The one of little Joan is one of those cases in which what the laws are faced with what the heart commands. A difficult situation for both parties, and especially for the 4-year-old boy, protagonist of a drama that he is not even able to understand at his young age.
A sentence of the Provincial Court of Oviedo has determined that pre-adoptive parents must give the child to their biological mother after three years of living with them. The delivery of the child occurred yesterday and, of course, it was a dramatic moment bathed in tears. Can you imagine having to give to whom you have raised and cared for as your own child for years? But on the other hand, the birth mother has the legitimate right to claim her child because the adoption system in Spain allows it.
Joan's story
Joan's mother became pregnant at the age of 14 while in a supervised home and social services took care of him. She says she always opposed giving her son up for adoption, and that as soon as she was of age she would claim, as she did.
For its part The boy lives in a pre-adoption regime with Albert and Noelia, a couple from Sueca (Valencia) since he was 18 months old. “I went to Asturias because they told me that the child could be adopted forever, not to have it taken away now,” explains Albert, his adoptive father.
The judge justifies the decision to give the child to his biological mother based on a psychological report in your favor which ensures that he had a difficult adolescence that has already been happily overcome. Their caregivers consider that they are already prepared “for the exercise of responsible motherhood”. However, the prosecution and social services are contrary to this report, they say it is not suitable.
The boy had to be handed over yesterday in the Civil Guard command to comply with the judicial sentence, which was already appealed by preadoptive parents.
Meanwhile the child he will stay with his biological mother until there is a firm sentence of the Supreme Court. During the time you are with your biological family, the child will be monitored and evaluated.
Putting ourselves in their place
Those of us who have children know that raising them for three years creates such a strong bond that if they separated you from one of them, it would be like tearing off a part of your body. "This is a hell that has no name: We do not know who it will be with or what will happen to it, ”said the mother.
For its part, too The claim of the biological mother is lawful, who really was a girl when her son was born. He had a difficult adolescence, but now that he is rehabilitated (according to psychologists) and being of legal age, he claims the possession of his son.
An aberration of the adoption system
The parents point out the perversion of the adoption system in Spain. It is not acceptable for preadoptive parents they must wait an average of four to eight years to obtain full adoption. During that period, the biological family can claim.
The Valencian Community recognizes that it is about an unusual case. "In the end when a boy or a girl understands that he is going to adopt it is because he really already knows that there is no possibility of return. That does not mean that in some cases it can happen, but they are very few cases," he explains to the Sixth Director General of Children and Adolescents of the Valencian Community, Rosa Molero.
The lawyers on both sides agree on something: it is "aberrant" child protection system who gave the Valencian couple to the foster child for a pre-adoption knowing that the mother claimed her son.
Open letter of the biological mother
My name is María José Abeng Ayang.
I am Spanish, although my skin is black. I was born in Guinea, and I came with my family to Spain at the age of two, accompanied by my mother and my two sisters. My mother came to look for a better future for her daughters, and so I grew up in Spain thinking that we had finally arrived in our country, to the promised dream.
I went to school here, I made my friends, my world and I thought I was European. And I say this because, evidently, my mother did not have the same concept (Guinean girls do not leave their home, they go to bed at 7 in the afternoon, and do not go to the park alone with their friends). So at 11, believing myself the queen of the world, and above all European, I could not "allow", that, my mother decided that I should go to bed early or that I could not wear a certain clothes, among many other things, because I repeat , I WAS EUROPEAN.
So one day, I came up with the "wonderful" idea (remember I was 11 years old) of going to the Civil Guard post, to tell my mother that I was not Guinean. But it was not like that. From the Civil Guard, the Social Services of the Principality of Asturias was notified, and there began something that I don't know very well how to describe. Maybe the exact word is "hell." Maybe I had died and had gone straight to hell without going through purgatory. From that same day, I was admitted to a reception center. And although my mother, fought and fought to get me out of the center, I was only a "poor" Guinean woman, who lived between Switzerland, (where my father works as an engineer), Spain, and Guinea.
