Heartbreaking: mother asks husband to choose between her or their newborn.

It’s a shocking story – a mother asks her husband to choose between her and their newborn with Down Syndrome. He chooses the baby. She files for divorce.  But  the fact is we may never know the true story behind what really happened, we can however shed light on what really matters here.

The story of little Leo Forrest has gripped our hearts since we heard about it last week.

A newborn baby abandoned by his mother just hours after his birth.

His father choosing to raise him alone.

And the reason – that Leo has Down Syndrome.

Mamamia reported that New Zealander, Samuel Forrest’s wife – an Armenian told him that if he chose to keep his newborn son, she wanted a divorce.

Samuel said he was unaware of the practice in Armenia, where Leo was born and where his mother Ruzan Badalyan is from.

“What happens when a baby like this is born, they will tell you that you don’t have to keep them,” he said.

“My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back.”

However, after meeting his son Leo, Samuel decided to keep him.

“They took me in see him and I looked at this guy and I said, he’s beautiful — he’s perfect and I’m absolutely keeping him,” he told ABC News.

Samuel said on his Go Fund me page “scores of babies are abandoned [in Armenia] each year, for reasons ranging from physical or intellectual disabilities and minor ‘imperfections’ … health professionals estimate that 98 percent of all Down syndrome babies born in Armenia are abandoned, every year.”

He said he hadn’t been aware of the practice beforehand. “What happens when a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you don’t have to keep them,” he said. “My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back.”

But the story got complicated when Samuel’s wife Ruzan Badalyan released a statement on her Facebook page saying she had been misrepresented and that the couple had actually agreed the best thing for Leo would be for him to be brought up in New Zealand.

“I saw the evasive looks of the doctors, my relatives’ tear-stained faces, received calls of condolences and realised that only a move to a country with such standards as New Zealand would entitle my son to a decent life.”

She said her ex-husband did not work or support her in while they were in the hospital.

“He left the hospital notifying me hours later that he was taking the kid with him, that he is going to leave the country for New Zealand and I do not have anything to do with the situation.”

She denies that she put him an ultimatum marriage or the baby, saying it is “absolutely not true”.

“Sam has never suggested joining him and bringing up the child together in his country.”

Overnight Samuel Forrest responded on his GoFundMe page saying “Ruzan should not be the target of all of the frustrations that this situation has created. Our paths may be moving in different directions, but she is Leo’s mother and I still feel a great deal of love for her. She and many like her are the victims of the social norms in Armenia.”

He wrote” I can assure you that I have tried my best to convince my wife we could keep the baby, but in her family, an orphanage seemed a safer option for Armenia. I did everything I could to keep our family together, including suggesting we all go to New Zealand together.”

Whatever the background story to this couple’s split – most of which we will never, nor should ever know – the overwhelming issue here is the well-being of Leo, and the light this has shed towards the plight of special needs children in Armenia.

Merdith Bland from Mommyish cites a 2012 report by UNICEF titled, “It’s about Inclusion: Access to Education, Health, and Social Protection Services for Children with Disabilities in Armenia,” which says that the country, “…has made considerable progress in the protection of the rights of children with disabilities.”She says that it still has a long way to go.

The report says:

“Thousands of children with special needs in Armenia are still isolated from their families, peers and communities and live in orphanages and special boarding schools. Many children with disabilities do not attend preschool and school at all, and do not participate in the life of their communities. The lack of social inclusion of these children keeps reinforcing segregation.

Samuel Forrest said that much of the money raised will be sent to help these children.

“After what I’ve been through with Leo, I’m not going to sit back and watch babies be sent to orphanages,” Forrest said. “As a child with Down syndrome, that becomes somewhat of a label. If we can get around this label, we’ll see that they’re normal. They’re a little different from us, but they’re still normal.”

As the debate rages about who left who and why and tabloid magazines fight for each side of the warring couple’s story what we need to concentrate on is the real victims behind this – special needs children right across the world.

Ways you can help:

Samuel Forrest’s GoFundMe Page

FullLife: a social organization based in Stepanavan, Lori Region, Armenia with a goal; to solve the social problems of Armenia’s disabled population.

Unison: An Armenian non-profit whose mission it is to support people with disabilities.