Santa Clarita foster family calls for Lexi to be returned to their home

The Santa Clarita couple that lost custody of their 6-year-old foster daughter after she was removed from their home by county social workers is calling for the girl to be retued, saying they are “incredibly devastated.”

In a video posted on the family’s “Save our Lexi” Facebook page late Monday, Rusty Page said the family’s “hearts are broken” after Lexi was taken away hours earlier to be placed with her relatives in Utah as ordered by a court.

“Let me speak directly to people who took our daughter and have her now,” Rusty Page said in the video as his wife Summer sat beside him clutching a doll. “Please search deep in your heart and soul, and do what’s best for Lexi. Do the right thing and bring Lexi back home...Look her in the eyes and ask her what she wants, she will tell you that she wants to go home.”

• SUSAN SHELLEY: How the law failed part-Choctaw girl and Santa Clarita family in custody battle

The girl is 1.56 percent Choctaw and meets the statutory definition of a Native American child. Thus with input from the tribe, as stipulated by the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, it was determined that the child would be placed with extended relatives of her biological Native American father.

• PHOTOS: #KeepLexiHome rally in Santa Clarita

At 17 months, the girl was removed from the custody of her birth mother, who had substance abuse problem, and the birth father, who has an extensive criminal history and lost custody of one other child,

The case has drawn widespread media attention and a Change.org petition launched by the family to keep Lexi in Califoia had gaered more than 66,000 signatures as of noon Tuesday. The Page’s attoey said Monday that they intended to file a petition “imminently” in the Califoia Supreme Court to keep Lexi in the state.

• RELATED STORY: Girl who is part Choctaw taken from Santa Clarita foster family’s home

Leslie Heimov of the Children’s Law Center of Califoia, which is representing Lexi since she is a foster child, has said that the court has decided the girl should be placed with the biological father’s relatives in Utah, including the girl’s sister who is living with the Utah couple. Another sister of the girl will be living down the street, she said.

• VIDEO: Lexi, who is part Choctaw, is taken away from her foster family in Santa Clarita

“This has become a legal issue but it’s also a family reunification issue and a sibling issue,” Heimov said. “The law is very clear that siblings should be kept together whenever they can be and they should be placed together even if they were not initially together.”

The girl has visited the Utah family regularly over the past three years, she said. They have come to Santa Clarita about once a month and they Skype about once a week.

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• VIDEO: Rusty Page of Santa Clarita speaks about DCFS placing foster daughter Lexi, 6, in Utah

“She has a loving relationship with them,” Heimov said. “They are not strangers in any way, shape or form.”

Meanwhile, Rusty Page said they are trying to make sense of everything “with our three other children who witnessed their sister Lexi forcefully ripped away from our home, our family, by strangers.”

“But nobody can possibly be more devastated than our 6-year-old daughter, who found herself restrained in a car, and driven away to go and live in a foreign place hundreds of miles from her family, friends, teachers, home and life,” he said in the video.

“The trauma and the terror our daughter has been put through is unforgivable.”

An official from the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services has said it is required to follow and carry out court orders.