Stand with Michael, Jason, and Their Foster Son

Hi, our names are Michael Sitiriche and Jason Diaz. We are a married couple who have been adoptive foster parents for 4 years. We have had countless children in our care over the last 4 years through a foster care agency in Brooklyn NY. We have our current placement since he was 6 months old, he is now 2 and a half years old. We have cared for this child as he is our own blood. We made sure he received all his vaccination as he did not have any vaccine or an official medical evaluation when we first received him. We gave him love, watched him grow and nurture him. We stayed up all night long to care of him when was sick. We have integrated him into our lives. Everyone in our family, friends and coworkers know who he is. He is extremely happy with us. He learned to called us dada. We have developed a true connection with him, a deep bond.

During the last 2 years we have been the primary care takers raising this child. When he was placed in our home we noticed immediately he had delays, he was not hitting milestones for a child his age and he had stiffness and weakness in his legs and one of his hands. We brought to the agency’s attention the major delays we noticed with this child, and we needed to look into services information. However, we hit some roadblocks as the agency ignored all our concerns for approximately 6 months. Thankfully, we found support from the daycare where we placed him. The daycare reached to the agency themselves with emails and calls and teamed with us, finally being able to explore what we could do to correct these delays.

My husband and I dedicated all our effort and determination to ensure our son was up to speed. We were able obtain early intervention for him, starting with occupational therapy and physical therapy. Both starting when he was a little over 1 yr old, we should have been getting these services a lot sooner as mentioned before. Working with the therapists they also noticed his stiffness and recommended to find out more since there was little to no information we had for what was causing these abnormalities for our kid. We decided to seek for more adequate medical care outside the agency, as we were not equipped with the proper medical services for our child. We first made an appointment with a pediatrician, who them referred us with a specialist, getting MRI’s done and following up with testing.

We were eventually referred to make an appointment with a Pediatric Physiatrist. This is when we received his true diagnosis. The baby has Cerebral Palsy due to his birth history. While we were devastated with the diagnosis, we were more determined to fight for this child even harder. We are committed to provide him with all the love and support he will need, work on building his medical team and give him the best possible life, my husband and I can provide for him.

Besides processing this diagnosis, my husband and I have been on a side battle with the foster care agency as we have been dealing with discrimination, bullying and retaliations from the administrators who have been obviously against us having the child in our care due to being a same-sex couple. Especially because we have been told since the child placement in our home, that there was a high possibility that he would not be returned to his mother. Even the mother herself has asked the agency if we were willing to adopt him. But the agency is not agreeing with the mother and now is trying to remove the child from his stability to placing in a home of a blood family who have turned down the opportunity of having the child in multiple occasions. Not to mention the birth mother fears this person will not allow her to continue a relationship with her own son since this family member is withholding her 4-year-old from her. The agency has chosen a person who has already caused the mother emotional and psychological pain. For the first 9 month the child was in our care, the family member did not inquire about the child or the wellbeing of this child. The real reason behind the efforts of the family to have him removed from our home is that the grandparents as well as the maternal aunt, who is now interested in the child, are homophobic. They have verbally expressed that to us, in occasions using the F words and referring to us as “those type of people”.

This agency in Brooklyn has also shown their own bias and have been discriminating against us since we started being foster parent for this agency. Starting with the Director who has stated on several occasions that as long as she is the Director of the agency Michael and Jason will never be allowed to adopt from us (referring to the agency). We have been fighting this agency for years, finally realizing who was the real problem. The agency is continuing to fight us with removing our current placement, ignoring the child’s biological mother’s wishes. His mother has said on countless occasions that she wants her son to be adopted by us. She has given notarized letters to the agency. She has been very verbal on mentioning in court to the Judge. However, the agency continues to block us in any possible way going from abusing their power and twisting the law to retaliate and making every effort to force us to give up on this child. They have gone as far as making false accusations to attempt to have this child remove. The have removed all the support to us, disregarding the child’s diagnosis and compromising his wellbeing. The discrimination and homophobic actions continue to escalate as we get further along in court.

Over the last year we have spent all of our savings on legal fees and the court fees continue to pile up as the agency is trying to draw this out as long as possible for us to give up. We can't give up on our son, so we are hoping there are people out there who will be willing to help us reach our dream of starting our family.