For the small few who are following this blog, I assure you at some point I will post some fluff and maybe even introduce myself. But for now, you must tolerate the things that matter to me.
Desirai Simmons was born May of this year to a Native American mother and non-native father. Little Desirai hails from the Absentee Shawnee tribe. Shortly before her birth - two months before to be exact- her parents split up and her mother decided to cut contact with her father, Jeremy Simmons. Her mother, Crystal Tarbox, went on to marry another man shortly after. Must have been a hell of a quickie wedding since she split with Simmons when she was seven months pregnant and was married to another man by the time she gave birth a few months later. Either way, she split up with the father of her 3rd child and was married to another man by the time Desirai was born.
This case mirrors the "Baby Veronica" case in many ways. We have a young, unmarried couple who split up and an expectant mother who vanishes without a trace and refuses all contact from the father. After her quickie marriage, the couple sought help through a church and were directed to Nightlight and Ray Godwin. Yup, you heard correctly. They contacted the now infamous child trafficking "adoption" lawyer and agency in order to place little Desirai for adoption without notifying Simmons of her plans.
The couple who planned to adopt Desirai are from South Carolina. Hmmm....are we seeing a pattern here? After all, South Carolina was called the adoption mecca, if memory serves me correctly. The go-to state for quick and easy adoptions with no "birth" parent hassle. Fathers' rights are non existent. The same state that completely dismissed Veronica Brown's right to a best interest hearing. The same state that that felt her current situation at the time of her forced illegal adoption was irrelevant.
But this case gets a bit strange. The couple who were seeking to adopt little Desirai are in their 60's. They have adult children who had all moved out of the home. The move to adopt an infant almost seems like some weird, crazed empty-nester type nonsense. Not to be discriminatory with age, but I have not heard of a couple that old adopting a newborn. And last I checked, most agencies and lawyers won't consider a couple that advanced in years. But Bobby and Diane Bixler were the lucky couple chosen to take Desirai and raise her as their own.
This would have worked. I'm sure if a few things were done differently, we would probably be hearing about another epic custody battle that would span for years and years and cover two states holding a jurisdictional pissing match. What went wrong, might you ask? Well, it's well documented that the only paperwork filed was the petition for adoption in South Carolina. But Desirai was born in Oklahoma (you catching on here?). The senior citizen Bixlers left Oklahoma and took Desirai home, no longer wanting to wait it out while two lawyers bickered about who was in charge of what. Bobby Bixler had to get back to work. So they just took the baby and left.
And no Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (ICPC) had been filed. All the legal eagles involved in trafficking Desirai out of Oklahoma couldn't seem to agree on who would file what. So Bobby and Diane Bixler, tired of waiting for all the proper forms to be finalized, just packed Desirai up and left for South Carolina.
For those unfamiliar with the ICPC, it is a very important piece of paper. It is legally mandated that this form is filled out and filed with the child's state of residence before a child can be transferred across state lines for foster care and adoptive placements. To not have one filed and still remove the child out of state is a crime. The Bixlers committed a crime. They may not have realized just how serious of a crime they had committed or possibly be aware that they committed a crime at all, but it is still a crime nonetheless.
K-I-D-N-A-P-P-I-N-G
Nightlight and Ray Godwin got themselves into some hot water. They might have been able to pull off Veronica Brown's sale to the Capobiancos, but this little mis-hap wasn't going to go unnoticed. When a South Carolina judge noticed there was no ICPC form in the initial adoption paperwork, he put a complete stop to the adoption. A lawyer in Oklahoma and the one involved in handling all the ICPC paperwork have demanded Desirai's return. Jeremy Simmons and Crystal's mother, Janet Snake, have demanded Desirai's return. Desirai, as I have said, is a member of the Absentee Shawnee tribe, so her removal out of state for adoption also violated the Indian Child Welfare Act
So, let's figure this out....nobody filed the ICPC and Desirai is a member of a federally recognized tribe, granting her certain protections under federal law. And, I might be wrong, but I do believe not having an ICPC is a violation of federal law as well. If I am wrong, please correct me. I assume it is since we're talking about transporting a child across state lines.
The judge who caught on that something was amiss demanded to know where the infant was and got numerous vague answers from the lawyers for the adoption agency. Rumors even circulated that little Desirai had been moved through at least two other families since the Bixlers. But no doubt that was done in an effort to conceal Desirai's where-abouts or to take heat off the Bixlers all together. But it was nothing more than a smoke-screen. The child's tribe had come forward, demanding custody and citing ICWA violations and were granted custody of Desirai through an Oklahoma court.
The Bixlers have yet to produce the child, hoping to hold onto her. I'm sure after seeing how the Veronica Brown case went, they are holding onto hope that if they hold on long enough, the courts will just finalize the adoption. Another set of entitled adopters who think since they paid top dollar for Desirai, they should be allowed to keep her.
The last update I have heard on this case is that the Absentee Shawnee are going to South Carolina to get their Oklahoma court order domesticated. I keep wondering what Oklahoma governor, Mary Fallin, plans to do to the Bixlers for kidnapping the little Oklahoma citizen. South Carolina courts put out charges against Dusten Brown for refusing to hand over his daughter to the Capobiancos in the fraudulent adoption. Governor Haley signed an extradition warrant for him. So what is Fallin going to do to the Bixlers? What are Oklahoma courts going to do? Where are the charges? Where is the extradition warrant?
Here's to hope that baby Desirai gets to go back home. With her family, where she belongs.
*for those wondering: the tribe got involved because of the ICWA violations. and as an unmarried father, Simmons would have been up against impossible odds if he tried challenging the South Carolina adoption alone. the lack of ICPC was a godsend in this case, no doubt about it, but I tend to think that OK and SC would have simply got one set up and brushed this under the rug had the tribe not come forward*
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