Perspective: Adoptive parents in the wrong with Baby Sam

It should be required reading for every couple seeking to adopt a baby. The Baby Sam saga is an object lesson in how desperation for a glowing newborn can lead otherwise rational couples into tragic choices worthy of a Euripides play.

Joseph Samuel Johnson, or "Baby Sam" as he's been dubbed, is now four-and-a-half years old. For all but the first few days of life, he has lived with his adoptive parents, Mark and Tracy Johnson of Tuscaloosa, Ala. And for nearly that long, the boy's natural father, Christopher Vietri of New Port Richey, has been trying to get him back.

In this irreconcilable zero-sum game, Tracy Johnson is right when she says "(Baby Sam) is the one who will hurt the most from this." But the Johnsons have only themselves to blame. They attempted legal kidnapping and used the creaky slowness of the courts as co-conspirator. This month, justice finally caught up with them. In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered Baby Sam returned to his biological father.

If this results in temporary trauma to the young child, as it no doubt will, the Johnsons should know it was caused by their own hand. Had they been willing to put the interests of their adoptive charge first, rather than their own desire to be parents, they would have returned Baby Sam to his father as an infant, when Vietri first came knocking.

Words like conspiracy shouldn't be tossed around lightly, but Vietri was the victim of one to deprive him of his child. When his former live-in girlfriend and Baby Sam's mother, Natasha Gawronski, gave birth in March 1996, she handed the child over to an adoption agency. She told the agency she didn't know the father's identity, and she told Vietri his child was stillborn. Vietri was skeptical and within a month he filed a paternity suit against her, seeking custody of the child he believed to be alive.

After Gawronski was served with the suit, she reportedly showed it to the adoption agency, Adoption By Choice in Tampa, which had already given the baby to the Johnsons after having been paid more than $17,000. Rather than notify the judge in the paternity action as to the whereabouts of Baby Sam, the agency hightailed it into court in another county to terminate the parental rights of an "unknown" father.

It took a few months, but Vietri seemed to be successful in clearing things up. He got the termination petition thrown out and won temporary custody of his child. But despite the rulings, the Johnsons refused to give Baby Sam back to his father. Instead they enlisted the Alabama state courts to block the Florida order.

Astoundingly, a lower Alabama court sided with the Johnsons, awarding them permanent custody and terminating Vietri's parental rights. The court said the Johnsons were now Baby Sam's psychological parents and that Vietri had abandoned his child before he was born by not providing the mother with sufficient financial or emotional support during the pregnancy.

Both reasons are recklessly dismissive of a natural father's rights to his children. By saying the Johnsons had become psychological parents, the court rewarded their strategy of dragging this fight out -- the longer the better. Think of the incentive this creates for adoptive parents to challenge the rightful claims of a natural father. The law should be acting to limit these kinds of terrible cases, not encouraging them.

And the idea that a father can abandon a child before birth is no more than a contrived justification to steal a man's child.

Why should a father have to maintain a relationship with the mother or risk having his parental rights severed? The constitutional bond between parent and child shouldn't be so easily set aside. A man might walk away from a woman but still care deeply for his children.

Vietri tried to be in his child's life as soon as he knew where his baby was. He sent Baby Sam presents and sought contact with him, but the Johnsons prevented any relationship. For the Johnsons to now claim Vietri abandoned the boy is a sad hoax.

Biological fathers are the hanging chad of the adoption world: many of those with vested interests in seeing adoptions move forward would prefer that their vote didn't count. Mothers are often reluctant to name the biological father, either because they're embarrassed by how they got pregnant or because the couple is estranged. And less than reputable private adoption agencies and adoption lawyers have been known to try to subvert the father's rights. With private adoptions costing on average about $15,000, and all the big money riding on the adoption going forward, fathers are viewed as a treacherous speed bump.

Vietri's rights were stomped on by those with a pecuniary and emotional interest in adopting away his child. The Alabama Supreme Court recognized this injustice by overturning the lower court and ordering that Baby Sam be returned to his father.

But the Johnsons are sticking to their game plan of delay, delay, delay. They intend to ask the court to reconsider its ruling. In January, five of the nine justices will leave the court and the Johnsons see this as an opportunity to change the result.

Meanwhile, the longer they hold out, the more pain they will cause the child they call "son," who rightly belongs to someone else.

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