Free the Taraz Ten
The website is called “Becky & Jeremy’s Exciting Adoption Adventure,” created by a Haverford couple to capture a once-in-a-lifetime odyssey to bring home a son from Kazakhstan as well as the joys of raising a first child.
But what has happened so far to Becky Compton, Jeremy Meyer, and the 16-month-old they call Noah Aldanysh Compton-Meyer in the mountain-ringed city of Taraz has been anything but routine.
It is there, about 6,350 miles from home, that Meyer, 40, and Compton, 39, have spent most of the last 7 1/2 months as Noah learned to walk, ate his first banana – and became a pawn in a battle with Kazakh officials who have blocked what the couple expected to be a routine adoption.
Compton, a psychology professor at Haverford College, remains in Taraz, spending three hours a day with Noah at an orphanage while fighting the Kazakhstan bureaucracy. Her husband, a labor lawyer with a Center City firm, returned four weeks ago to an empty house on Haverford’s campus and the possibility that Noah might never arrive at the freshly painted, toy-filled room that has been waiting for him for nearly a year.
“It was incredibly hard to leave,” Meyer said. “I may never see him again. That’s horrifying.”
Jeremy is a friend of mine, and I’ve been following this wrenching saga.
If you’d like to help the Meyers, or any of these families, please call your senator or congresscritter, especially if they prioritize children’s affairs and international relations.
