Adoptive Couple’s Dream Turns Into Nightmare

After years of frustration and heartache trying to adopt a child, Rachel and Orlando Ventura finally had the family they so desperately wanted.

Thanks to foster care, they no longer would have to attend birthday parties as clowns, play Santa Claus at Christmas or lead Girl Scout troops just to have the joy of children in their lives.

Last fall, the state placed in their care two girls--a 4-year-old and an infant--whom the couple hoped to adopt.

“This was our dream for so many years,” says Rachel Ventura. “We finally had it. We were not the outsiders looking in.”

What the Venturas didn’t realize was that the very program that allowed them to have that family would threaten to destroy it.

By becoming foster parents, the couple had entered into a partnership with the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, the agency in charge of the state’s foster care program.

In April, a Dade County judge, without opposition from the agency, ordered the Venturas to turn over the infant originally named Jacke Valdez to her natural grandmother in New York. Less than three weeks later, the baby was killed when she was thrown out of a Bronx apartment window by her mentally disturbed biological mother.

Now, because of an apparent error by the agency, the couple faces losing the 4-year-old they adopted this summer.

The child’s biological father, George Setters, has come forward seeking custody, and a judge has revoked the adoption.

The Venturas say the child, known as Baby K, is legally theirs, that the state agency no longer has jurisdiction in the case. They have filed an appeal, and it could take months before the issue is resolved.

“I can’t believe in less than three months that they are saying they could be taking another child from us,” said Rachel Ventura, who works in the insurance industry. “This is an adoption that has been finalized. I have a birth certificate. She has a new name.”

Setters told the court in September that he had searched three years for his daughter after his ex-wife left with her. He says he feels like the state and the legal system “shafted” him. “It’s like I don’t exist,” he said.

Such cases are hardly rare these days.

In Florida last year, foster mother Kathryn Reiter fled for four weeks with the baby daughter she planned to adopt rather than follow a court order to turn the infant over to her biological family. The case resulted in new legislation strengthening the obligation of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services to locate relatives of adoptable children as soon as possible.

“HRS continues to do what it wants regardless of what the law says,” said child advocate and lawyer Karen Gievers. “In too many cases, they don’t do a thorough, diligent search, and years later, if they find relatives, it becomes a major-league tug of war with the child becoming the rope.”

Anita Bock, the top agency administrator in Dade County, says affidavits seeking to retrace Baby K’s relatives appear not to meet the legal standard requiring caseworkers to check all available records. The two employees who worked on Baby K’s case are no longer with the agency, she said.

“This is just a tragedy for the couple,” Bock said. “When I heard they were the couple involved, it just broke my heart.”

Even before the latest events, the Venturas’ road to parenthood could not have been more torturous.

The couple learned early in their 10-year marriage that they could not have children of their own. Private adoption agencies, where fees can run more than $20,000, were ruled out.

In 1994, the couple met a pregnant woman named Brenda. She said the couple could adopt her baby if they took care of her prenatal costs. She even urged the couple to build a nursery.

The woman disappeared after six months.

“The nursery was drop-dead gorgeous,” Rachel Ventura says. “It was a mother’s dream, because it was.”

Eventually, the Venturas learned about foster care. And after taking hours of classes, they became custodians last fall of the two formerly abused children.

“It was like God sent us a package down,” says Orlando Ventura. “It was so fateful because we had been told it was very hard to get placement with a newborn.”

Before they could begin adoption procedures on the infant, the grandmother of Jacke--pronounced Jack-ie--came forward wanting custody. With the agency supporting the move, the grandmother, from New York, promised a Florida judge she would take care of the child and never leave her alone with the mentally ill mother.

The Venturas turned over Jacke on April 3. Less than three weeks later, the child was dead.

“I’ll never forget when they pulled out her little casket from the hearse. It was made out of Styrofoam,” Rachel Ventura says. “The only thing we have to remember her by is the dirt I took from her grave. . . .

“Nobody paid attention to this child’s life. Everybody was too much in a hurry to get the baby off their hands.”

The Venturas, though, have not been silent. Jacke’s death made headlines nationwide as the couple denounced America’s foster care system as antiquated and in need of an overhaul.

Bock defended the actions of the state agency in Jacke’s case.

“People forget that human beings run all these decisions and judges are human and we are human and a lot of the work we do is based on judgment,” she said.

Inside the Venturas’ master bedroom in their home south of Miami, a bassinet draped with lace sits empty.

“Inside, a part of me died,” Rachel Ventura says. “On the other hand, I came back from New York to my other daughter and somehow she made it better. She gave me love.”

With the state agency saying there were no relatives in sight, the couple on May 1 adopted the little blond girl with hazel eyes.

The Venturas have littered their home with Baby K’s toys--a small tricycle, a toy kitchen, a plethora of Disney characters. During an interview, the 4-year-old comes bounding out of her bedroom to offer some make-believe tea to her parents.

“This is not the child that came to us in October,” says Rachel Ventura. “She was physically and socially abused. She threw frequent tantrums, she was socially withdrawn, she was scared of everybody. She didn’t even drink from a cup. She drank from the bottle. Basically she was a very, very disturbed child of 3 1/2.”

The Venturas learned they could lose Baby K after a trip to Orlando in August to propose a new law that would hold social service workers responsible for their mistakes in child-custody cases.

George Setters, Baby K’s biological father and a painter by trade, lives in a mobile home in Fort Lauderdale with his two grown sons. He stopped talking to reporters after a recent court hearing, saying he didn’t want to try his daughter’s case in the media.

The Venturas have offered a compromise to Setters to allow visitation, but he has refused. “He can be an uncle or daddy No. 2,” Orlando Ventura said.

Baby K comes back out of her playroom, approaches the open front door of her adoptive parents’ five-bedroom house, and peers out into the blazing afternoon.

Whatever is outside the house, Baby K wants no part of it. The little girl turns around abruptly and skips back to her room.

“She has been through hell and now she has bonded with us,” Rachel Ventura says. “Let’s talk about the interest of the child and her family. Hasn’t she been through enough trauma in the first three years of her life?”