Actor/comedian Chris Rock is facing a lot of heat following the news that he had been raising a South African girl for several years without officially adopting her.
A DailyMail exclusive shared that a full-fledged criminal investigation was being conducted by an elite South African police unit over concerns that proper legal procedures weren’t followed in the acquisition of Ntombi-futhi Samantha.
The now seven-year-old had been living with Rock and his estranged wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, since 2008. Rock, however, hasn’t seen Samantha in over a year since the divorce proceedings but has seen his two biological daughters.
Samantha’s birth father, Crispen Khanyile, was a waiter at the Saxon Hotel in Sandhurst in Johannesburg during 2008 when he supposedly met and befriended Rock. The girl’s mother, Thusang Precious Ndebele, hails from Zimbabwe and lives in a run-down flat in Johannesburg with her other two siblings. The couple has since separated.
Compton-Rock is currently in the process of adopting Samantha, who was in the States on a leisure travel visa but not as a potential adoptee, which is illegal.
The Hawks, a South African elite force tasked with high profile and sensitive crimes, have taken over the investigation following alerts by the Department of Home Affairs after they began their own inquiry. An unknown source had done an initial look into the girl’s birth parents.
“Whatever arrangement there was between the Rocks and the parents of the child, laws are in place to prevent parents from allowing their children to travel overseas indefinitely with third parties,” a detective with the agency shared. They continued, “It seems there has not been regular contact with the biological parents and if money changed hands, or even gifts in return for the child staying with other people overseas, it sounds very much like child trafficking.”
Both birth parents have refused to comment, and representatives for Rock also did not respond to comment request.