A convicted child sex offender, Brandon Keith Mitchell, and his partner bought a baby through surrogacy and are now causing chaos online after posting a video about their son’s first birthday.
This poses a question: How can people with this kind of criminal record get access to a baby like this?
With little oversight and regulations, the surrogacy industry has become a breeding ground for heartbreaking stories like this.
In 2023, Brandon and his partner, Logan Riley, posted a GoFundMe asking for donations to hire a surrogate. They explained their process was through a gestational surrogate, where the baby is not biologically related to the surrogate mother. The men announced in November that they had found a surrogate, who was a family friend, and created four embryos through IVF. At some point, they were able to implant at least one of the embryos, and the surrogate later gave birth to a little boy.
After posting a tribute video to their son’s first year of Life, viewers began finding out Brandon Keith Mitchell’s past.
It was discovered that Mitchell is a registered sex offender who was caught sexually messaging an underage male student while he was a teacher. The Megan’s Law site for the state of Pennsylvania confirmed Mitchell’s status as a Tier 1 sex offender, showing he had been convicted for child sexual abuse and possession of child sexual abuse materials.
Prosecutors found 12,000 messages over a 20-month period between Mitchell and his victim, who was a 16-year-old boy at the time of the events in 2013. Mitchell was the child’s 30-year-old chemistry teacher at the time. Police also recovered hundreds of other sexually explicit videos of the child on Mitchell’s laptop.
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Although a convicted pedophile is banned from adopting in Pennsylvania, the surrogacy industry has almost no regulations on who can use their services. This is one of many ways that surrogacy differs from adoption. While adoption focuses on the child’s best interests, the fertility industry prioritizes the wants of adults.
Unfortunately, this is not the first case of a surrogacy arrangement going terribly wrong. Earlier this month, a Texas woman found out that her surrogate baby was entangled in a baby trafficking ring.
Every child is made in God’s image. Surrogacy harms the value, safety, and lives of babies and can easily become a breeding ground for mistreatment, abuse, and trafficking.
Children should be received as blessings, not treated as products to buy.
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