Road to Guatemala adoption hits bumps

Instead of celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday in their Minneapolis home this week, Shaun Nugent and Chris Denton are marking their eighth month in Guatemala on what has become an unexpectedly difficult quest to adopt the 4-year-old orphan who has become the center of their lives.

Nugent and Denton, who married in August 2005, first traveled to Guatemala this spring with Nugent's two sons, Bryan and Colin, to meet the little girl they want to adopt.

"We were dreadfully nervous," Denton said, remembering the first time they saw the girl with her foster family in the lobby of the Westin Hotel in Guatemala City. But Denton's fears that the child would be frightened were unfounded.

"I don't know why, but she was very comfortable with us immediately. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Denton said.

Nothing else about their adoption process has been easy.

Denton said she feels that she is "in limbo" along with more than 3,000 other U.S. families trying to adopt Guatemalan children.

The families don't know what will happen with their cases because Guatemalan rules regarding adoption are set to change Jan. 1. Guatemala intends to stop processing adoptions to the United States and other countries where an international treaty dealing with adoptions is not in force.

The Minneapolis couple expect to meet with Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., on Saturday, when he will be in Guatemala to urge the country's Congress to allow U.S. adoptions already underway to be completed under existing law.

"It would be unconscionable to pull the rug out from under the families that already have the emotional attachments to their kids," said Coleman, co-chairman of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.

The problems that Nugent and Denton have encountered forced them to put their lives on hold and move to Guatemala. In April, Nugent resigned as CEO of Sun Country Airlines. After initially taking a leave of absence, Denton also resigned from her job as a business process consultant at Target.

They have barely lived in their new home in the Linden Hills neighborhood in Minneapolis over the past eight months. Since April 1, the first day they laid eyes on the little girl, Nugent, Denton or both of them have spent part of every day with her. At the outset, they served as her foster parents. In recent months, they've visited her in an orphanage.

Thousands of homeless kids

"There are thousands and thousands of kids that don't have homes," Denton said, adding that the needs of those children should take precedence over politics.

Kjersti Olson, Latin America program manager for the Children's Home Society and Family Services in St. Paul, said her agency helped 65 families adopt children from Guatemala in 2006. Now, she said, "We are not actively taking any new applicants."

Guatemala is preparing to overhaul its adoption system to meet child-protection standards defined in the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The U.S. State Department advised Americans in September to avoid beginning adoptions until there is clarity about Guatemala's new system.

"The reason you have a Hague treaty is because there are countries that do have concerns about child trafficking," Coleman said. But he argues that the procedures that Guatemala will create to meet the Hague criteria should not be used as a reason to greatly delay adoptions that have been in the works for months. The United States intends to comply with Hague standards in 2008.

Coleman said the issue is clear: "You give a child who needs love to a family that wants to give them love and the opportunity to bring them up in the state of Minnesota."

Dad is familiar with adoption

Nugent, 44, is the father of two teenage boys from his first marriage. He relished the thought of expanding his family by adopting a little girl because his parents had adopted a little girl from South Korea. His sister, Kelly, now 39, introduced him to Denton.

Denton, 35, said she long wanted to pursue an adoption. "I traveled a lot as a kid through other countries," she said. "I've always envisioned myself building a family through adoption."

The couple contacted the Children's Home Society and Family Services to conduct the home study that is required of adoptive families, and then they thought they'd adopt a Colombian child.

While waiting, they got impatient, Nugent said. Denton found an out-of-state adoption agency on the Internet and checked it out through the Better Business Bureau and five references. They decided to seek adoption of the Guatemalan child.

Working with the smaller agency "was our first and biggest mistake," Nugent said. He and his wife both have high praise for the Children's Home Society and strongly encourage parents to work with long-standing agencies.

Their problems started to surface after they met the child in Guatemala.

"There was a whole story associated with this girl, where she came from, her birth mom, the reasons why her birth mom was putting her up for adoption," Nugent said. "All of it has turned out to be false."

Last April, after spending several days in Guatemala, Nugent returned to Minnesota with his sons and went back to work at Sun Country. Denton intended to remain in Guatemala for a few months and serve as a foster parent while the adoption process moved forward.

But Nugent said that he was immediately torn between his responsibility to address Sun Country's "very significant business challenges" and worries about the safety of his wife and the girl they wanted to adopt because of his lack of "familiarity with the country, the culture and people."

He loved his job, but he knew he had to leave it. "Every day I miss that job," he said this month during a visit to Minneapolis. "I miss the employees. I miss the excitement, I miss the strategic planning side of it."

But, he added, "It is still secondary to this adoption for me."

Nugent flew back to Guatemala, and he and Denton served as foster parents to the girl in Antigua, Guatemala, as they began the process to get her legally declared an orphan.

In August, Nugent recalled, there was a raid by the Guatemalan state police on a large foster home in Antigua, which he interpreted was meant to send a public signal that Guatemala was addressing problems in its adoption system.

The raid created instability in Antigua, so Nugent said the judge handling their case ordered that their foster daughter be placed "into an orphanage to protect her." Nugent and Denton packed up their belongings and moved to a two-bedroom condominium in Guatemala City near the orphanage where their future daughter was sent.

Their lawyer, who lives in Guatemala, is involved in running the orphanage.

Key hearing is Dec. 10

On Dec. 10, Nugent and Denton are scheduled to appear in a Guatemalan family court in which a social worker will weigh in on their adoption case by assessing the background of the Minneapolis couple and other factors.

"Our lawyer doesn't speak any English," Nugent said, but he and Denton are quite fluent in Spanish after living in Guatemala since April. During that time, Denton has returned to Minneapolis only three times for visits. Nugent has spent about a quarter of his time in the Twin Cities so he can visit his sons and tend to other family business.

Despite the arduous adoption process, they said it is worth it.

"I couldn't ask for a cooler child," Denton said, describing the little girl as "trusting, funny, outgoing and intelligent." Denton added, "She is definitely a little actress. You can tell she's been in many situations where she's had to use her sweetness."

Nugent said he and his future daughter have become bilingual together. "She teaches me Spanish and I'm teaching her English and it works pretty well. So now we've got this Spanglish between us."

Liz Fedor • 612-673-7709

Liz Fedor • lfedor@startribune.com