Single Man Adopted A 13-Year-Old Boy Since His Adoptive Parents Abandoned Their Guardian Rights To Him

Peter realized he had to take Anthony in because the child had nowhere to go.. and no one deserves that

Damjan

• Published in Interesting
• March 6, 2020

Life hasn’t been kind to Peter Mutabazi. He was born and raised in a small village near the Uganda and Rwanda border. His family didn’t have enough money to buy food, so they grew their own peas, beans, and sweet potato. He was helping in the garden since he was four years old. Clean water was also an issue. Since they didn’t have any, the kids had to walk 2 or 3 hours to get it. Poverty was all they knew.

As that wasn’t enough, Peter’s dad was an abusive man, and the whole family suffered. He would beat his wife, deny them food, and things only got worse as the time passed by.

When Peter was 10, he went out to get cigarettes for his father. It was pouring rain, so the cigarettes were destroyed. He knew, if he had gone back home, he would suffer a severe beating. He decided to run away instead of going back home.

Peter had to overcome a lot of obstacles to create a better future for himself. Still, he was persistent, being accustomed to hard work from an early age. Finally, he settled in Oklahoma and started a real estate business.

His house had two empty bedrooms, and he found the best way to use them. He wanted to help children that needed a place to stay, so he went to a foster agency…..

“In the USA, you have to take parenting classes and be licensed by the state you live in if you want to be a foster parent,” Peter explained the process. “All foster children belong to the state. Since I was licensed under a private agency, they would approach when they needed a home for kids. I have had 12 kids in the last 3 years, ranging from 2-11 yrs. Since I’m single, I could only handle 2 at a time.”

But Peter met a boy whose tale was too painful even for the man who went through so much ordeal.

One day Peter got a call from his social worker inquiring, “Can you take in an 11-year-old boy just for the weekend?” He said goodbye to two brothers he was fostering, and he was sad to see them go, even though they were reunited with their birth parents. He was drained emotionally and couldn’t take care of another child right now. The social worker was persistent and convinced him to take the child into his care.

At first, Peter didn’t ask why Anthony was in foster care. He couldn’t cope with any more heartbreaking stories. He promised himself he wouldn’t get attached again, only to lose the kids and got through the grief again. All he was going to do is provide shelter to the kid just for the weekend, nothing more.

It was almost 3:00 a.m. when the social worker arrived with the boy, because they had to drive two hours from another county. The foster system is facing many difficulties – In Oklahoma there is a shortage of foster families, and they must send kids to different counties, so the kids not only lose their homes, but their familiar surroundings too. Also, the fact that foster parents often avoid taking in older children made the social worker without any good solutions nearby.

Peter said to Anthony he could call him ‘Mr. Peter’ but just 20 minutes into his stay, he asked if he could call him ‘Dad.’

When the social worker arrived on Monday morning, Peter decided to ask about Anthony’s story. It turns out that the boy was abandoned by his birth mother when he was two. He was placed afterward in a family that served as elders in their church. They’ve adopted him, and after ten years of raising him, left him in a hospital and never looked back. Peter couldn’t believe it, “Who would do that?”

They also disavowed their parental rights, and that meant Anthony had no place to go.

The two are now inseparable, and on the 12th of November, Anthony’s adoption was made official in a Charlotte courthouse and photojournalist Cole Trotter captured the priceless moment.

“I have not had any difficulty with the adoption,” Peter said. “It took longer but I knew he would be my son … Nobody wanted him and it’s really hard to find homes or families that would take an 11-year-old boy.”

“I am truly blessed to have him; I feel like I have needed him or that he changed my life more than I have changed his,” Peter says.

And the best thing is - he didn’t give up on fostering kids. ”It’s hard to be a single foster dad, but it’s worth every minute of it. We are about to have another child, and we are thrilled.”

And how did people react to this story?

Damjan