Baby Doe: An Afghan Abduction

23:45And John and Jane Doe were wary of going to America. For one thing, they didn't have the money. So the masks wired them $1 ,000. The most generous explanation is that it was a no-strings-attached loan. But in another light, could it have been an attempt to win the Doe's trust? Or even to buy baby Doe outright? Still, John and Jane were hesitant. They wanted to go somewhere closer for medical care, like India or Pakistan. At this point, Jane was eight months pregnant, and they wanted to be able to get back home quickly. But the mass insisted that the baby needed to come to the United States, specifically, where they just happened to have a legal adoption order for baby Doe.

24:37We have every reason to believe it was always their plan since the first days when Joshua Maas learned about how Baby Doe had been orphaned after U.S. military strike to bring this child into their family. And they had been working towards that over the course of many months and against the actions of the U.S. government who had reunified her with her Afghan family. So the Maas were still dead set on adopting Baby Doe, going so far as to pay the family family's way to the States so they could get their hands on her. And notably, they didn't tell the Dills they were trying to adopt their baby out from under them.

25:15Mast admitted to sitting on this very important information in an interview with CBS News. But on the word adoption, did you use the word adoption? I don't think I used the word adoption. We were trying to explain again in a way that they would understand because they don't have a concept of adoption in Afghanistan. That seems pretty sneaky. Especially since the masks already initiated adoption efforts in the U.S. Even if Afghans have a different understanding of adoption, it seems like the masks could have tried to help them understand that they wanted to take care of the baby instead of the does.

25:56But they never did. And to the contrary, there appears to be evidence that Joshua and Stephanie Mass intentionally withheld that. fact. There were countless opportunities for them to have frank conversations with the Afghan family about their desire to adopt her, and that information was not shared with them, which seems like an intentional omission of a very important piece of information. So at this point, the stage was set for a showdown between the masks and the does, and then a huge twist totally raised the stakes.

26:38Afghanistan's government has fallen to Islamist militants who make up the Taliban. The fall of the Afghan army, the fall of Afghanistan, the fall of Kabul, has happened at a speed that is really stunning. On August 15, 2021, the capital of Afghanistan, and by extension, the entire country, fell under Taliban control. In addition to the massive geopolitical implications, this event also starkly changed the dynamic between the Mast and the Doe's. Through an interpreter, Mast began calling and texting the Doe's incessantly, telling them that this was their last chance to get on a plane to America and get medical care for baby Doe.

27:24Suddenly, there was a very valid, high-pressure reason for the Doe's to leave Afghanistan right away, which was very convenient for Mast, who had been trying for months to lure them to the states. The fall of Afghanistan to terrorist rule gave him the opportunity he needed. It certainly seems that way, right? They had been trying for months to persuade the Afghan family to send Baby Doe to them in the United States to no avail. But then when the fall of Kabul took place, there was an opportunity to evacuate Baby Doe initially with her Afghan family and bring them to the United States where then the mass surely knew that they would have at the time more legal authority with the adoption order.

28:10This story might have turned out differently if Afghanistan hadn't fallen when it did, creating a wave of chaos for the mass to take advantage of. The normal processes, international processes for identifying the family of children who who are orphaned in war did take place and did designate the child's family to care for her. And so in that way, I don't know if it was specific to the fall of Afghanistan or if it was just that this was a very determined person who wanted to proceed no matter what the international legal rules were and no matter what various sovereign countries had determined about this child.

28:57In the chaos of the Taliban takeover, the masks finally convinced the Dohs to bring their baby to the States. Just a week after Kabul was taken, the Dohs got in a taxi and rode for eight hours to Afghanistan's fallen capital, passing Taliban checkpoints along the way. The Dohs arrived to pandemonium at Kabul airport. People were being shot at. Kids were fainting from dehydration. but the Masks had used their military and political connections to smooth things out for them. The Does were recognized, picked up in a car, and taken into the airport.

29:39From Kabul, the Does were flown to a base in Germany, where they met Major Masks and his wife Stephanie for the first time on a U.S. military base. The masks kept up their pressure campaign, trying to convince the does to continue on to the states by saying they would pay for baby does medical treatment and school fees. The does became agitated by this. They insisted that they didn't need the mask money, and they didn't want to go to the U.S. Masks swore on Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph that he meant them no harm. And if religious appeals weren't enough, there was also the implied authority of the military uniform he wore.

30:21Here again is Kelly Albinac Cribs, an attorney at the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.

