A Guatemalan judge has ordered an American couple to return their adopted daughter back to her birth mother.
Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez said in her ruling that the girl belongs with her birth mother, Elizabeth Rodriguez Morales. The parents of this girl are said to have fought for years to get their daughter back, and urged authorities in the United States to work with them and comply with the judge’s decision. The girl was kidnapped in 2006 and subsequently adopted and taken to live in the United States, where she now resides in Liberty, Missouri.
This court order represents the first time in Guatemala’s history that a judge has ordered a child living abroad to be returned home.
Guatemala has been known to have a long and troubled adoption history, and although it used to be one of the most popular countries in the world for international adoptions, numbers have since dropped due to corruption and fraud.