Social workers in the US have removed a sobbing child from her foster family of FIVE years because it has been revealed she is 1.5 per cent Native American and her carers are not.
Protesters tried to stop child services from taking six-year-old Lexi from the Page family in Santa Claritra, California but because she has Choctaw blood she is prevented from living with a non-Native American family due to the ‘Indian Child Welfare Act’.
After a two-and-a-half year legal battle to adopt Lexi, Rusty Page told protesters on Monday he and his wife Summer would be reluctantly observing a court order for the child’s removal.
Heartbreaking footage from video from KTLA, sees a tearful Lexi begging Rusty, ‘Don’t let them take me away’, as she is carried into a black car with government workers.
Her foster mother Summer Page bursts from the home screaming ‘I love you, Lexi’ while a crowd of friends and neighbours cried, prayed or sang hymns.
The Page’s other biological children, a nine-year-old, another six-year-old and a two-year-old, had been legally prevented from being warned about Monday’s impending separation and are said to be devastated at the loss of their long-term foster sibling.
“As a grandmother, it’s ripping my heart. It’s ripping me apart to see Lexi has been a part of our family for almost five years, and she’s not going to understand what’s going on,” Tari Kelly, Lexi’s foster grandmother, told ABC 7.
“The children are not going to understand the separation. This is going to destroy these children.”
According to the Indian Welfare Act, the law was introduced in 1978 “because of the high removal rate of Indian children from their traditional homes and essentially from Indian culture as a whole.”
“Before enactment, as many as 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were being removed from their Indian homes and placed in non-Indian homes, with presumably the absence of Indian culture.”
“The tribe and parents or Indian custodian of the Indian child have an unqualified right to intervene in a case involving foster care placement or the termination of parental rights .”
Lexi was 17 months old when she was removed from her birth parents’ custody due to her mother’s substance abuse problems, and her father’s extensive criminal history, according to court records cited by the Los Angeles Daily News.
Despite a petition being signed with more than 40,000 signatures to keep Lexi with the Page family, the only mother and father she’s ever known, the Choctaw tribe has decided to place Lexi with extended relatives in Utah.
She will be taken to live with people who are not related to her by blood but connected to her father’s side by marriage, they are believed to be non-Native American and not living on the reservation, reports US NEWS.
The couple are believed to already have Lexi’s sister and another sister will be living down the street, said Leslie Heimov of the Children’s Law Center of California, Lexi’s court-appointed legal representatives.
“The law is very clear that siblings should be kept together whenever they can be, and they should be placed together even if they were not initially together,” Heimov told the Daily News.
She said Lexi had met them before and they were not strangers to her.
“She has a loving relationship with them,” Heimov said. “They are not strangers in any way, shape or form.”
In a statement the Choctaw Nation said it believed this move was what was “best” for Lexi.
“The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child,” a statement from the tribe read.
“The tribe’s values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us.
“Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child.”
A page “Bring Lexi Home,” has been stated on Facebook and has so far garnered more than 14,000 supporters.
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