Get Baby Kaylee Home to Her Daddy; Miranda and Brad Larsen, Return Kaylee to Her Father

I had decided to spend the majority of this month in a hole, in la la land, safely away from triggering things about adoption. Unfortunately, thanks to some truly horrendous actions of two people, I have decided to not just crawl out of that hole, but to jump out guns-a-blazing.

Just before heading out for work this morning I was made aware of yet another adoption injustice coming from Utah. Go figure, Utah – no way! Surprise, surprise! If you’d like to read more about the back story to this situation, please see the Facebook page Get Baby Kaylee Home to Her Daddy.

Here’s the run down –

Colby and his girlfriend were expecting a baby and expecting to parent together. However, his girlfriend’s parents had other things in mind. After bringing the baby home from the hospital, his girlfriend, somehow, some way, decided (after talking to her parents) that she wanted to put the baby up for adoption. She told Colby of these wishes and he insisted on parenting and did just that, for a couple of weeks, until law enforcement came and removed the baby to be given to Miranda & Brad Larsen.

Miranda and Brad both knew that Kaylee’s father didn’t want to give her up. His name is on her birth certificate and paternity has been established. However, as those well-versed in adoption laws know, Utah plays by its own rules and, essentially, gives fathers next to nothing as far as father’s rights are concerned.

This didn’t seem to bother Miranda and Brad in the least. They wanted the baby and they made sure they got the baby. Who cares about if I’m taking someone else’s child against their will who NEVER CONSENTED TO AN ADOPTION, right? In my opinion, Miranda and Brad Larsen represent all that is evil in the world of adoption. Ethics thrown out the window to fulfill their selfish desires.

Upon doing some minor digging, you can see that, at least, Miranda has been “child shopping” for a some time.

This was a post from this past February about an older child seeking a forever family. Miranda was tagged in it by a friend or family member and her reply is, “Seriously, Serenity (last name omitted)? Now I have to pray about it and ask Dad (name of dad tagged and omitted here). Ask Dad? That’s odd. This seems like something you would say if you were a child considering getting a puppy. “Ugh, thanks for showing me the cute little puppy who needs a home!! Now I have to pray about it and get permission from Dad!! LOL!” At least that’s how it reads to me.

Here is Miranda and Brad’s adoption.com profile:

http://adoption.com/profiles/BradandMirandaLarsen31711-3527

I’m sure that it will soon be taken down so here are a few screen shots for your viewing pleasure.

“Congratulations on your adoption!!” Suck it adoption.com

This should read, “Congratulations on kidnapping someone else’s child!”

But seriously, isn’t that what they just did? They legally kidnapped someone else’s child because of the unconstitutional laws that allow Utah to get away with this crap. Not only unconstitutional, but a clear violation of civil rights – the right to parent one’s own child!

Within hours of this story getting out, there are thousand’s of likes on the Facebook page created for Colby’s fight, and thousands of dollars for his legal fees have been raised. Within hours of this story getting out, Miranda and Brad deactivated their Facebook profiles (one can only guess why) and created new ones – that aren’t so super secret and will probably be deactivated shortly as well.

Brad appears to be the assistant principal of Thomas Edison Charter School. Do you have your children enrolled here? Will you still continue to support a school that employees someone who would steal someone else’s child? Just throwing that out there.

As you can see, the public is not happy:

Not quite sure I agree with the “great people” analysis on these two.

So, there it is. Pretty simple. In black in white. Just because they could, they did. Without any true concern with the true and real father of this child.

But Colby is fighting back. He has retained a fantastic lawyer, Wes Hutchins. Sadly, I do expect this to be a long drawn out battle, like they all are. His legal fees will surely be insurmountable. To donate directly to Colby’s legal fund you can mail donations to:

Wesley D. Hutchins

Attorney

6751 South Adventure Way

West Jordan, Utah  84081

If you’re more comfortable donating online there is a GoFundMe set up and you can visit that page here: https://www.gofundme.com/g8b7btmk?rcid=5cad896b96a54b1181f69a8f8c110407

Where does this leave us? I am calling on ALL ethical adoptive families to speak out against this injustice. This puts a smear on ALL of you if you sit back and say nothing, allow it to happen. No matter what you think of me and my blog, if you sit back and say nothing, you are just as bad as them.

I am calling on everyone in the adoption community to rally around this father and give him the love, support, and guidance he will surely need in the coming months. If you are able to donate monetarily that is always helpful as well, but it is not required to be an integral part of his journey. Share his page, share this post, lend an ear, offer support, just do something.

