Oregon Denied Home Study

I am going to share something here that is very sensitive. My wife and I have been for about 1 year now trying to adopt our great Niece who will be 2 years of age in Jan 2012. She has been in a very good foster home since she was appx. 3 weeks old. First we had get certified as foster parents for her and then the plan was to move her to our home. But the judge in the case denied moving her to our home because he did not want the child moved unless it was to our adoptive home. Fair enough. So then the adoption home study started. 3 months in to the study, we were denied because childrens services questioned the stability of our marriage. 3 years ago my wife and I split up for about 6 months. The reason was I was for two issues. One was a many year struggle with adult pornography. Yes, I watched porn. And the bigger issue was I made two trips out of the country to engage with prostitutes. I turned my life around and am heading in the right direction now. Before we started the adoption process my wife and I talked about whether we should tell childrens services of our split up and the reasons. Our decision was to tell the truth about what happened. During the foster care certification, all of this was brought up but the certifier did not go into in depth detail on it at all. During the adoption home study this was all talked about. During the adoption home study, the certifier made the statement 3 times that he would be approving/recommending us for adoption. He also made statements like since my wife and I got help individually as well as couple, that was a very positive thing. He also made the statement that couples that go through hard things like and come out the other end together tend to be stronger families and advocates for their marriage. We felt based on the statements and discussion with the adoption certifer that things would go well for us. Then in May 2011, we were informed that our home study was denied. Or actually what they said was they stopped working on it because of concerns about our marriage. My wife and I went through a lot. Certainly my wife went through more than I did. But we stuck it out and worked things out. Both my wife and I would agree that we have a more solid marriage today than we have ever had or at least for a very long time. My wife and I great parents who have raised two great children. We both love kids and are young enough to go around a second time with kids. Anyway, after our denial, we pretty much got the cold should from childrens services. Phone calls and emails to them went ignored. So we hired an attorney to help us fight our denial. The attorney tried for about 6 weeks to get childrens services to come to the table and talk about the concerns and issues they had with us as a couple and to re-consider their denial. The attorney got the run around. So we filed two things. One was a motion to make us a limited party to the case. The other was to get a judicial review of the case. Our attorney was clear that the motion to file to make us a limited party to the case was not something he thought we could win, but the hope was to get information out there to the court and to childrens services about what our issues were. And sure enough, we had the hearing for the motion of limited participation and we lost. It was about a 7 hour hearing but the scope of such a motion is very narrow we knew it would be tough to win. Now here is the situation with the baby. She has been in foster care since she was 3 weeks old. Great foster family. The foster family stepped out of trying to adopt her because the birth mother has another child on the way that most likely will be taken away and the foster family does not want more children. We are willing to take more than one child. Like I said above, childrens services has pretty much ignored that we even exist. They started looking for other family to step up and no one is willing tos step up. SO they started looking for people outside the family to adopt the baby. They found a family that the foster parents know and approved them and just two weeks ago moved the baby to that home. Now on the legal front, we still have the case to come before a judge for a judicial review of the case. The problem is that case may not come before the court for another 9 months. In the meantime, the baby has already been moved to an approved adoptive home and is bonding with that family. I feel pretty strongly that we will win our case of a judicial review before a judge. No, I cannot say for sure, but I think we have a better than 50/50 chance. If we win that case, my understanding is all it will do is kick it back to childrens services to do another home study on us but probably from a different office. That home study could still get denied again. But let's say it was approved. We would probably be looking at close to another year for all that to happen. The baby would be close to 3 years old. She will have certainly bonded with her new family. And then all of that would be undone and she would be moved to our home. Of course that is all best case scenario from our standpoint. I have to tell you, my wife and do not like that scenario at all one bit. I mean, we want nothing more than to have our niece and her siblings stay in the family. But let's say all the court stuff goes well and we get approved, would we really want to upend her life again and move her to our home? No, we do not want to do that. It is aggonizing to know what to do. We want what is best for our niece and we do not feel upending her life in a year is in her best interest. So what we have asked out attorney to do is to plead with the court to expedite our motion to an earlier date. If we can get it moved from 9 months away to say 2 months away, that would be a lot more reasonable. If we cannot get it moved to an earlier date, we are probably going to drop the case. I am going to say something right now that I think might be a little sensitive and controversial. If I had to do this all over again knowing what I know now, I would have chosen not to reveal the issues my wife and I had to childrens services. Now some people would say well that is lying. OK, maybe it is. But so is childrens services telling a family 3 times that they would be approved. You do not tell a family that and then change your mind. Unless we had not revealed that information and it was found out later. But that is not the case here. We shared it all from the beginning. In fact, before we even started the home study, we told childrens services about our issues and asked them if it would be a problem and if it would be tell us up front and we will step out now. But they did not do that. They made it sound very positive for us. So my experience is and advice is and I would tell this to anyone. If you have issues in your past that would show up on a criminal record, then you have to reveal that information. However if there are other sensitive issues that would not show up on a criminal record, consult an attorney on what you should share before you even start such a process. My wife and I interviewed a number of attorneys before we selected one and almost all of them asked us how did childrens services know about all this. Our answer was we told them. I think every attorney we talked to was surprised we were so open and candid about sharing this and made a statement that it was a mistake on our part. So again, if it shows up on a criminal record, you got no choice to share it. If it does not, consult with an attorney first before you start revealing parts of your life that some people can turn and use against you. I think that is the whole thing for us. We trusted childrens services with sensitive information. They lied to us about a number of things. They cannot be trusted with sensitive information and you should tread carefully.