US Marine’s adoption of Afghan war orphan voided
The rare ruling is the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle between Afghan and American couples over a three-year-old girl.
In a highly unusual ruling, a Virginia state court judge has annulled the adoption of an Afghan war orphan by a US Marine more than a year after he took the three-year-old girl away from the Afghan couple who raised her.
But the girl’s future remains uncertain. For now, she will stay with Marine Major Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, under a pre-adoption provisional custody order. The Masts will again have to prove to the court that they should get a permanent adoption.
Despite the uncertainty, Thursday’s ruling was a welcome move for the Afghan couple, who had been identified as the child’s family by the Afghan government in February 2020 and had raised her for 18 months.
The Masts quickly left the court after the hearing, flanked by their lawyers. The parties are prohibited from commenting on the basis of a gag order.
The ongoing dispute sparked alarm at the highest levels of government — from the White House to the Taliban — after an investigation by the Associated Press news agency in October revealed how Mast was determined to save the baby and bring her home as an act of Christian faith.
But so far, the adoption order has remained in effect.
“There’s never been a case like this before,” Judge Claude V Worrell Jr. said. Thursday.
The girl, who will turn four this summer, was a baby when she was found injured in the rubble following a US-Afghan military raid in a rural part of the country in September 2019.
She spent more than five months in a US military hospital before the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross determined that she had living relatives and reunited her with them.
Unbeknownst to them, Mast found out about the baby while she was in the hospital and decided that he and his wife should be her parents.
The Masts previously told Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore that she was the daughter of transient “terrorists” who died in battle and was thus a stateless orphan.
Mast claimed that the Afghan government was willing to relinquish jurisdiction over her, although it never did. Moore granted him the adoption.
The Masts first contacted the couple in Afghanistan and offered to help with the girl’s medical treatment. After the US military withdrew from Afghanistan, which fell to the Taliban in 2021, the Masts helped the couple evacuate to the US.
Once arrived, Mast used the adoption order to take the child and the Afghan couple have not seen her since.
The Masts claim in court that they legally adopted the child and that the Afghan couple’s accusations that they kidnapped her are “outrageous” and “undeserved”. They have repeatedly declined to comment to the AP.
Judge Worrell, who took over the case after Judge Moore retired in November, said the Afghan couple were “actual parents when they arrived in the US” and their due process had been violated.
Worrell also said from the bench that the Masts knew things they never told the court, especially about what was happening in Afghanistan at the time the Virginia judge allowed the adoption.
He said he wasn’t sure if it was intentional, but “the fact is the court didn’t have all the information known to [the Masts] at the time the order was entered”.
The ruling is another twist in what is already a high-profile case.
“Once an adoption is final, it is extremely difficult and rare for it to be reversed,” said Virginia attorney Stanton Phillips.
“This is really very unusual,” said adoption attorney Barbara Jones. “You just don’t hear this happening.”
A spokesman for the US Department of Defense told the AP on Thursday that the department was aware of the ruling and referred the news agency to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
Another hearing is scheduled for June.