My European dream was relegated to living in a reception center. My ideas of "princess" vanished and denying my personal responsibility and blaming all my ills on my mother. The need for justification of everything that was happening to me, made me arrive at distorted interpretations of reality and create a parallel world to not suffer. A world of fantasy and illusion typical of a girl, where I dreamed that a blue prince came to rescue me, fought against the evil dragons that had locked me up and lived happily and ate partridges forever. But at that point, I became pregnant with 14 years, being admitted to the reception center, of a person who was neither a prince, nor was the opposite blue. I didn't even know I was pregnant, because by then the prince had disappeared, and I had already decided to save myself. At 7 months of pregnancy, on a weekend visit to my house, my mother realized that my gut was not normal, and forced me to take a pregnancy test.
How curious that the Social Services, who wanted to protect me from my own mother, (remember that to enter a child center, I had been declared homeless), they could not protect me from pregnancy, and did not even realize that , a life was growing inside me.
From that moment on, when my mother confronted the dragons asking for explanations of the pregnancy, I was very cordially told that the child was going to be given up for adoption. Because yes, he was a male and his name would be Juan Francisco Abeng Ayang. I spent that night, swallowing my own stupidity, and begging "whoever it was", God, the Virgin or all the Saints not to let him leave my side, because I already loved him, because a new feeling was born inside me , because I would give my own life for that child inside me, and because I discovered that the more you love, the more you can love. I began to recontextualize time, place and intention, and to feel that I no longer needed to "get" anything. I already had it all. And I felt happy as never before, to take that child in my gut.
But this idea, I did not like who had abandoned me by protecting me, nor did I enter into their plans, that I could talk more about the account, much less that I stayed with my son, so the sooner they got rid of it, much better. If it were not for me to uncover what was not convenient, or "my mother's" Guinean "could even ask for patrimonial responsibility of the Public Administration. So, when social workers and educators began to "try" to convince me that my son MUST BE given for adoption, I fled Spain alone, pregnant for seven and a half months to Guinea, helped by an uncle of mine.
I stayed in Guinea, for a month and a half I wish I had never returned. But my mother's lawyer convinced me to come back, under the pressure that I could cause legal problems for my mother, and on the premise that I would never allow my son to be taken away.
And I came back And I went into labor. And they gave me a C-section on June 4, 2012 and they didn't even let me see my son. He was taken from the hospital the next day, while I stayed seven days. They didn't let me breastfeed him, they didn't let me caress him or have him with me. Nobody told me where I was, only that they were going to give him up for adoption. I spent seven days crying non-stop, and when I left the hospital I returned to "my reception center." Juan Francisco, on the other hand, was already in another reception center. They didn't even let us be together. I was scheduled to visit one day a week for an hour, and although my mother started to take legal action on June 22, I felt extremely unprotected by the Administration, which was precisely who should protect me.
At six months they reduced my visits, to one hour a month, and at three months they suspended all visits. I no longer wanted to be European, I just wanted to be with my son. I felt so "helpless in my helplessness" that I thought God had abandoned me, and that I no longer needed help from anyone, because only I could help me.
I made an internal inventory, and although it seemed that my world had become paralyzed, I drew strength to appeal since 2012, each and every one of the resolutions of the Ministry, seeking legal counsel, who acted as judicial defenders, (remember that I was 15 years old, and I was still supervised), arriving at trials, where sentences were passed against me, for the sole reason that I was a minor, and was being supervised. (There are the sentences in case anyone, before speaking and opinion wants to see them).
My mother, on the other hand, started her own private war against the Public Administration, becoming an "annoying grandmother", who presented writing after writing and appeal after appeal.
Hear me never do. Do not disturb the Public Administration. Do not disturb those whose salaries we pay. Do not bother those who have voted, and who are there to defend our interests. Never do it, or the dragons will turn against you. Praise them and tell them how well they do their job. This will do much better. Trust my experience.