30:31It certainly seems like he took advantage of his position of authority, not only in his interactions with the Afghan couple as he tried to pressure them to relinquish custody of Baby Doe, But in his interactions with other government officials as he facilitated Baby Doe's evacuation from Afghanistan, he used his uniform to his advantage in his effort to take this child from her rightful family.

31:02Stuck in limbo after just fleeing their home country, the Doe's finally caved to the pressure and agreed to go to America. Major Mass was there to meet them when they arrived at the airport in Washington, D.C. He helped the family get through passport control. But the Does were surprised when he presented a passport, a U.S. passport, for baby Doe. Even more surprising, her last name on the document was listed as Mast.

31:38On the other side of the checkpoint, Mast handed a black bag to John. He then went into a room to meet with some officials. He came out looking angry and left the bag with John. More on that later. Unable to immediately take custody of Baby Doe, Mast instead made arrangements for John, Jane, and Baby Doe to be sent to a military base in Virginia. not far from where he lived. Now they were finally on his home turf, where he'd been laying the groundwork for two years to adopt Baby Doe. Mast had the opportunity he'd been waiting for, and he wasted no time capitalizing on it. Under the pretense of being moved to an apartment, John, Jane, and Baby Doe got into a black van.

32:23Inside was an official from the State Department. She offered to hold the baby, since at that point, Jane Doe was very heavily pregnant. But the van didn't pull up to an apartment. It was a government building where another official was waiting, along with an interpreter. The official told the Doe's, this isn't your child. They explained that because she wasn't their kid biologically, they wouldn't be able to keep her. At this point, the Doe started to panic.

33:00Just then, Mast walked into the room, still pretending to be there to help. Mast assured the Doe's that he was there because he'd gotten an email that said he had to claim the baby or she'd be taken to an orphanage. He said they were all family and that they'd sort everything out. Of course, that wasn't the case. At this point, Jane went to the State Department official who was still holding baby Doe. Jane pleaded with her, please give me my daughter. but the official said no and took the crying baby out of the room. Jane screamed and fell to the ground. John confronted Mass asking, Why are you doing this?

33:38But Mass didn't answer. Instead, he just pushed him away and left the room. He had finally gotten what he wanted, so there was no need to pretend to be warm and supportive anymore. Stephanie Mass was outside waiting to receive baby Doe. Here she is in an interview with CBS News. I was in the car, and so the statement department representative brought her out to me, and I could hear an urgency in her voice. She said, is everything okay? And she's like, no, they're getting a little emotional. And then Joshua came out about five minutes later and upset, just visibly, just bothered. And he said, that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

34:25But here's the thing. He didn't have to rip the baby away from her family and caregivers. He decided to. And making that decision went against well-established processes for how immigrant children are meant to be treated. If a kid is arriving with a family member, even if it's not a parent, but if it's a family member they know and trust and that is a fit caregiver with the intention to continue to care for them, we want that child to remain with that family member. So in this instance, though, Baby Doe arrived with those trusted caregivers, right, who had been her de facto parents for 18 months, but was very quickly turned over to Joshua Mast.

35:08And that is something that perhaps could have benefited from additional investigation before there was any transfer of physical custody. It also would have been beneficial if the mass had taken into account what was best for baby Doe, but they didn't. This was a process in which it doesn't seem like the child was considered at all. The child was unaware it was happening. The child's parents were unaware that it was happening. There's no way to prepare her for a separation that you don't know is coming. There's nothing in place, presumably, to help her process that separation or understand why.

35:51There was nothing considered ahead of time, as far as I can tell, to ensure that she continued to have access to her culture, her religion, her language, or anything that was familiar to her, even the food she was used to eating. And typically when we see children that have been separated either from family or from their culture because they've just arrived in the United States, for example, that's an incredibly difficult experience. It was also an incredibly difficult experience for John and Jane. The masks strung them along for days, promising them that they would get to see baby doe soon. Meanwhile, they threw a welcome home party for the little girl.

36:39In late September 2021, Jane gave birth to a baby girl. She begged the mass to bring baby doe by the base even if just for a visit, but they didn't even acknowledge the request. The does were distraught. Jane particularly missed the baby girl so much that being separated from her caused Jane to consider harming herself. Then, one day, Jane found the black bag that the mast had left with John back in Washington. Inside was the paperwork for the Mast Virginia Adoption Order. Almost two years after the fact, this was the first time the does realized the couple they thought had been helping them had actually adopted their baby from under them.

