Very Frustrating Time Right Now..

Well needless to say, yesterday was not a good day. It started out great as I was able to spend all day scrapebooking Mateo's pictures from our visit trip into an album, and that was awesome. Although, afterwards I came home to an email from the director of the orphanage. We will fight this, and are hoping that our attorney goes to PGN on MOnday, and requests to have Mateo taken out of the orphanage. I have never known of anyone to be so cruel. This is a child, and she is all about the money. She even adopted a child from Guatemala herself and runs and orphanage...I cannot believe this. Doug & I were physically sick last night, I woke up this morning feeling numb. This is the hardest thing I have every had to go through in my life. DOug & I 's love for Mateo has only grown stronger, and our anger towards her has turned into strength for us to fight to have done what is right for the sake of Mateo.

I am going to copy and paste the emails that went back and fourth so you can see what has happened. It will be too hard on me to explain this to everyone over and over again. We still have faith that Mateo will come home to us.

The first email is from our Attorney to the director of the orphanage notifying her of the change of POA, and that we will no longer use her attorney and that we have hired him. The 2nd is her response to him. The third is my response to her. The last her response to me. I did reply to her again, but I dont think that it makes much of a difference, she probably deleted it at this point.


Mrs. NANCY BAILEY, Director
Semillas de Amor
DEAR MRS. BAILEY:
This is to introduce myself as the new notary of Mr. and Mrs. Douuglas Earl Edwards in Guatemala, according to a Power Of Attorney (hereinafter referred to as "POA") granted by them on early March, on ocassion of their short stay in Guatemala City.
I am also informing you that previous POA granted on behalf of Lic. Mayén, the former and original guatemalan proxy, was cancelled too and he was notified through a letter of mine, yesterday afternoon.
As a result of a legal introduction of myself, PGN's Section for Minors is also aware of this substitution; so, please be ware of any further steps to be followed. I will soon be in touch with you by phone.
According to this institution's authorities, what I need from you is INFORMATION on how to reach the biological mother (YESICA DEL CARMEN MORALES) for they need to interview and ask her some questions, and depending on her answers and cooperative attitue, they'll be able to define what are the most valid opitons to take.
It' 10:50 a.m.and, so far, Lic. Mayén (former proxy) has not called me. So, I would expect him to communicate this afternoon. He must have information on how to reach Yesica.
Please feel free to call me. I take for granted that all necessary cooperation will flow smoothly between both parties for we are foremost mindful of the needs and welfare of DAVID MANUEL.
Hoping to hearing from you soon, I remain
Truly Yours,
ROBERTO GONZALEZ PEREZ
Attorney at Law

As you can see his email was very poliete...

Here is Nancys response:


Dear Lic. Perez,

By canceling the power of attorney for the Edward's family you have cancelled their adoption. We will not be giving you any information on the birth mother or on the child.

Since the family has decided to hire you as their attorney I recommend that you find them a child to adopt.

Nancy Bailey


Very cold, this is how she has been the whole time!

Here is my response to her:

Nancy,

When we met with the had of minors court section of PGN while on our visit trip , she told us where our file stands now, it is in the best interest of Doug, Mateo, & I that we cancel the POA with the attorney that you had hired, and hire our own. She said your attorney , as well as the birth mom, and the civil registrar were all under a criminal investigation. She also stated that the attorney that you hired had been linked to other investigations that were also questionable…and if we wanted this adoption to proceed, (because it would not, if we would have not done anything)…to cancel the attorney that you hired. She told us this. We saw our file, we saw the falsified birth certificate..it was obviously falsified, but yet the attorney that you hired allowed it to be completed and put in the file. Our DNA test is missing out of our file, why is that? PGN has to now have another DNA test done to prove that she is even indeed the birth mom. For five months we waited and listened, and took the information we got from you as the truth..and then when told by Susanna that more than likely it would not go through, right before our visit trip..so she questioned us coming…we had no choice but to fight for our son. We went on that trip on a leap of faith that it would work out, and when we were able to get right into PGN, we felt that was GOD listening to thousands of our friends & families prayers.

PGN said that the only reason Mateo had not been moved at that time was because our file hadn’t officially been moved into Minors Court, which we were told by you, that it had been. I assume that , that is the information that your attorney had given you..but it was not true. We were also told that our file was at Misterio Pubilico ( SP??) but it wasn’t…it will go there because it will because it is now a criminal investigation…they would have pulled Mateo out already, if it wasn’t for us saying we wanted to keep him there. We can tell he is well taken care of, we can tell he is loved.

You have adopted a child, you know what this is like, how could you be so cruel? You have taken our money, you took the gifts we sent, you took all the stuff we donated with no question…but yet, stayed outside when we came to drop Mateo off, and didn’t come up and say anything to us? We had never questioned anything you were doing or had done, until we found out that we had been told lies for 5 months..whether you knew that they were or not. The head of PGN minors Court section said that the attorney was being investigated, and more than likely he wasn’t following up or working on the case because he knew that it was.

I love him, he is my son…..

Valerie Edwards

The last email I am posting is what she wrote back to me. This is probably the most insensitive email I have ever read.

Valerie,

I find it interesting that you believe everything that this lawyer has told you and that God opened the doors to PGN for you. First you need to know that David Manuel is not your son and that you have no legal right to him until the Guatemalan government approves the adoption.

David's birth mother came to us to place him in adoption and not to the lawyer. She had placed one other child in adoption with the exact same paperwork. I am glad you are such an expert in Guatemalan paperwork but we did not know she was lying. She lied because she is from El Salvador and wanted to place her child for adoption and most likely did not want to go to the effort of getting the needed paperwork from El Salvador. I guess she fooled everyone on her first adoption with her paperwork because it was not picked up by either the Guatemalan or US governments.

Because you are now such an expert as is this "new" attorney on David's case I feel as though there is little information I can give you. But I will tell you that if the Guatemalan courts want to take David away from us that there is an appeals process and we have been through that before and won each time. We would not permit David to be taken from us.

And yes, David's case was moved to the ministerio publico because we paid a criminal lawyer to meet with them and see what our next steps might be. We told Gladney that the case was a criminal case and that the birth mother risked going to jail for lying about her paperwork. Our lawyer is not lying nor is he being investigated. Miguel Angel is an honest man and went to the ministerio publico several times to talk to them about the case. They would give no information. Which is why we hired a criminal attorney. I suspect it is in the best interests of the new lawyer to take on your case and bad mouth our attorney.

The donations that you brought were for the children and not for me. I am sorry if you weren't thanked enough for them or that you expected that I would meet with you. Had you wanted to meet with me you only needed to set up a time for that but I can see you had already made a plan to hire the other lawyer.

You were NEVER lied to.

Cruel? Well, I would like to see you do what I have to do everyday and the amount of work that I do and for free. I doubt you would last a day.

Please do not write again. We will not be working with this lawyer. Had you wanted to discuss options for your case you should have done so when you were in Guatemala instead of sneaking around and finding a new lawyer that will only complicate things.


PLEASE keep our family in your prayers. We have a long fight ahead of us....

Valerie