When someone has a baby, more times than not, they will love and support that baby no matter what medical issues arise over the course of the child’s life.
Most would think that the circumstances surrounding adoption would be the same.
However, YouTube personality Myka Stauffer, known for her video blogs, or “vlogs,” about her kids, decided to seek an adoption dissolution for her 4-year-old son, who has autism, at least in part due to his “medical needs.”
She and her husband, James, came to the decision to find their son, Huxley, a “new forever family” after taking care of him as their own for two-and-a-half years, People reported.
“There’s not an ounce of our body that doesn’t love Huxley with all of our being,” Myka Stauffer said in a YouTube video released May 26. “There wasn’t a minute that I didn’t try our hardest and I think what Jim is trying to say is that after multiple assessments, after multiple evaluations, numerous medical professionals have felt that he needed a different fit and that his medical needs, he needed more.”
According to a June 2012 report from the Child Welfare Information Gateway, an information service run by the federal government, between 1 and 5 percent of all completed adoptions are dissolved, proving how rare an outcome like this is.
“From the updates we’ve gotten from the agency, and through the adoption agency, in what they felt was literally the perfect match,” Myka Stauffer said.
After the couple announced they were placing their son with a new family, several of their former sponsors, including Chili’s, Playtex Baby, Danimals and Fabletics decided to permanently cut ties.
“We have previously worked with Myka Stauffer and are no longer working with her. We are aware of the news she shared about her family, and are very sad to hear about this difficult situation,” Danimals wrote on Instagram.
Some of the other companies that had previously sponsored Myka Stauffer began receiving backlash on their Instagram pages, so they cleared up with their followers that they had also dissolved their partnerships with the couple.
“We can confirm that Fabletics is no longer working with Myka,” Kate Hudson’s athletic brand wrote back to several comments.
Hudson also confirmed the same news in the comments on her own page.
Myka Stauffer would go on to remove all of the photos she had of Huxley from her Instagram page, leaving only the photos of her other four biological children up on her account.
After the Stauffer family spent years caring for this child and putting his face all over YouTube and Instagram, then posted an oddly vague vlog regarding their choice to rehome him, Myka’s subscribers have been left to wonder where Huxley has ended up.
According to Buzzfeed News, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office is conducting an ongoing investigation regarding the family, Huxley’s new adoption and his whereabouts.
The sheriff’s office’s community and media relations manager, Tracy Whited, confirmed to Buzzfeed that Huxley “is not missing.”
“All adoption cases are confidential, and must go through a thorough process, with specific requirements and safeguards,” she said in a statement.
“In private adoptions there are the same legal requirements that must be adhered to. These include home studies as well as background checks on the adopting parent(s).”
Still, she said authorities “are confident that the appropriate process is occurring” in regard to Huxley.
But the Stauffer couple’s explanation wasn’t enough to quell outrage over the situation.
A group called “Cancel The Stauffers” organized a petition, which has already received more than 44,000 signatures, calling for the family to remove all of their monetized content regarding Huxley from their YouTube page.
“The recent re-homing of Huxley Stauffer has been heartbreaking,” the petition reads.
“These people need to stop exploiting and profiting off of Huxley immediately!”
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