Area family caught in international adoption dispute

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In the fall of 2009, Angela Manuszak first met the little boy she hoped to call her own at a prison-turned-orphanage in rural, southern Vietnam. “That’s your mommy,” his caregiver told 2-year-old Thomas, commanding him to sit on Angela’s lap. By the end of the visit, Thomas was ready to go home to his new family in Washington Twp.
He’s still waiting. So is his adoptive family — Angela and her husband, Terry, and the three siblings they adopted from Taiwan in September. And so are 15 other so-called “pipeline families,” all of them caught in what Angela calls a “nightmare of bureaucracy” brought about because of changing regulations designed to prevent human trafficking in international adoptions.
While they wait, the Manuszaks say Thomas’ health has deteriorated. “They’re putting process before the life of a child,” Terry Manuszak said. “It’s unconscionable.”