37:26In October, the woman told the Associated Press, Our hearts are broken. We have no plans for a future without her. In messages reviewed by CBS News, the Afghan man told an interpreter that he felt, quote, Over the next few months, Jane's mental health declined sharply. Still living on the military base in Virginia, they reached out to as many government departments as they could. Finally, in November, a group of officials got together to meet about the Doe's case. When they looked into the underhanded way the mass had taken custody of baby Doe, they realized something was very off, and they contacted the FBI.

38:12While this was happening, John and Jane Doe settled in Texas, where they had a family friend. but they stayed in touch with the FBI as well, hiring attorneys who specialize in immigration and adoption. With their legal team, the Do's filed a petition to vacate the Mass 2019 adoption order. They also filed a lawsuit in federal court against Joshua, Stephanie, and Richard Mast, as well as the attorney who put the two families in touch and the interpreter who helped translate. the lawsuit accused all parties of fraud, conspiracy, and false imprisonment of a child.

38:56Up next, a high-stakes legal battle to reunite Baby Doe with her rightful family before it's too late. Now, back to the story.

39:12Two families say that they want to care for this little girl, this child known as Baby Elle. There's an Afghan couple now in the U.S. who say that they are the child's rightful family. And they accuse an American Marine and his wife who have adopted the girl of unlawfully taking custody of her. For this section, we're going to lean heavily on the expertise of two attorneys who filed briefs in this case on behalf of John and Jane Doe. My name is Becky Wallison, she, her, and I'm a senior attorney with National Center for Youth Law. Kelly Albanek-Cribs. I'm an attorney at the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.

39:55So in this case, we submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the Afghan family, the A's, who are trying to get their child back. The attorneys advocating for John and Jane Doe argued that placing baby Doe with them would be in her best interest. That is the goal of family courts domestically and abroad. In Virginia, the state uses the best interest of the child to make determinations about where to place children and really centrally in the factors that it lists are placement with family, relatives, and existing environments that the child is familiar with. So sort of at baseline, I think what complicates this case is that my understanding is that this child was happily living with her family and was removed without any reason of suspected neglect, abuse, abandonment, or anything else.

41:00And so already you have a fundamental issue of was it in her best interest to remove her from her loving family? I think under no law would there be any evidence that it was in her best interest to remove her from a family that was taking very good care of her. As a separate matter, if we assume she's in a system that has to determine her best interests, then connection to family, culture, and language are integral. They're so important for kids to be able to heal from traumas, for kids to be able to grow up with a sense of identity and belonging, and to be able to develop into the kids that they are growing into and the people they're going to be.

41:47Our interest in this case is to ensure that baby Doe is connected to a family of origin and grows up immersed in her culture, heritage, and language. Indeed, the well-established principles of child psychology tell us that children thrive in that environment. And right now she's being denied that environment. Since September 2021, when the mass took baby Doe from John and Jane, there has been no one around her to speak to her in her native language or to teach her about her Afghan heritage. John and Jane Doe would be perfectly positioned to do this and to help ease her transition to life in a whole new country.

42:32This is a young couple that was at the early stages of starting their own family. They were educated. They came to the United States and planned to remain here and raise their family in a loving home. There's no reason to believe that baby Doe would not have a healthy, happy environment to grow up in if she were reunited with them. From their statements and actions, it seems clear that the Doe's care deeply about the baby girl who was taken from them. They have said that every time they buy an outfit or a toy for their daughter, they buy a second, matching item for the child they hope will be returned to them soon.

43:19As sad as it is that the family has been separated for several years, there is still hope that the damage can be mitigated and repaired. Although there had been a rupture, social science suggests that it's possible to repair that rupture and return a child to their family after there's been a separation. Has it erased that possibility? Absolutely not. Has it done harm to this child that is likely to follow her for years? Absolutely. Not only the immediate trauma of being torn from the arms of your caregivers is something that's going to impact her developmentally. It surely has already impacted her developmentally.

44:02But also growing up estranged from your family of origin and disconnected from your culture, your heritage, your language, that is going to have long-term impact on mental health and development. Aside from the fact that, yes, she has been through extraordinary trauma already. But that is, and she's going to have to cope with that for years to come, regardless of where she's placed. It's not the case that simply because she's with a white Christian family with significant financial resources that she doesn't face challenges. But it's not too late to do something about it, right? Children can overcome it and are often incredibly resilient.

44:47But the things that really support them in being resilient are having trusted adults that they know and that love them and having access to things that are familiar, even if it means a phone call with people who speak your language, even if it means food that you are familiar with. And then also having mental health supports to essentially be able to grow into whatever your new experience is. And I didn't see any evidence that any of those things were in place for baby Doe. If she were able to reunify with her Afghan family, there's work that can be done to repair those bonds. Those bonds were once there.