And proof of what I have written so far, I literally copy, an answer that was given to me in 2013 by the Chief of the Children's Centers Section of the Principality of Asturias, (there are many like this) for you to observe and read : (If someone wants to read more there are a few as "nice" as this:
"You were also told that there is a conflict of interest in this public administration that cannot defend JUAN FRANCISCO's legitimate right to have parents and not grow up in a center and, your right as a mother to have a relationship, even if alone, without supports that allow you to live with relatives and, in a protection center, reasons why you have no capacity to assume their upbringing.That is why you have been appointed a legal defender, specifically, the lawyer ..., to that you exercise your right to assess what to do and, if you wish to resort to the Resolution of February 5, 2013, of the Beginning of Preadoptive Welcoming in the Family of Others (whose copy is attached).
It is also possible, even if you are not satisfied with your child's pre-adoptive care, that you do not resort to understanding that the best thing for your baby is to have parents who can give him everything you would want but you are not in a position to give and , that you say goodbye in the case of JUAN FRANCISCO ".
My world crumbled. For months, I fell into a deep depression, especially when lawyer after lawyer, none managed to defeat the giant dragon.
They were years of fights in court, of closing my door in my nose, of misunderstanding, of ruthless cruelty. And I say to you: No. I have never drunk, as Mr. Vila has dared to say, I have never smoked, I have never drugged myself, nor have I ever been mistreated. Here is my body to do the tests they consider. I DID NOT TAKE MY CHILD for having a bad life. What bad life could I have had in a reception center with 14 years? Did they worry instead if the father was in the center itself? If I belonged to that Administration that tried to cover the sun with a finger, giving my son up for adoption to silence a poor Guinean girl? Peaceful Dragon My son has no father. He has a mother, and it's ME.
But God is great, and never fails us. And he put an angel on my way. My lawyer, Nieves Ibáñez Mora, who for the first time took an interest in my case, and spent sleepless nights and nights, studying that file that was convoluted, misplaced and without beginning or end. And after two new trials and two years new years of struggle, the Provincial Court of Oviedo, with the support of THREE PERITES (two psychologists, Doña Elena Aza, Don Carlos Castellanos and a social worker), estimated the aberration that had been done with me since they deprived me of my son. Yes Mr. Vila, don't lie anymore. THREE PERITOS, NOT ONE AS YOU ARE COUNTING. The sentence is available to anyone who wants to read it, because it is devastating regarding the Public Administration, and the treatment given to me in regards to my son.
I am not going to enter Mr. Vila, in his double standard of representing biological mothers to recover their children, and now oddly enough the opposite case. Nor in the books you write, about the system malfunction, and stolen children. But I will not allow, one more defamation, on the other hand.
As for my son needing an adaptation before being delivered, I totally agree. Therefore, after delaying the delivery process day after day, the Court urged the delivery on August 8 of this year, indicating a link proposed by the Ministry of Asturias, from day 3 to 8. And there we saw my Lawyer and I on August 2 in Valencia, so that on day 3 the foster parents did not appear. Neither did the 4, nor the 5, nor the 6, nor the 7 nor the day 8 (day in which three technicians from the Ministry of Social Services of Asturias went to Asturias, to attend the delivery and left how they came) Every day, it was torture, as if a knife was stuck in the center of my heart. I argued even with my lawyer, who relegated me to calm and I could only think where my son would be. We stayed in Valencia, my lawyer and I until the 12th, begging for an answer, and a little mercy. But we returned 14 hours by train to Asturias, with the dog of the Paw Patrol that I had bought for my son, a lot of Ninja turtles, (which did not stop ringing in the 14 hours of travel), and the broken heart, amen from the uncertainty of whether the foster parents had disappeared forever and I would never see my son again. There was not a single word of encouragement on his part, nor a minimum of compassion.
Wanted the foster parents by the security forces, for the fulfillment of a sentence (I say, that the sentences have to be fulfilled by all, as I fulfilled them at the time, since when they denied me from the visits until the last judicial resolution), and the parents receiving officially as "disappeared", an order to "search and locate" them was issued by the Court.
The foster parents were located by the Civil Guard, on September 5 (almost nothing, right?), Just one month in which I thought I was dying of anguish thinking that I would never see my son again, who had left Spain, and thousands of other things that went through my head), my lawyer contacted Mr. Vila, to make an adaptation plan, from September 7 (that I, once again came to person in Valencia), until on the 12th. But no. It could not be like that. The foster parents refused, urging them as the last day of the Civil Guard on the 12th, or if necessary proceed to their detention.
