Search Angel Help Requested: The Legacy of Adoption Loss

I am seeking the help of search angels for my former foster son (details at the end of this post), who found me about a year ago on Facebook. Scott calls me Mom, because sadly, though he was part of our family for less than a year, I am the closest thing to a mother he has ever had.

Scott's life has not been easy. He was dealt a rotten trifecta: taken and placed for adoption as an infant, rejected by adopters as a teen, only to find original family in a shambles, unable to be of much positive, constructive help. Scott has spent a good deal of life behind bars.

He is free and sober now and trying to get on track. But his job opportunities are severely limited because of his tangled identity. He cannot prove who he is!

Scott was born and adopted in NJ trough DYFS. Despite his female adopter telling him to "get out of here" and "go find your 'real family'," she refuses to be of any assistance and he has no birth certificate - original OR amended! 

Any suggestions or help would be most welcome.

The Back Story

 

My firstborn, Alicia, was born July 15, 1967. She was lost to adoption six months later, in early 1968.

In 1971 I married and moved from NYC to NJ start my life over as a suburban wife and mother. To redeem myself... maybe to prove myself.

Once settled into our new little cape cod house on Meadow Road, with no conscious connection, I began calling adoption agencies and telling them I'd like to adopt an "older" child of about 3 or 4. I thought, like many do today all the old cliches about their being so many kids who need homes and it would be a righteous thing to do.  A liberal act of altruism, not infertile desperation.  I was quickly told that "older" meant 10-12 and put the idea to rest.

I never made the connection that I was trying to replace my Alicia, who would have been the age of the child I was seeking, until much, much later. Was I also trying somehow to justify and believe the brain washing that adoption is a good thing, for the best?  Was I trying to make penitence for having "given away" my firstborn child? I gave one away so I will take one?

It was almost as if I was saying: "I'm ready for her now, God. I can give her that two-parent home i was told she needed and deserved."

During the next decade I had three children born 1974, 1976 and 1979. Two boys and a girl. I was labelled by family and some friends as "super mom" for home birthing, breast-feeding and always having a baby in a sling or back pack... never putting them down or letting them cry. "Spoiling" them by some standards of child care.

These were the happiest years of my life!  I felt fulfilled, and for the first time in my life proud of myself for my accomplishments in raising these three healthy children. (I had proved "them" all wrong." I WAS a fit and capable mother!)

Being a mother was so wonderful, there I was once again on the telephone inquiring about fostering. I went through the training and told them I wanted to foster teens. The year was 1983 and again, I made absolutely no conscious connection that I was seeking a teen to add to our family!

The folks at DYFS were ecstatic. they said that is the hardest population to place and the most in need. (The did send me a little girl first. Another tragic story, I won't go into...)

And then they sent David (now Scott) to us!  We welcomed him into our family with a big WELCOME HOME sign.

In a bizarre twist of fate, I quickly learned that David had been adopted as an infant, his adopters divorced and a-mom decided he was too much for her to handle. She had him living in the garage for some minor, teenage behavioral incidents at school.  And then, when he was 16, she dumped him into the foster care system and he came to live with me!

I found David's original family, which was not as much of a blessing as we had hoped for.

I look now at the photos and it so very clear to me today that as much as I ADORED my three kids, and had recently found Alicia,  something - someone - was missing from from our family photos.  

David was born April, 1968, just months after I lost Alicia.

Below is Alicia with my kids and I when I found her -- ironically, when she was 16.

Alicia is on her knees so I could see all of their faces together. 

Had she stood for the photo, it would be just like the other photos here.

The subconscious has a mind all its own and compensates in ways we may never fully come to grasp. And what a tangled web it can weave.

PLEASE HELP SCOTT IF YOU CAN!

 

Born Scott Woods 4/12/68 in NJ to Delores Fleischer Woods and Roy John Woods. Adopted in NJ by Loretta (Stern) Lippe and Gary Lippe and named David Lippe.

He has been using his original name Scott Woods for decades but has neither an original or amended BC and cannot get photo ID.

When Adoption Breaches Civil Rights

“A child’s circumstances may ‘require’ statutory intervention, perhaps may even ‘require’ the indefinite or long-term removal of the child from the family and his or her placement with strangers, but that is not to say that the same circumstances will necessarily ‘require’ that the child be adopted. They may or they may not. The question, at the end of the day, is whether what is ‘required’ is adoption.”

The [UK high] Court....   

....also reiterates three points made by Lord Neuberger in Re B.

(1) the child’s interests include being brought up by the natural family, ideally by the natural parents, or at least one of them, unless the overriding requirements of the child’s welfare make that not possible;

(2) the Court must consider all the options before coming to a decision; and

(3) before making an adoption order the court must be satisfied that there is no practical way of the authorities (including the Health Service) providing the requisite assistance and support and Judges must explore rigorously whether a Local Authority is seeking a Placement Order because resource issues make it unwilling to provide the necessary support. 

So says UK high court. 

* IF ONLY we could see such a stance taken in the U$A - the largest importer of children trafficked from around the world - instead of giving only lip services to protecting its children.   

* IF ONLY this position had been taken as multiple state and federal courts made decisions concerning Veronica and Dusten Brown. IF ONLY it would be taken in the case of Deseray and all other contested adoptions which have railroad the rights of natural parents.

It bears repeating: "the child’s interests include being brought up by the natural family, ideally by the natural parents, or at least one of them, unless the overriding requirements of the child’s welfare make that not possible."  The child's interest. What a concept!

* IF ONLY both the U$ and the UK took this position instead of its push for "permanency" of children in foster care, totally distorting the meaning of permanency in disrupting a family to create a new, unrelated one instead of working to maintain the integrity of the original family with resources and assistance. The essence of this UK Judgment is "confirmation of how seriously non-consensual adoption is to be treated in the family justice system" a problem there as well as here.

* IF ONLY American child care practices honored a child's identity as per the United Nations mandates and outlawed states' falsification of birth certificates and sealing of original birth certificates from adopted persons.

* IF ONLY children were not such a sought-after commodity. iF ONLY infertility rates so high, same sex couples were not now adding to the demand that creates and perpetuates child trafficking for adoption.  

* IF ONLY we as nations could stop the corruption, the exploitation to fill these demands and support struggling families.

* IF ONLY we honored a child's heritage, lineage, continuity, and right to identity, as well as his PERMANENCY within his family of origins.

* IF ONLY we honored the civil rights of every person including those adopted which means protecting their right to remain with the family of birth and if necessary to remove them from that situation to honor their identity.

* IF ONLY...