A black couple from Pennsylvania who adopted twin boys who are white have been accused of kidnapping their own kids – including by a woman who threatened to call the cops when their sons had a tantrum at a playground, according to a report.
Jennifer McDuffie-Moore, 43, and her husband, Harry Moore, 37, took in 3-year-olds Brayden and Trevor as foster children after they were separated at birth from their biological mother, who suffered from drug addiction, South West News Service reported.
Two years later, the Collingdale couple officially adopted the twins, who joined the couple’s biological children, Joy, 21, and Kourtney, 11, and their adoptive kids, Keenan, 10, and Sanchez, 8, according to the news outlet.
Jennifer, 43, who co-owns a child care program, and Harry, a mechanic, described racist episodes they have experienced as the black parents of white children.
“A month ago, we were playing at the playground and the twins didn’t want to go home. A lady had been watching us playing and when one of the twins had a tantrum she told me she was going to call the police,” Jennifer told SWNS.
“I scooped the kids up and she thought I was stealing them. One of the twins said, ‘No, that’s my mom!’ I don’t want to justify it because people should mind their own business,” she said.
The couple also said they’ve been pulled over by police while driving in their minivan. In one episode, a cop interrogated them about two white foster girls in the vehicle.
“We were coming back from a family outing from Delaware and we got pulled over,” Jennifer told SWNS.
“We had our children and two little strawberry blond girls who we were fostering with us and the first thing the cops asked my husband was, ‘Whose kids are those?’ And he wasn’t kind about it,” she said.
Harry said the officer claimed she had pulled them over because the minivan’s windows were too dark.
“But we knew why he pulled us over,” he said.
The parents said they first experienced the racial challenges when they adopted Keenan, who also is white, in 2016 – but the episodes grew more intense after George Floyd’s murder and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We often see transracial adoption done the other way — a white family adopting a black child,” Jennifer told SWNS.
“Even doing the paperwork there are a lot of questions about our ability to foster children who are white. It took us 2,695 days to adopt Keenan because we are black,” she said.
“We have conversations about race all the time. In our home we talk about it, we know that everyone is different, you have to acknowledge it and not pretend to be color blind,” Jennifer continued.
“Last year was crazy. We saw all these racially charged incidents happen and we had to have conversations with our children,” she added.
The mom said that Brayden and Trevor “were supposed to stay for a weekend and now they are here forever.”
“They were born with a drug in their systems and so they are medically needy with developmental delays and speech and language issues,” she said.
“Two days after we took them in for a weekend to give their foster carer a break, the agency asked if they could stay for good,” Jennifer continued.
“We said they could stay with us until they had found a home but then time passed and they were nearly a year old and our whole family, my nieces and our church, pitched in and we eventually started the adoption process,” she said.
The couple said they can’t imagine their family without the twins.
“They are definitely are our sons,” Jennifer told SWNS. “Instead of scrutinizing what color people are or their gender or their preferences, people should understand that love really does support a family. There are so many kids out there without homes.”
The post Black Pennsylvania couple accused of kidnapping their adopted white kids appeared first on The News Amed.