I am absolutely sick and tired of seeing these stories. What has our world come to? In the United States of America, babies are being taken from their parents with no just cause because someone else wants them. How long do we allow this to continue before we rise up, as a nation, and say NO MORE! How long before we go down that slippery slope and YOUR child is next? Or your grandchild? Or your niece or nephew?

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” -Desmond Tutu

To the Larsen family,

I am begging you to do the right thing, the ethical thing. Maybe you had a momentary lapse of sanity. You CAN redeem yourself and reunite this father with his daughter. You have the power to do so. It doesn’t need to drag out in court for months or years. I have complete confidence that it will not end in your favor so you are only delaying the inevitable. Please return Kaylee to her father. Restore my faith in humanity. Restore my faith, please.

I’ll leave you with a post from my blog that deals with how God feels about situations like this. Seeing as the Larsens appear to be deeply religious people of the LDS faith.

A Tale of Two Women and a Wise and Blessed King

Two women came before King Solomon. Both had given birth on the same day, three days before, but the first woman’s baby had died. Now the women were fighting over the living baby. King Solomon decided that the best way to figure out who would keep the child was to tell the women the baby would be cut in half. One half of the child would go to the first woman, and one half would go to the second woman. The true mother of the baby, the birth mother, cried out to the King. She would relinquish her rights to her child, to save his life. King Solomon, who is often referred to as the wisest man who ever lived because God blessed him with unsurpassed wisdom, saw the passion of the birth mother, and he did the right thing. He gave the baby to his own mother, the one with the selfless love, the one that would rather surrender her baby than see him die. King Solomon had no intention of hurting the baby. He had no intention of giving the baby to the more “deserving” parent. He just wanted to identify the true mother of the child. The woman who gave birth to the baby. It was a clever ploy.

When I think about recent cases in the media I can’t help but think of the shocking similarities with King Solomon’s story. You have two women, one is the true mother of the child, one woman is so desperate for a baby that she is willing to steal the child of another, no matter the consequences to the child, or the child’s true mother. I wonder if King Solomon thought about what kind of mother a woman who steals another person’s child would make? Maybe that’s part of the reason he wanted to be absolutely certain he was returning the child to his mother, and not the crazed woman who attempted to kidnap the child.

The Bible does speak favorably on adoption. Think of baby Moses in his basket, (Exodus 2: 1-10) swept down the river, and adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter. He obviously went on to do amazing things in the name of God and eventually returned to his natural family, the family of his origin. Esther, (Book of Esther) who was adopted by her cousin, was also a tool of God. But in almost every circumstance of ordained adoption in the Bible, there was a life or death situation that led to the adoption. Moses’ mother faced the reality that her son would die if she didn’t send him away. Esther was an orphan. Both of her parents were dead. God still chose to keep her in her family, and she was adopted by her cousin. The Bible only shows support for adoption of true orphans, or in the case of extreme circumstance. You will find infertile women in the Bible, (Hannah and Sarah are two examples.) but nowhere in either of their stories does God tell them to take the baby of another woman, let alone forcefully take a baby from its mother.

Adoption is a wonderful way for a child, an orphan in genuine need, to find a loving home. It should not be used as a tool to separate a child from the loving embrace of his mother.

It’s very clear how God feels about children. When the disciples tried to prevent women from bringing their babies and small children to Jesus, he grew angry and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Mathew 19:14, emphasis added.) He did not leave until he laid hands on the children. He takes especial interest in the fatherless child and defenseless women. Psalm 68:5 says, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.”

Job laments the truly wicked, and part of his description of the behavior of a damnable person is, “The fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.” (Job 24:9) Someone who would take a defenseless, fatherless child from the breast of his mother, in exchange for money owed is listed as one of the many horrible and evil things a person might do to deserve punishment from God. He also mentions people who “drive away the orphan’s donkey and take the widow’s ox in pledge. They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding.” (Job 24:3-4) Clearly bullying and harassing single women and their young children, the meek and defenseless, is considered a detestable act. Other comparable sins he mentions in the same chapter are theft, murder, and adultery.

And how does God handle those who harm children? Those who would steal a child from its family? Exodus 21:16 says, “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.” How much harder will the Lord come down on someone who would kidnap one of his fatherless children?

Proverbs 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”  If the mother wants her child, and she is fit, what right does another woman have to pilfer the blessings given to someone by God for their own selfish desires? When considering the plight of women coerced into signing away their parental rights you need to ask yourself, “How would King Solomon rule in these cases?”