Motherhood as a crusade
Any reasonable person could muster sympathy for Allison Quets, the Florida mother who gave her twin babies away to a Raleigh family nearly three years and has fought ever since to get them back. But any reasonable person could also see that it’s probably best that she not succeed.
The news accounts of her crusade seem always to carry a studied tone of neutrality, exceeding even that which journalism’s fabled objectivity typically requires. (The effect is that those stories manage to read like the purse-lipped answer you’d likely get if you clumsily asked somebody about their brother-in-law’s latest stab at rehab.) Yesterday’s local paper carried yet another one of those accounts, complete with that careful neutrality, but there was no mistaking the message delivered to Quets by a county judge earlier this week: Stop. Just stop.
Quets has repeatedly lost her court challenges. She lost in Florida, and when she ran out of options there she started over in North Carolina. She also once fled with the twins while on a court-approved visit with them in Raleigh and spirited them away to Canada. After being caught and charged with kidnapping, she spent eight months awaiting trial before eventually being sentenced to five years of probation. The jail time only slowed her efforts, though. Within a month, she was back in court, seeking visitation with the children she had snatched.
All this, of course, hints of obsession and emotional instability. There is no suggestion that the children are unsafe or unloved with their adoptive parents (who have maintained a dignified distance from the media during this tawdry mess). It’s hard to see how the twins would be better off with a natural parent who would subject them to such turmoil rather than with an apparently stable adoptive couple. But it’s also hard to countenance the separation of mothers from children.
Still, children are not possessions. And mothers — good ones, at least — are supposed to put the welfare of their children ahead of their own needs.
The judge this week ordered Quets to pay the adoptive parents’ legal bills, which at this point are surely substantial. Maybe that will help nudge Quets out of the courtroom. Better yet, maybe it will nudge her toward an acceptance of the fact that her children might be better off without her.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Honestly, how could any parent leave her children to people who would coerce and steal babies from a sick woman they said they would help?
The recent ruling is political at best, pushed by the old boys network and the money in the adoption industry. No one has ever gotten as far as Allison Quets in a contested adoption, and it is in the attornies’ best interest to see her lose everything…so you see decisions like this. What you don’t see reported is the FL decision that spent pages stating her actions were not frivolous and she did not owe attornies in FL money, the Needhams would have to pay their own attornies.
It seems reasonable to any thinking person (to borrow your phrasing) that the Needhams should uphold the contracts they signed and be expected to obey the law. The OAA was ignored by the Needhams and the ICPC as well. The NC court action filed by Quets was ONLY about having the Needhams uphold what they agreed to. Somehow, they seem to be above the law, but the attornies want to see Quets crushed by the same laws.
This is not an example of adoption…not at all. Think about it…federal violations took place in August 2005. This is nothing short of child trafficking and if it is allowed to stand, every adoption in the US is dirtied by the actions of the judiciary and adopters involved here.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I thought I’d come back and share this link to the legal issues with this case http://www.tylerandholly.info/Civil-Case/Errors_Omissions.html . You claim those who support Allison are not well-reasoned, yet the evidence is so clearly in her favor.
You are so right that these children are not possessions: That the Needhams tried to negotiate visits for cash (Allison pays them and they give her time with the twins) is commodification of the children at the highest level. It’s disgusting. See this post http://amyadoptee.blogspot.com/2008/03/abductors-of-quets-twins.html Amy’s blog is known for thorough research and great care in presenting supported facts, so if she says they were trying to sell visits, she has concrete evidence of that fact.
And I do have to add, as a mom, that your diction choice couldn’t be any more appropriate. This is a crusade for sure…she is their mother.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I thought Allison Quets signed the adoption papers twice. The first time, she changed her mind, she got the children back. The second time she signed the legal documents, she was not allowed to recind the contract. I don’t see any stealing here. I see a woman who eagerly sought to place her children twice within the adoption system. She even tried to get the best deal by searching around for a family to pay for her medical bills. In this case, I see a legal system working as it should. It is sad for Ms. Quets, but she chose to go down this path. If she was uncertain, she should have waited or put them in foster care until she could make a rational decision.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
The 911 call is the answer to the suggestion that she was eager. Coercion and force were used on her that day and the next one. No one calls 911 from an attorney’s office if they WANT to sign documents.