45:30She was raised by her cousins for 18 months, deeply and intimately connected to them and their culture. Those bonds can be reestablished and she can be reconnected to her family and to her culture in a way that can help mitigate the long-term consequences of the harm she's already suffered. Progress has been made towards this effect. In May 2023, a Virginia appeals judge threw out the mass adoption order. He found that it did not fit into any of the criteria required by state law. He also said that the procedural errors that led to it were so outside the scope of the adoption code that the circuit court lacked the power to sign the adoption.

46:18Which means that this is so outside of the realm of what the legislature considered happening in an adoption procedure that these adoptions are void. They are as if they never happened because they were so flawed from the beginning. Throwing out the adoption order in such spectacular fashion could even have criminal implications for the masks. Under Virginia law, knowingly and intentionally providing false information to a court, essentially, that is material or relevant to an adoptive placement is a felony. And what that means for this case is that I, it seems like based on what the Court of Appeals said, that the masks knowingly and intentionally provided false information in writing and presumably under oath about baby doe being available for adoption.

47:21And Virginia says that's a felony. And I think that's very telling.

47:29Meanwhile, the family court proceedings have continued. In July of 2024, a Virginia appeals court dealt another blow to the mask case by voiding their custody order.

47:44So the masks lost at the family court because the adoption was vacated because it was fraudulent. And they appealed that to the court of appeals. So essentially, the court of appeals said that the masks have no legal authority to physically or legally care for or hold baby Doe. That might seem like a promising development, one step closer to reuniting Baby Doe with her family, but the decision doesn't actually say who should raise her. What it didn't decide is where Baby Doe should live for the rest of her childhood. It said that matter had to go back to the trial court for future proceedings to determine whether Baby Doe should be reunified with her Afghan family.

48:42This kind of limbo is as distressing as it is unprecedented. I will say that there are stateless children, but this child is a child where it is unclear who is the person or entity responsible for taking care of her under the law, and that this is a first for me. I've never seen that before. There were failures at every level of this process, that led us to where we are today, which as I understand it, is that this child is now living with a family that took her and has absolutely no legal authority to hold her or care for her.

49:27For the time being, she remains in the custody of the masks. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and the stakes are high. Beyond the personal stakes for the families involved, there is also global ramifications. The federal government warned the Virginia judge that the masks' actions could be seen as endorsing an act of international child abduction. Lawyers from the Department of Justice have written that allowing Baby Doe to stay with the masks could impact American foreign policy from threatening international security pacts to endangering troops stationed abroad by feeding Islamic extremist propaganda.

50:07Even the Taliban weighed in on the issue. The terrorist group put out a statement saying it will, quote, seriously pursue this issue with American authorities so that the said child is returned to her relatives, unquote.

50:30Meanwhile, time has passed and Baby Doe is now five years old, entering critical years of development. I think one thing that I want to emphasize and that we reflect on here at the Young Center is the harm that comes from the passage of time in this case, right? It is a travesty that this child has been with the mass for three years now, as the courts have slowly examined issues of jurisdiction and the legal authority to issue the adoption. This every day that passes is a day that makes it harder on this child for when she is reunified with her rightful family and does further harm to her long term development and mental health as she continues to be kept from her rightful family.

51:23So the passage of time is something that is deeply concerning here, right? She will grow up knowing her story, knowing at some point there's significant news coverage of it. All she has to do is Google her name or her parents name at some point. She will know that she was taken from her family of origin that loved her and was caring for her. And that is going to cause profound trauma. trauma. This court opinion that was issued in July doesn't require the mask to turn over baby doe to her rightful Afghan family. It requires more court proceedings. And of course, we value and respect the rule of law in this country.

52:05I want to say it was a fundamental breakdown in the rule of law that led to a trial court issuing this adoption order in the first place. So we want to see this court process play out, but it needs to play out with all due haste so that this child can be returned to her rightful family and begin to heal, begin to repair the bonds that have been harmed and begin to reacquaint herself with her rightful family and culture sooner rather than later. The real tragedy here is that Major Mast and his family were so blinded by trying to do what they thought was best for baby Doe, that they failed to consider what would actually be best for her.

52:47Then the Taliban takeover gave them the chance to act, which led to the current mess of a situation. Now, it remains to be seen if and when there will be an opportunity to heal.

53:06thank you for tuning in to The Opportunist this episode was written by Nani Okwilogu and executive produced by Connor Powell we'll be back next week with new stories about people seeing an opportunity to get ahead and taking it until next time

53:54We'll be right back.

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