The Kiwi dad who claims his wife forced him to choose between her and their newborn son with Down syndrome has another family that includes a daughter who also has Down syndrome. A new report reveals Samuel Forrest has not seen his other children following his messy divorce in New Zealand.

Forrest has captured sympathetic hearts all over the world when his story was shared online. According to him, his Armenian wife Ruzan Badalyan forced him to choose between her or their newborn baby Leo after they found out he has Down syndrome, or DNS.

Badalyan’s family were apparently ashamed of Leo, who was born on Jan. 21, and she herself would not even look at her son. Forrest chose the baby over his wife of 18 months. They divorced a week after Leo was born. A crowdfunding campaign was launched and has now reached over $600,000 to help the father and son to return to his native New Zealand.

According to the Daily Mail, baby Leo isn’t Forrest’s first child or the first who was diagnosed with DNS. He has four children, ranging from 15 years old to 6, in his first marriage, the youngest of which also has DNS. He hasn’t seen them in years, though, after he and their mother divorced and he was excommunicated from their Exclusive Brethren church in Whanganui.

He was banned from seeing his kids when he left the church, prompting him to leave New Zealand and start a new life in another country. His extended family who are also members of the church were also forbidden to have any contacts with him.

“It was one of the reasons why he left in the first place and went to Armenia. He had no contact with his children and saw no future for himself in New Zealand. It was all very sad,” a source told the paper.

The Mother’s Reply

Meanwhile, Badalyan has refuted Forrest’s claims that she abandoned her own son. In a long statement, the young mother detailed how Forrest took away the decision to keep her child for her. She was aware that the child should be raised in New Zealand where special needs kids are better taken care of than in Armenia. However, contrary to Forrest’s allegations online, she did not force him to choose between her and Leo.

Instead, it was Forrest who left her side in the hospital and notified her hours later that he was taking Leo with him to New Zealand. He allegedly did not give her option to come with them but he started circulating the story that she abandoned them.

“As a mother who has faced this severe situation, being in the hospital under stress and depression, experiencing enormous pressure from every side, not finding any support from my husband’s part on any possibilities of giving a child decent life in Armenia, I faced two options: “To take care of the child on my own in Armenia, or to abandon my maternal instincts and extend the baby an opportunity to enjoy a decent life with his father in New Zealand,” she wrote in a statement. “I went for the second option.”