Marine’s Adoption of an Afghan Orphan is Thrown Out by an Appeals Court; the Child’s Fate is Still Unknown
On Tuesday, an appeals court in Virginia said that a U.S. Marine should never have been allowed to adopt an Afghan war orphan and threw out the custody order that he had been using to raise the girl for almost three years. The ruling changed the course of a nasty custody battle that affects people all over the world in ways that go far beyond the fate of one child.
Marine Maj. Joshua Mast had been trying for years to get the court to let him keep the child, who was left alone on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2019.
Mast and his wife Stephanie were able to get the courts in his hometown of rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, to let him adopt the child. This was done even though the child was still in Afghanistan while her government found her extended family and reunited her with them. Over a thousand other people also left Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in the summer of 2021. As soon as Mast got to the US, she used the Fluvanna County papers to get the child taken from her family in Afghanistan and given to him by the federal government.
This month, she turns five. The Masts say they are her legal parents and that they “acted admirably” to save a child who was in a dangerous and urgent situation. Mast’s Afghan family fought against her adoption and haven’t seen her in almost three years.
What will happen to the child is still unknown: The appellate court’s ruling on Tuesday doesn’t say who should raise the girl in the end, so she is still with the Mast family for now. On Tuesday, none of the government departments involved would say what the next steps might be or what their part might be in deciding where the child should live while the court case continues.
The Masts could go to the Virginia Supreme Court and ask that the ruling from Tuesday not be carried out.
The court has told everyone interested in this case they can’t talk to the press about it. The Masts’ and the Afghan couple’s lawyers did not answer the phone when called. The child’s lawyer, who was hired by the court to look out for her best interests and is only known as “Baby Doe” in court records to protect her privacy, also did not reply.
Several legal groups that helped the Afghan couple said they were heartened.
Becky Wolozin, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said that the Court refused to legitimize the Masts’ illegal actions, which have caused Baby Doe a lot of needless pain, by making it clear that they have no legal rights over her.
In May of last year, Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell overturned Mast’s adoption order, which had been made by a different judge in 2020. However, the child could still stay with the Masts because of a custody order that was still in place. In the fall, an appellate panel of three judges heard the case. On Tuesday, they issued a 23-page order removing Mast as the girl’s formal guardian.
In his order on Tuesday, Appellate Judge Daniel E. Ortiz said that Mast’s adoption “did not fit into any” of the state law’s requirements. It was “so outside the scope of the adoption code that the circuit court lacked the power” to sign the adoption, he said. But the adoption was still signed. He also admitted that Mast didn’t tell the court about important events, such as the fact that the Afghan government never gave up its claim to the girl, that she had been given to family in Afghanistan, and that a federal court had already turned down Mast’s attempts to stop the reunion.
There is still a lot of mystery surrounding why the court allowed the Marine to adopt in the first place. The Associated Press asked the court to open the case up. That request was given by Worrell in January 2023, who made the case public. But more than 18 months later, the court still won’t show the whole file, even though lawyers for The Associated Press have sent many letters asking them to.
The appellate panel told the circuit court to stop all adoption processes and hold a hearing on the Afghan couple’s adoption petition, which is still being looked at by the court. Oriz wrote that the Masts could also send their own letter.
The original adoption order was made by retired Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore, who refused to say anything about the case.
In court, the U.S. government said Mast had no right to this child and that she should be sent back to her Afghan family right away. Lawyers for the Justice Department have written that letting the child stay with the Marine could have big effects on U.S. foreign policy, such as undermining international security agreements and putting troops stationed abroad in danger by spreading propaganda for Islamic extremism.
But the federal government hasn’t done anything other than file papers with the court to help get the girl back to her family in Afghanistan.
The State and Defense departments told AP to talk to the Justice Department, but the Justice Department wouldn’t say anything. On Tuesday, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia, and the Virginia Attorney General all refused to say anything. Citizen and Immigration Services in the US said they couldn’t do anything about it.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is in charge of major criminal investigations for the Marines and the Navy. A spokesperson for the service stated that the agency is “thoroughly investigating this situation.”
Maj. Johnny Henderson of the Marine Forces Special Operations Command said that Major Joshua Mast will stay on duty while the probe is going on. “At this time, there is no other information available to protect the ethics of the investigation.”
