Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's adoption of Vietnamese-born, three-year-old Pax Thien may hit a snag if the biological mother contests the adoption papers signed by his grandparents.
LOS ANGELES: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's adoption of Vietnamese-born, three-year-old Pax Thien may hit a snag if the biological mother contests the adoption papers signed by his grandparents.
According to 'News of the World', 29-year-old Pham Thu Dung, a heroin addict who gave up Pax when he was only two days old, may hit on the Hollywood celebrity couple for money or could even demand that they return her child.
Speaking from their home in a poor suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, Dung's 55-year-old father Chien said that she became pregnant with Pax following an affair with a married man at a garment factory she worked in, reports www.hollywood.tv.
"Our daughter is a heroin addict and she is a bag of trouble. Since 16, her life has been ruled by drugs. When she finds out that a rich movie star has adopted her baby, she will go after Jolie for money and make trouble for her. She may even try to take the child back," he warned.
The once wealthy family plummeted into a life of abject poverty because of poor investments and Dung's heroin habit.
"We have already lost too much money because of her drug habit. She always wants money," said her father, a former oil tanker skipper. "But it is us who have to pay it back. She doesn't care that we live on a 15-pound monthly pension, can only afford to eat once a day and have five children to support as well as my wife's mother who is 101 years old."
On Nov 29, 2003, Dung gave birth, and the doctors were worried over the underweight child's health. Two days later, as the child, who was named Quang Sang, which means bright light, fought for his life, Dung disappeared.
A month later, penniless and consumed by the shame of their daughter having given birth to a child out of wedlock, her parents gave him to the city's Tam Binh orphanage. Since then, none of the family has contacted Pax until Jolie spotted him three years later on a visit to the orphanage.
"I never visited my grandson," Chien's wife Nhan said. "I was scared I would fall in love with him and want to bring him home. I knew we could not afford it and my daughter could never support him. But we hope he has a very happy life and that one day he'll come to visit us. I just pray my daughter forgets all about him."
Earlier this year, Dung was actually at her parents' home when orphanage officials arrived unexpectedly.
"Although our daughter was in the room, she did not reveal that she was the boy's mother. Nor did we. She just sat in the corner, pretending to knit. She did not say a word and showed absolutely no emotion. She listened hard when the director told us her boy was going to have a good life, and that he was lucky he was going to live with this rich American woman."
"Then she disappeared. We have not seen her since that day. In February, we were asked to sign more papers agreeing to the adoption and stating that we did not know the whereabouts of our daughter, which we did. We did not know then that Angelina Jolie was the rich American who wanted to adopt our grandson," Chien said.
Soon after the deputy director's visit, Dung wanted to go to the orphanage and look for her son, even though she didn't know what he looked like.
"I persuaded her not to go," said Dung's 33-year-old sister Trang. "My sister thinks about her baby a lot. She dotes on my younger daughter and both my girls call her mother. If she could, she would try to get her son back."
Trang insists that Dung was devastated to have given her child up.
"I wanted to take him home with me but my father refused to allow it and told us we had to give the baby up. Dung's drug habit has cost my family a great deal, money we can't afford," she added.
Still, Trang said that both she and Dung feel terrible that they left the child behind.
Jolie and Pitt have a biological child, Shiloh, and two other adopted children, Maddox and Zahara, besides Pax.
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