A 32-year-old man has been adopted by his former foster mother. The Daily Mail reported that they were separated for a decade and after being reunited she adopted him at the age of 32.
Maurice Griffin was removed from the foster family at 13 but never found the permanent home that he was looking for. Lisa Godbold who took him into her home in the 1980s has now officially adopted him.
Lisa and her husband Charles spotted him as a child at an organage and agreed to foster him, partly because they were an interracial couple of mixed race and so was Griffin.
"Interracial relationships weren't as common or accepted as they are today, and the fact that Maurice was biracial and we were a biracial family made us a great "profile"," Lisa said according to The Daily Mail.
"It was the best day in my life," Griffin said to CNN after the proceeding in San Diego Juvenile Court. "I fought for 10 years and finally the day came."
Lisa added to CNN "I was just overwhelmed with emotion."
When Griffin was taken into foster care by the Goldbond's he quickly bonded with their two sons, Gideon and Spencer.
"We were best friends," Griffin said to CNN. "We'd run around, we did mischievous things and fun things. It was a good time."
He lived with the family for four years until he was 13. They were only two months away from adopting him. Griffin said to CNN affiliate KSWB that he "wanted to be treated like a real son" and their sons got spanked. He innocently told a social worker that they were going to be spankin him and she told her superiors. The superiors took him out of their care because of the incident.
"You can't spank foster children. Maurice very much wanted that," Lisa said. "We wanted him to feel like the rest of our kids. And there was a difference of opinion with some of the (child welfare) supervisors."
Lisa and her husband fought to keep him but she was told she could also lose her biological children. She therefore let it go and as time moved on they lost touch.
"It was just an emptiness," said Griffin to CNN. "I couldn't talk to anybody about it because nobody was there. I couldn't call somebody; there was just a void in me."
He went from foster care to foster care missing the only people he considered his family.
"I didn't let anybody get close to me again," Griffin said, to CNN. "I hurt a lot of people. It was a rough road."
Six years ago Griffin found Lisa on social media and they communicated online and then she called him, they were then reunited.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