And now you come to do all this media circus, on the 12th, in the Civil Guard barracks, with ambulance, demonstration, lies, slander and defamation when I could have urged his arrest, refusing to do so for understanding his own pain ? And I find that all the press, national and private television talk about me, without knowing what happened, what I have gone through, and without contrasting the facts, guided only by what the foster parents say, that they were legally missing? And it appears in Spanish Television, Mr. Fernando Onega, pleading for justice, in a television that we pay all the Spaniards? Justice for whom? And what sense of justice moves these parents, their interest or that of the child? Is it not the fundamental interest of any person, knowing and being with their family of origin? Justice for whom, I repeat? Justice, only if it favors them if it does not favor them, do they skip the law, the sentence without more and disappear? What justice is asking who violates justice?
What dark media background hides "my case", which has been made national news, as if we were talking about a matter of national interest? Does anyone worry about investigating whether there are more cases like mine, of negligence of the Public Administration, or of what procedure is done to give the foster children, or how are the foster parents chosen? Do you know the number of people who have contacted me, for suffering a case similar to mine? Does anyone worry about it?
What contacts do you have, to reach the national level, and that all the media give the news in a biased way? Make Mr. Vila even more media? Do we defend the interests of a child, or do we want to win new cases for the office, and more money to pocket? What does this manipulation of public opinion respond to, especially when speaking in this country is free? This is my story. My sad documented history, and that the Provincial Court knew how to value, with a file of many pages, and YES. Juan Francisco Aben Ayang, is my son. Although I was deprived of being with him for four years, HE IS MY SON. I am not an alcoholic, nor a drug addict, nor do I even smoke. They never mistreat me or mistreat me, as you, Mr. Vila, dare to say. They did not take away my son for leading a bad life, because I was a guarded girl, who lived in a shelter.
Has anyone asked why the Ministry in permanent abuse of their right, sent after the sentence to the police to my house, to ask all my neighbors, if my partner mistreated me? Why, after sentencing in my favor, the police follow me and go where I study? Do you think I'm half naked in the street and I drink alcohol? It's fine, by God. And if I drank alcohol when I go out, that is not the case, because I also don't like alcohol, what? I am 19 years old, I am of legal age and so far, I have not had my son with me. None of you drink when you go out? Will they demonize me for that? More when it is uncertain.
Defame in this country, it seems to be free for now. I am only a Spanish girl of Guinean origin, who NO LONGER WANTS TO BE EUROPEAN, and that all she wants is to be happy with her son. Son, who has a family, some grandparents, some uncles, some cousins, and above all a mother. And my son, his name is not Joan (in Valencian), nor Xuanín in Asturian. His name is Juan Francisco.
I'm only 19 years old, but life has tanned me in the fight with dragons. I have cried in these four years, so much !!! that sometimes I thought I would have no more tears to cry for the rest of my life. I was wrong, Mr. Vila. Today seeing his slander, I have cried again. Cry with rage, helplessness. Wondering why so much pain towards me and my family. And of joy, of much joy in hugging my son again (which by the way, is the same as me until he has the same separate teeth as me)
It is not me who initiated this. It is not I who have to turn their anger, their sadness and their helplessness. I did not give them the foster child. They took it away from me. It is not me, who has put them in this situation. I am only a mother who LOVES above all her son. That he has not stopped fighting for him, from the moment I knew he wanted to take it away from me or do you think it was easy for me to flee to Guinea pregnant, with 14 years, so they wouldn't take it away from me?
What is clear is that I will not give up my son, now or ever. If I hadn't come to get him back. I would look for him when he was 18 years old. And what do you think Juan Francisco would say, when I know all my history, all my fight against dragons?
Thanks to everyone who has stopped reading my story. And by God before giving your opinion, know the truth.
P.D: The child is fine. Quiet as I am, and as he is. Respect us and let us enjoy what we have been denied by the dragon in these four years. Thank you.
María José Abeng Ayang.
