Rashad Head and Ricky Watters

This local story just keeps getting more complicated. I wrote about it briefly last month and someone left a comment in the post with some info. The legal fight has continued. To recap, Rashad Head is a 17-year-old dad. His 16-year-old ex-girlfriend became pregnant and placed the child for adoption. He was preparing to be a father to the child and his parents were supporting him totally, so the adoption took all of them by surprise. His family has filed to stop it, but in the meantime, the Georgia lawyers and the Florida adoption agency have moved custody of the child to adoptive parents in Florida. There is no simple legal reason why his rights as a father may be terminated, but due to loopholes in intercounty transfers, it may very well happen.

In the media we've only heard one side: Rashad Head's. The mother and the adoptive parents have maintained silence. When I read about these kinds of court cases I don't like to immediately take sides. Nevertheless, judging from all the information that's out there, it looks like his rights and the child's rights are being attacked in a very disturbing way. It casts the adoptive parents in a terrible light. Why would they move forward with an infant adoption when one biological parent objects and is clearly ready to parent?

One practical reason is that they have very, very deep pockets.

From 11Alive News

The Heads soon learned that the baby was in the custody of Superbowl stand-out, Ricky Watters.

“I believe that the couple that has the baby are wealthy and well off and I believe their goal is to tie this up into litigation to basically bankrupt this family so they will not be able to continue to fight for their son,” said Head’s attorney, Leslie Gresham.

This has been a really hot topic over at SoA, and someone just posted that Ricky Watters, the retired NFL star, is himself adopted.

From ProFootballWeekly.com

Watters was adopted, and another primary reason for calling it a career was his search for his birth family. He loves and appreciates his adopted family, the only family he'd known, but locating those with whom he shared bloodlines was a yearning he couldn't shake.

After a taxing but ultimately rewarding search, Watters met his birth mother and two brothers for the first time just over a month ago.

"That's one of the things I kind of want to get out there (in his book and music) because I know that there are probably a lot of other people dealing with that situation and don't understand it. I started telling myself, 'You'll probably never find 'em, and even if you did, you'll probably never like 'em. They're probably not even good people.' You just tell yourself stuff like that because it's like a denial situation. But my wife was the one that was like, 'I'm watching you and I know that you care, and there are things that are going on that you don't understand because you don't know where you come from.'"

"That's what I want to let people know, that if they're in the position or that phase of it, it's not a situation where it's 'Do you want to know or not?' It's like you have to know where you come from, you have to know why you look the way you do, why you have the mannerisms you have. So many things make sense now."

Damn, this story is weird.

It really underlines the need for legal reform in private adoption. For more information I would suggest this recent report from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute.

Rashad Head

Ricky Watters