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Reuters General/ ­- Article, Ter, 17 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
Cherokee adoption battle in South
Carolina high court
By Harriet McLeod CHARLESTON, South Carolina |
Tue Apr 17, 2012 11:04am EDT (Reuters) ­- The
adoptive parents of a 2­-1/2­-year­-old Cherokee girl at
the center of a custody battle stemming from her
Native American heritage will ask the South Carolina
Supreme Court on Tuesday to return her to them.
Authorities took Veronica Capobianco from Matt and
Melanie Capobianco of Charleston, South Carolina, on
New Year's Eve and turned the toddler over to her
biological father, Dusten Brown, a member of the
Cherokee Nation. Brown had sued for custody under
the federal Indian Child Welfare Act that protects
Native American families from being separated. The
court proceedings Tuesday afternoon will be closed
and records are sealed because it is an adoption case.
A ruling is expected in mid­-May, and parties and
attorneys have been ordered by the court not to
comment. The Capobiancos legally adopted Veronica
at birth in 2009 through an open adoption in
Oklahoma, said family spokeswoman Jessica Munday.
According to "Save Veronica," a website set up by the
couple's supporters, Veronica's birth mother, Christina
Maldonado, who is not Native American, offered the
child for adoption because she could not care for the
baby and had no support from Brown. Maldonado lives
in Oklahoma, Munday said. The biological parents
were not married, and Brown was in the Army in
Oklahoma when Veronica was born in September
2009, Munday said. Brown contested the adoption and
began petitioning for custody of Veronica under the
federal law when she was four months old. "He loves
this child with all his heart," Brown's attorney, Shannon
Jones, said in January. A family court judge in
Charleston found last fall that the federal law trumped
South Carolina's adoption law, which ends a father's
paternity rights when he has not provided pre­-birth
support or taken steps to be a father before and shortly
after birth. The Capobiancos have spoken to Veronica
by telephone only once since Brown, whom she had
just met, drove away with her in December, Munday
said. PETITION CONGRESS Friends and supporters
of the couple have gathered almost 22,000 signatures
on a petition to Congress asking for changes to the
Indian Child Welfare Act. "We're not saying the whole
law has to go away," Munday said on Monday. "There
was obviously an intent for it. You hear about tribes
with only 1,000 members. They don't want to lose their
culture." The 1978 law gives tribes a right to intervene
in adoption and child welfare cases and provides extra
protections against the parent of an American Indian
child having parental rights removed, said Chrissi
Nimmo, assistant attorney general of the Cherokee
Nation. Under the law, a child should be placed with a
member of the child's extended family, whether they
are Indian or not; a member of the child's tribe; or a
member of another Indian tribe. The law was passed
"as a result of studies that found that Indian children
were being removed from their families at a
disproportionately higher rate than other children,"
Nimmo said in an email. "And 99 percent of Indian
children in adoptive placements were in non­-Indian
homes." The Cherokee Nation, which has about
317,000 current enrolled members, is involved in about
1,100 various types of child custody proceedings
nationwide, Nimmo said. Nimmo said only one Indian
Child Welfare Act case has reached the U.S. Supreme
Court, which ruled in 1989's Mississippi Band of
Choctaw Indians vs. Holyfield that "the tribal court had
exclusive jurisdiction over a private adoption even
though the mother left the reservation to give birth to
twins." South Carolina law allows a reasonable amount
of time before and after birth for a father to establish
paternity rights, said Stephanie Brinkley, a Charleston
adoption lawyer who has researched the laws that
apply to Veronica Capobianco's case. After that, a
father's rights can be terminated if he hasn't provided
support in some form, she said. "You've got to have
more than biology," Brinkley said. "It's biology plus
action. It's not always about money. Did he provide
diapers? Did he set up a nursery in his own home?
The court will look at whether Brown had a
constitutional right to establish parentage." (Editing By
Colleen Jenkins and Eric Beech)
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