basis of some system of desert.

By the way, maybe you should lay off the prejudice against rural people.

[Elok]

By the way, maybe you should lay off the prejudice against rural people.

But...but...but those ignorant dirty peasants in backwoods America have ugly and wrong beliefs about the proud working people of rural Guatemala!