Adoption Agency Backs Angelina As Zahara's Birth Family Want Her Back

Angelina Jolie's adoption of an Ethiopian baby was legal, the agency involved said on Thursday, rejecting reports that the child's relatives want her back.

Newspapers have reported this week that relatives of two-year-old Zahara, including a woman who says she is her birth mother, want the child returned to Ethiopia. Jolie adopted Zahara in July, 2005.

"The court in Addis Ababa approved the adoption after studying the document her grandmother wrote ... saying her daughter, the mother of Zahara, had died and she was too poor to bring her up," Tsegaye Berhe, the head of Wide Horizons for Children, which conducted the adoption, told Reuters.

Comments

[avicenna]

02:27 AM on 11/18/2007

This is the work of senseless parasites that don't have the grey matter to think about the impact of their actions on everyone involved in this issue. So called spin makers of "news" needed to make trouble for a family for the sake of generating useless buzz over this adoption by going off finding the grandmother who had left the dying child at the orphanage and paying her and this woman claiming to be the no-longer dead mother to go raise a rucus over Angelina and her daughter. Must be the same slime that pulled a similar stunt with Madonna's adopted son - by going out to generate controversy by prodding the poor father to express words of platitude for the ears of the media. Does anyone think that there would be any reporting of the reemergence of a missing dead woman for a malnutrition and abondoned baby if it wasn't known that a wealthy and mind-blowingly famous couple were the adopted parents?

[langstonhughesfan]

07:34 AM on 11/17/2007

What a horrible story. Hard not to feel for a birth mother who must watch her daughter grow up in the media, but will never have a chance to hold her. However...Angelina seems to be a wonderful mother to this girl and it would be criminal to rip her from the only family she has ever known. I agree with the poster that said anyone can give birth--being a parent is a completely different story. Too bad all the way around, though.

[realitytrumpsbull]

12:12 AM on 11/17/2007

Can't resist...."HEY, ANGIE, LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE!"

[SmolderingRuin]

10:27 PM on 11/16/2007

Put her BACK into that poverty-stricken hell hole? Great idea. If I were Zahara, I know which one I'd choose.

[JMcCoy]

11:43 AM on 11/16/2007

Angelina did a noble thing in adopting this child and others. She should be commended. These children will be afforded opportunities that they would never know had they not been adopted by a caring and financially able person. When Madonna adopted the child that she adopted, there was drama from the family after the adoption became public. Reports read that the family of Madonna's adopted child then wanted to come visit the child. It seems that the intentions of both biological families seem questionable at best. I wish both Zahara and David the best and I hope that they will be able to actualize their full potential because of the opportunities that they have been provided.

[kellygrrrl]

07:45 PM on 11/15/2007

something tells me they can reach a mutually-satisfying arrangement, probably in the six-figure range.

[kimbutgar]

01:44 PM on 11/15/2007

What a stress it would be for that child to return to a life of poverty in Ethiopia. After being a loved cherished child living a jet setter life and eating good food this child will be traumatized to return to her Mother who gave her away. Sounds like an extortion thing for money. It it wasn't Brangelina this child would be left to starve and die. Shame on the Grandmother for signing the papers in the first place if the Mother was really alive. This is very fishy

[saludevil]

01:05 PM on 11/15/2007

How much money did that grandmother get for selling her daughter's baby? Something sounds fishy here. We need more of the story. A child belongs with birth parents first and foremost PERIOD!

[hootie1fan]

12:18 PM on 11/15/2007

Zahara has been with Brangelina ll this time. I smell the need for Angelina's $$$$$$$$$$$$

[Lucille]

11:53 AM on 11/15/2007

If the mother is actually alive and not dead as the adotpion document claims, then the adoption is invalid and the natural mother's petition should be heard.

[TheQuestion]

11:48 AM on 11/15/2007

Child's interest first. I believe that once you make a decision to give up a child to adoption - you should keep that promise. This is no good for the kids. They need consitancy. It is also unfair to the adoptive parants who have invested emotionally in this child.