Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

It took him a while, but a 32-year-old man will finally have his wish, of being adopted into his former foster family, granted. Maurice Griffin of California, is prepping to be adopted, a dream of which had to be put on hold, until he reached adulthood.

As a boy, Griffin was fostered by Lisa Godbold and her husband. The couple saw Griffin at an orphanage near their home in Sacramento, and decided that he would fit nicely in their interracial family, given his background. “Interracial relationships weren’t as common or accepted as they are today,” Lisa explained. “The fact that Maurice was biracial, and we were a biracial family, made us a great profile. So to speak.”

Griffin loved his time with the family, getting along well with the couple’s two sons, who were younger than him. “We were best friends,” he said. “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 the age of 13, and just as he was supposed to get adopted, things went wrong.

Wanting to be treated like Godbold’s other two boys, Griffin expected to be disciplined, which he told a social worker. “I told her they were going to be spanking me. She told her superior and her superiors told her I had to be taken out.”

Officials removed him from the home. Godbold fought for him to stay, but was told that she may lose her biological children thanks to the spanking allegations.

Over time both parties lost touch with one another, with Griffin being placed in several different foster homes. The ordeal affected his adult life. “I didn’t let anybody get close to me again,” he said. “I hurt a lot of people.”

Griffin was reunited with Godbold via social media, before she called. “She said, ‘hey baby,’ and I said I got to call you back,” he said, explaining that he was feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing.

Her husband passed away, but that didn’t stop the fight to have Griffin adopted. The two headed to a San Diego juvenile court Friday to begin proceedings to formally allow him into the family.

Photo:  KSWB