“I wanted to help so bad I was willing to bring home any child that needed me,” said Myka Stauffer. “For this I was naive, foolish, and arrogant.”
One month after revealing to her followers that she and husband James had “rehomed” their adopted autistic son Huxley, Myka Stauffer has come out with a lengthy statement about it. She also denied that the family was under any sort of investigation.
On Wednesday, Myka broke her month-long silence after those initial comments by first apologizing “for the uproar” after the reveal that four-and-a-half-year-old Huxley had been “rehomed.”
In late May, Myka said that the decision to “rehome” Huxley was because the family was not made aware of the full scope of his autism and the extent of medical care he would need. She said that Huxley’s new mother is a medical professional more equipped to take care of him.
“I’m sorry for the confusion, and pain I have caused, and I am sorry for not being able to tell more of my story from the beginning,” she said Wednesday in a lengthy statement posted to Instagram.
She further apologized for “being so naive when I started the adoption process, I was not selective or fully equipped or prepared.” She did, though, say she had no regrets about bringing Huxley to the United States from China because he’s “getting all the help he needs” now.
Nevertheless, Myka is taking ownership for what he had to endure his first three years in the U.S., saying, “Even though he is happier in his new home and doing better that he still experienced trauma and I’m sorry, no adoptee deserves any more trauma.”
“I wanted to help so bad I was willing to bring home any child that needed me,” she continued. “For this, I was naive, foolish, and arrogant.”
She further attempted to tackle some of the rumors and criticism that have come the family’s way since this story first broke, including that Huxley’s adoption was “to gain wealth.” She did acknowledge that the family made money from sharing their adoption journey on YouTube, but “every penny and much more went back into his care. Getting Huxley the care and services he needed was very expensive and we made sure he got every service and resource we could possibly find.”
In early June, Buzzfeed reported that the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office is working with “several other agencies” to ensure Huxley’s safety. Stauffer’s latest statement would seem to indicate that that investigation has been concluded to satisfaction, which would hopefully mean Huxley is doing well in his new home.
The family came under scrutiny and fire upon revealing that three years after they had adopted Huxley from China, he had been relocated to another adoptive family. That story came out after fans had started wondering why he’d suddenly stopped appearing in the family’s content on their YouTube page and was no longer mentioned.
In a since-deleted video posted to her channel on May 28, Stauffer confessed to her 717,000 subscribers (down to 696k as of this writing) that the couple were not aware of the level of medical attention Huxley required and so they placed him in a new “forever” home to better suit his needs.
“This is by far the hardest video James and I have ever publicly had to make,” she said in the seven minute clip. “There’s not an ounce of our body that doesn’t love Huxley with all of our being.”
“There wasn’t a minute that I didn’t try our hardest,” she continued through tears. “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.”
The couple was met with some support from the adoptive family community, but also stark criticism. In particular, people took issue with the fact that it appeared the Stauffer’s had been profiting off of their adoption journey, sharing 27 videos, as well as sponsorships, along the way.
Fans also took issue with the fact that the family, who’d been so open with sharing their journey to bring Huxley home, suddenly went radio silent when it came to moving him out of their house.
Stauffer initially defended their decision, insisting it “had nothing to do with he just had Autism [sic].” She said Huxley wanted this move as well.
“He constantly chose them and signed with and showed tons of emotion to show us and let us know he wanted this,” she said of the new family. “Huxley never had a say in his adoption, and he needed more help and also wanted this and we know that 100 percent.”
