‘Internet twins mother wrongly stripped of parental rights’

A MOTHER who twice offered her twin daughters for adoption over the internet was wrongly stripped of her parental rights, a court in the US has ruled.

The Missouri Supreme Court said yesterday that the toddlers' subsequent adoption by foster parents, including a British couple, should be thrown out.

A lower court judge terminated Tranda Wecker's parental rights in 2002, leading to the adoption of her twins by a couple from St Louis.

But the high court reversed the decision and sent the case back to the lower court. It was unclear what the ruling would mean for the girls, now three.

Ms Wecker has said she was broke and under stress when she put the twins up for adoption in 2000.

California couple Richard and Vickie Allen said they paid an internet broker $6,000 to adopt the girls, but Ms Wecker later decided the couple were unfit and, joined by a British couple, Judith and Alan Kilshaw, whom she believed would be better parents, took the twins from the California home.

Ms Wecker and the Kilshaws, who said they paid the same broker $12,000 drove with the girls to Arkansas, where a judge approved the adoption. An Arkansas judge later voided the adoption, and the twins were placed in state custody in Missouri.

As the case played out, Ms Wecker became a tabloid sensation as the mother of the "internet twins".

The Supreme Court said the judge who terminated Ms Wecker's parental rights failed to document adequately the reasons for such a drastic step.

"The two attempts at placement of the twins for adoption may have been mistakes, and may even have harmed the twins, but no reported Missouri case has ever held that placing a child up for adoption more than once rises to the level of abuse," said the court.