KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
It has been 81 days since 6-year-old Lexi was removed from her Saugus home by county officials.
The fight for custody of the part Native American child who was raised in Santa Clarita continued Friday with arguments made to the California Court of Appeals by Rusty and Summer Page, who were Lexi’s foster parent, and lawyers for the family.
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In a news conference after the court appearance, Rusty Page said the family has not been allowed any contact with Lexi for more than two months.
“It’s not because we haven’t tried,” Rusty Page said. “We have repeatedly asked to speak with Lexi and have been cruelly denied. Why? Because we spoke out. Because we promised Lexi we would fight with everything we could to bring her home.”
However, National Indian Child Welfare Association officials said that the Page family was well aware of Lexi’s heritage and knew what would eventually happen.
“In this contentious custody case, there have never been any surprises as far as what the law required,” officials from the National Indian Child Welfare Association stated.
Rusty Page said that the world has declared love for Lexi over the past few months, since “it became more important to uphold the law than to look out for the interests of an innocent girl.”
Despite protests in front of the house and a petition that had at the time garnered over 30,000 signatures, officials from the National Indian Child Welfare association said the law was very clear in this case.
Get live news updates about Santa Clarita by following KHTS on Facebook and KHTS on Twitter“The foster family was well aware years ago this girl is an Indian child, whose case is subject to the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and who has relatives who were willing to raise her if reunification with her father was unsuccessful,” according to a press release by the organization.
The family will not receive a decision from the court today, Page said, but they remain optimistic.
“We are hopeful that the justices who heard the case today will look at the facts and decide to bring Lexi home, once and for all, to her family,” Page said. “At the end of the day, the law should never trump the rights of our daughter.”
The legal battle began when officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services took Lexi, a child who is 1.5 percent Choctaw and whose father is an enrolled Indian tribe member, from the Page’s home in Saugus on March 21, citing a stipulation in the Indian Child Welfare Law. The law was passed in the 1970s to keep Native American tribes together.
She had lived with the Page family for four years as a foster child prior to her removal.
Lexi was sent to live with a non-Indian couple who are extended family of her father.
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hahaha, What a bunch of horse crap! All these wasichu’s making a stink over a law they made up! Oooh 80 days without seeing your paycheck? LA County DCFS don’t give a shat! They routinely break up american indian families and declare they are not native if they don’t live on a reservation so this story is a bunch of bullshat! The only thing going on here is someone’s payin’ someone to help destroy the FEDERAL indian child welfare act…wonder who that puppet family could be?
This child was a foster child. The foster caregivers were told from the start that this placement was temporary to accommodate a reunification with the father that lived nearby. The fosters were also aware there was a plan B with relatives of the father in Utah. Those realitives visited and skyped on a regular basis. Once reunification actively began the foster filed obstructive actions to prevent this child from returning to her kin as planned. The fosters had neither custodial or parental rights to this child. The fosters forced this child to languish in foster care for over 3 years after the initial move to Utah was ordered by the court. During that time the court ordered the child moved to kin 3-4 more times. The foster caregivers continued to obstruct. The child is with her sisters. Child services from both states report that she is doing well and is loved. This is the goal of foster care- to return children to their families.
I’m not surprised that the Pages haven’t been allowed to contact Lexi. Why prolong the agony? I’m sure Lexi will be just fine if everyone gets out of the way and stops promising things that aren’t going to happen!
Mamabear “Lexie will be just fine”? In her eyes she was kidnapped against her will from mom and dad and sibling…… There are a gazillion Disney Movies about the trauma of losing a parent because it’s truly a kids worst nightmare. Give me a break. I pray this kid is returned.