"At 17 I was tricked into letting a celebrity adopt my baby"

At 17 I was tricked into letting a celebrity adopt my baby

Questions: Karen Davies, pictured with her second daughter Bella, was forced to give up her first daughter, Lucy , who was adopted by a celebrity
Questions: Karen Davies, pictured with her second daughter Bella, was forced to give up her first daughter, Lucy , who was adopted by a celebrity
The letters that arrive twice a year on birthdays and at Christmas are among Karen Davies’s most treasured possessions. Like any mother, she loves to read that her daughter has joined the school choir, adores Justin Bieber or that she has just won an ‘Oscar’ for her turn in the school pantomime.

But after the elation fades, a different, darker mood sets in, because the handwritten notes also serve as a stark reminder of something else – a quite terrible, draining predicament.

Despite the touching letters, Karen has not actually seen her little girl, Lucy, for several years, nor is she allowed to. Because the girl, then a toddler, was taken away from her by the courts against her will and handed to a well-known celebrity and her then husband, also a celebrity.

It is hard enough for Karen that she was alone in court without legal representation when her child was taken, that she says she was given no support or explanation, and that – aged 17 and in local authority care following the breakdown of her relationship with her mother, while her father was in and out of prison – she simply didn’t know what was happening.

But what makes her situation all the more heartbreaking are the constant reminders she gets about her pretty daughter.

She’s there in the interviews the celebrity gives, in which she talks freely about the adoption and her happiness at becoming a mother.

The child also features heavily in the celebrity’s commercial ventures. For while the celebrity is free as the legal mother of the child to talk openly about her daughter and her happiness, the woman who gave birth to her is silenced, unable to speak under her own name to say how, as she sees it, the theft of her child by social services has come close to wrecking her life.

Karen, now 27, understands the reasons why, legally, she cannot be named or pictured. All names have been changed. The child, now of primary school age, must be protected. Yet a decision taken by the authorities nearly a decade ago has left her, and others like her, in a monstrous legal limbo.

In an affecting interview, which offers a rare insight into the secretive world of the family courts, Karen says she feels utterly wronged by the adoption process, and claims social workers led her to believe her child would be temporarily fostered and then given back.

She also insists she had no clue adoption proceedings were imminent and was not even told she might need a solicitor to fight her case. Worst of all, says Karen, is that she cannot know what Lucy thinks about the adoption – and is desperate that it be known she did not give up her daughter willingly.

‘I always thought in my heart of hearts I was getting her back,’ she says. ‘I need her to know the truth. I worry that she’ll think I abandoned her.’

I worry that she’ll think I abandoned her

Photographs of the little girl, some before adoption and others sent to Karen with the twice-yearly letters, cover the walls of her tiny flat in the Home Counties. ‘I did nothing for her to be taken away and everything in my power at that time to get her back. It was all about fostering. They said if I did this, this and this I’d get her back. That’s all I was told.

‘I didn’t know about solicitors, I didn’t sign anything. In court, no matter what I did, said or presented, nothing was good enough. She was still going to be taken away. That child should be with me. If I had harmed a single hair on her head, I’d understand but I didn’t do anything. Social workers didn’t give me a chance.’

Karen adds: ‘I cry for my daughter when I wake up and before I go to bed, especially when it’s close to her birthday or at Christmas. One minute she was with her mum, the next she was being ripped from my arms and living with strangers. Now I want to know what the hell happened.’

Much more http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3682695/At-17-tricked-letting-celebrity-adopt-baby-t-Troubled-girl-forced-child-banned-saying-love-you.html?ito=social-facebook


What a sad story and this child was adopted in 2008! I wonder why?
I wonder who the adoptive mother is? There were some hints in there....