And if a signature is what matters, then what about the Needhams signatures on an Open Adoption Agreement they closed as soon as they had what they wanted? That’s fraud.
Yes, fostercare while she recovered…that would have been lovely if the social workers suggested or offered it. And that is actually what the Needhams themselves offered to Allison, but then they took the kids. Not unlike what was done to Anna Mae He’s parents.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Suzanne, if I recall, the first time Quets asked for the children back (that bizarre 911 call), she got them back. She then returned and signed the papers again. Then she changed her mind again the next day. The second time, it was too late. The judge probably looked at her two signatures and oddball behavior and reasonably reasoned that the relinquishment would move forward under the law. Obviously the courts agree. And at 47 years old, she should have done her research into options, including fostering. She wasn’t an innocent child victim taken advantage of by the big bad meanies. This is an educated woman, already past middle age, with an actual working brain. Brain enough to go looking for the best financial deal in relinqushing her children, it seems. And she cannot be compared to the Hes, foreigners who did not speak English very well and who had a white bigoted country judge rule against them because of prejudice against Communist China and perceptions that the Bakers were better (whiter, richer, more American, more Christian) parents than the Hes. Quets signed a contract. The Hes did not sign a contract. The Hes thought the child was going into temporary foster care. Quets sought out a permanent relinquishment, albeit with visitations.
Finally, the Needhams honored the open adoption until Quets reneged on it and kidnapped the children. After that, I don’t blame them for hiding those children. I think she’s actually a physical danger to the children. If I were the Needhams, I’d move away to New Zealand or the Falkland Islands, change everyone’s name, and stay in hiding for the rest of our lives. She’s one scary person.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Dear GD,
I have read the article and the comments having followed this case since mention of the International Parental Kidnapping Act warrant (IPKA) issued as a result of the children being taken cross the border.
There are many facets to this case that disturb me, firstly the internal Floridian situation and secondly, the use of IPKA when there was a perfectly and tried and tested alternative known as the Hague Convention (on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction).
The Floridian aspects is disturbing to me because throughout the mother’s state of mind has been ignored. Anyone in the position of having a child, especially for fathers who see mother go through birth and the frequent after effect of post partum depression, knows only too well that mom’s at this time are in need of a lot of support.
Mother in this case was also seriously ill during the pregnancy and one child is hard enough to cope with never mind two.
Oddball behaviour?
Absolutely. Anyone with half an ounce of common sense knows this to be true and the reasons why.
Danger to the children?
Absolutely not. Utter tosh. Pure emotive shennanigins.
Why oh why was there no support?
Which opens up that can of worms about single parents, etc, etc, etc….ad nauseum.
As for the Needham family maintaining a dignified distance; there was plenty of nonsense being posted by them at one point as well though in their position with the upper hand i.e. possession of the children legal and physical, they don’t want or need publicity so it makes a great deal of sense to to duck out of the limelight and probably also explains why they are so keen to have every record sealed.
So why did the US Government use IPKA?
This was a sledge hammer to crack a walnut.
When I first saw this, I thought instantly something was not quite right. At this time only a handful of IPKA warrants had been used and successful prosecutions could be counted on one hand (4).
It struck me as grandstanding by somebody using IPKA and Allison Quets as an example. That someone is probably the FBI CACC’s offices and Office of Children Issues in the Department of State in Washington DC. The Hague Convention would have worked well and without the hooha turning this into a far more emotional issue than it already was, however it would have been very interesting to see a Canadian courts view on whether the Needhams did in fact have any rights (Canada like most of the world is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - the US and Somalia are the only two who have not).
I cannot see why IPKA needed to be used at all and locking mother up for 8 months strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment that has done no-one any good, least of all the children.
Karl