Battle for adopted Kirsty continues
Lekopanye Mooketsi | Monday September 15, 2014 12:19
Biological mother Annah Kopo has accused Deborah Jan Kirsten-Mey, a South African, who gained custody of six-year-old Kirsty, of tricking her into giving up her daughter.
While Kopo claimed ignorance for signing away her child, Kirsten-Mey insisted that Kopo was a willing partner in the protracted adoption process.
Both women gave contradicting views that have led to the adoption, which started when the two met in 2008.
This week, Kopo told the media that when they met in Orapa that year, Kirsten-Mey had volunteered to take care of her daughter because her nanny was playing truant.Kopo claimed that she gave her then three-month-old baby to Kirsten-Mey on that understanding. Furthermore, she claimed that it was Kirsten-Mey who insisted that she should have the baby to look after since she (Kirsten-Mey) had a maid.
At the time, Kirsten-Mey worked as a teacher at a Debswana mine school in Orapa. She was later transferred to Jwaneng and took the child with her following the adoption. In an interview with a South African magazine, YOU last year, Kirsten-Mey revealed that it was Kopo who begged her to adopt her daughter.
Kirsten-Mey said that she met Kopo at the permits office in Orapa, where the latter was working.
Kirsten-Mey said when she saw Kopo for the first time she was accompanied by a black South African child that she had adopted. In fact, she claimed that it was Kopo who suggested that she adopt Kirsty, though she (Kopo) told the local media that Kirsten-Mey had told her the little boy who accompanied her, was her maid’s son. “Kopo obviously realised I’d adopted Simon and she begged me to take her daughter as well. I just laughed at her because who offers her baby to someone else,” YOU had quoted Kirsten-Mey then.
Kirsten-Mey had told the magazine that when she went to the permits’ office a week later, Kopo approached her.
”I then gave her my phone number so she could make contact with me when she finished her work,” the magazine stated, adding that Kopo left the baby in Kirsten-Mey’s care.
“I immediately fell in love with her. She was a beautiful baby, she obviously needed love. Her hands and feet were clenched when I got her, but within a week she was more relaxed,” Kirsten-Mey allegedly told YOU.
She claimed that she realised that she was becoming increasingly attached to the child and told Kopo that she would return her baby. “Annah then begged me to start with the adoption proceedings,” Kirsten-Mey claimed.
According to the magazine, 2009 was the year when Kirsten-Mey had all the paper work to prove that she had officially adopted the baby.
But after she relocated to Jwaneng in 2010, Kirsten-Mey received summons to appear at a magistrate court.
“Kopo wanted her baby back, but her appeal was rejected because she’d willingly signed the adoption papers. I love Kirsty with all my heart. I didn’t want her to go back to a home where she wouldn’t be loved,” Kirsten-Mey said about the child that she has renamed Angel Kirsty Kirsten. The magazine also reported that another appeal by Kopo, this time to the High Court, also failed.
Moreover, when Kirsten-Mey was about to leave for South Africa with Kirsty last year at the end of her contract, the child’s father, Joshua July moved to appeal.
Apparently July had been kept in the dark about the adoption until everything had been finalised. It was while July was preparing to apply for an order to revoke the adoption that he found out that Kirsten-Mey’s contract had expired.
July made an application for an interim interdict that prevented Kirsten-Mey from relocating with the child to South Africa.
However, the Jwaneng Magistrate Court dismissed his application.
A legal battle ensued after July subsequently filed an appeal at the High Court. Lobatse High Court judge Tebogo Tau, who granted an interdict against Kirsten-Mey, heard his appeal.
Social welfare officers, accompanied by security agents, raided Kirsten-Mey’s home in Jwaneng taking away the child who was temporarily put in foster care.
Kirsten-Mey was determined to fight to the bitter end, and took the matter up at the Court of Appeal (CoA).
This year, the CoA dismissed Tau’s ruling that the disputed child should remain in the country.
In the CoA findings, there is nothing in the Adoption Act prohibiting a non-citizen from adopting a child in this jurisdiction.
“The only territorial requirement is that the child should not be removed from the jurisdiction within 12 months of the adoption order being made,” one of the CoA judges ruled.
In their judgment, three CoA judges Ian Kirby, Isaac Lesetedi and Stephen Gaongalelwe found that in one section of the act, if the child’s mother is unmarried, no consent to adopt is required from the father. Surprisingly, two different social welfare officers had advised Kopo against the adoption, but she still went ahead with it. Last Friday, Kopo’s sister told a radio station that they were also against the adoption and refused to be her witnesses.
Meanwhile, the Kopo family has decried the manner in which the child was recently snatched from them following the High Court ruling.
Kopo’s sister said in the radio interview that the police officers that came for Kirsty had harassed her. She said they did not even give her a chance to prepare the child. In the same radio programme, human rights lawyer, Uyapo Ndadi said that they want to establish whether there are any legal steps they can institute to challenge the manner in which Kirsty was taken away from the Kopo family.