Miami Gay Couple Lose Custody of Foster Child

This is a sad story. I've read over it several times and have really mixed reactions. They are so mixed I'm running them in two side-by-side columns below the news article.

Gay Couple Claims Discrimination; Loses HIV-Infected Baby

POSTED: 3:59 pm EST February 13, 2007
UPDATED: 6:09 am EST February 14, 2007

MIAMI -- An 8-month-old boy is stuck in the middle of a controversial custody battle between his paternal grandmother and the foster parents who nursed him back to health.

Ricky Morales' foster parents, Roger Carrillo and his partner Hiram Perez, learned Monday that they're losing custody of the child who they nursed back to health from a drug addiction at birth.

They believe they are being discriminated against because they're gay.

Just moments before noon Tuesday, representatives of the state agency Children's Home Society removed Ricky from his foster parents' home. The issue of taking the child away had become so large in south Florida that three police officers and three squad cars were involved in the extraction, leaving both Carillo and Perez distraught.

"Where is the paper? Where is the paper?" said a distraught Carrillo, asking for a notice explaining why Ricky was being taken away.

Ricky, now a healthy 20-pound bundle of joy to his foster parents, sat in the back seat of a squad car to be taken to his paternal grandmother's home after a Juvenile Court hearing Monday awarded custody to her.

"As far as we are concerned, nobody wanted him before. No one wanted him because of his condition. Why, all of a sudden, because he looks so wonderful and healthy and suddenly they want him," Carrillo said.

Carillo and Perez, an employee of the Children's Home Society, are licensed foster care parents and said they took Ricky in when he was just a newborn 4 1/2-pound baby.

At the time he had been exposed to HIV and was born addicted to heroin and crack cocaine, Carrillo said, but pictures in his foster parent's home indicate that Ricky enjoyed the nurturing environment he had been in for eight months.

Carrillo said that his and Perez's emotions ran high when the state officials called him Monday saying that a Juvenile Court judge, after a DCF investigation, had deemed the grandmother fit to raise the child.

Ricky's mother and her boyfriend are both in rehab, so officials said the grandmother should be granted custody

"Where was she eight months ago all along? She has only seen the baby twice," Carrillo said.

Despite the attachment and bond Carrillo and Perez have built with Ricky, state officials said that they have no legal standing, but that they did fulfill their role as foster parents.

One Side Perez worked for the agency. He knew what they were getting into. Even if they had not been a gay couple, there was no guarantee, until TPR and maybe even after, that the child would stay with them permanently. Maybe the grandmother had other children to take care of as well, and wanted the baby but lacked the resources to handle such a severe medical need. But now she's in a better place to care for the child. Being in the custody of relatives will also allow him to grow up with more contact with his mother and father. Hopefully the mother will turn her life around in rehab and they can all get along with each other and be something like a real family. It's hard for Perez and Carrillo, but drawing the media into it is not going to help them. They have to accept their loss and celebrate the eight months they contributed. Many, many foster parents have to deal with unexpected custody loss, or even worse, the medically fragile child dying in their custody.

Another Side Perez and Carrillo nursed the child through a nightmarish period. Florida is one of the most regressive states in the country when it comes to gay adoption; unlike a straight couple or single, they would not be able to adopt the child and the best they could hope for was permanent foster parent status. They went through so much hoping for so little, so no wonder they're mad with grief. Maybe the grandmother didn't want to handle a cocaine-addicted, HIV-exposed baby. But now that the baby is safe and healthy, she wants him back from his "eight-month babysitting" stay. How deep is her commitment to this child? What if the mother never cleans up and in a few months something else happens in the grandmother's life -- loses her job, gets a new boyfriend, stubs her toe -- and she sends him right back into foster care, where he ends up with a completely different set of parents, and he starts yo-yoing back and forth between foster and biological, as is so common, until he gets a serious attachment disorder...

Here are a few more links about the story:

Miami Foster Care Gay Couple Loses Foster Child

Foster Child Removed Because Couple Is Gay Men Say