Reuters: Most Read Articles: Cherokee girl in U.S. adoption battle transferred to adoptive parents

Reuters: Most Read Articles Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Understand your audience Are you treating your visitors as stats and numbers? It might be time to put a face to your audience. Try WHYanalytics - a free new real time analytics tool. From our sponsors

Cherokee girl in U.S. adoption battle transferred to adoptive parents Sep 24th 2013, 03:16 By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY | Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:16pm EDT OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A 4-year-old Cherokee girl known as "Baby Veronica," who is at the center of a cross-country custody battle, was handed back to her adoptive non-Native American family on Monday, a Cherokee Nation spokeswoman told Reuters. The transfer came hours after the Oklahoma Supreme Court lifted a stay, clearing the way for the girl to be transferred from the custody of her biological father in Oklahoma, Dusten Brown, with whom she has lived for nearly two years. Brown gave Veronica to her white adoptive parents, Matt and Melanie Capobianco of South Carolina, at about 7 p.m. CDT on Monday, Cherokee Nation spokeswoman Amanda Clinton said. No details were immediately available on where the handover took place. "The transition was voluntary and handled peacefully by all parties," Clinton said. "We ask that everyone please keep Veronica in your prayers tonight." Oklahoma's top court earlier on Monday lifted a stay it had imposed on August 30 that had kept Veronica in Oklahoma where she has lived for the past two years while Brown, a member of the Cherokee Nation, fought the adoption. The case has highlighted overlapping parental claims in two states - as well as the clash between a Native American culture seeking to protect children from being adopted outside their tribes and U.S. legal safeguards for adoptive parents. The Capobiancos have been in Oklahoma for the past month and have been allowed to visit Veronica, who lived with them for the first two years of her life, according to a family spokeswoman. Veronica's birth mother, who is not Native American, arranged the adoption with the Capobiancos before the girl was born. Brown has argued he did not know the mother would give her up for adoption when he signed away his parental rights. Brown, who was not married to the birth mother, argued that the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 allowed him to have custody of Veronica, who is 3/256th Cherokee. A South Carolina family court agreed with him and he took custody of her in 2011. But in June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling and decided the act did not apply. Her adoption by the Capobiancos was finalized in July, but Brown refused to turn her over. Brown is still appealing the case and it could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court again. Monday's ruling does not affect an extradition order Brown currently faces on charges of custodial interference in South Carolina after refusing to hand over Veronica earlier this summer, when the Capobiancos' adoption of her was finalized. He has a hearing on that extradition order set for Oct 3. (Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City and Harriet McCleod in Charleston, South Carolina; Writing by Karen Brooks and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Eric Walsh, Barbara Goldberg and Eric Beech) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions