News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Tues. Oct. 12, 2020: Judge Amy Coney Barrett shared some details about her 7 children, including the two Haitian kids she adopted, in her opening statement on the first day of her Senate confirmation hearings on her Supreme Court nomination Monday.
Her decision to introduce her children to the US and the world, comes as some, including Ibram Kendi, founder and director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, have criticized her for adopting the two black children, calling her a racist “white colonizer.”
But on Monday, Barrett, 48, spoke lovingly of all her seven children with her husband of 21 years, Jesse Barrett, including the two they adopted into their family.
“Vivian,” she said, “Came to us from Haiti.”
“When Vivian arrived, she was so weak that we were told she might never talk or walk normally,” Barrett revealed. “But now she deadlifts as much as the male athletes at our gym, and I assure you that she has no trouble talking.”
Vivian Barrett is 16 and was adopted when she was 14 months.
Then there is John Peter, who she said, “joined us shortly after the devastating earthquake in Haiti.”
“Jesse, who brought him home, still describes the shock on JP’s face when he got off the plane in wintertime Chicago,” Barrett stated. “Once that shock wore off, JP assumed the happy-go-lucky attitude that is still his signature trait.”
JP is 13. He was 3 when he was adopted.
As part of her opening statement, the judge also noted: “I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written. And I believe I can serve my country by playing that role.”
She added that if she is “fortunate enough to be confirmed, I pledge to faithfully and impartially discharge my duties to the American people as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.”
