The Harm of Labeling Adopted Children

Candigirl 63 writes on Adoption.com forums:

i know this sounds awful but i feel like giving up. i am disabled and adopted a baby girl 11 years ago. the adoption people told me her mom was a little slow. met the mom and indeed a little slow. i trusted the adoption people and adopted the little girl. as time went on she screamed and cried all the time. arching her back like she was possessed. i dug into her past and medical records and found mom was an alcoholic. looked up alcohol effect on babies. found fetal alcohol syndrome and saw facial pics. she had all the facial deformities as well as scrambled toes. i got her into counseling starting at 3 years old. although she was slow to learn, the worst was the horrible violent tantrums over little things. time goes on and her tantrums are still 3-4 times a week. she still arches her back violently and throws her head back and forth screaming high pitch screams. banging her small body into doors and walls. still. she goes to counseling as well as i do too. i learn as much as i can. by the time she is 11 i am the professional on fas and have to talk to the counselers about fas. but i am 50 and her violence is too much now. she rages at least once a week. she has taken a knife and threatened to kill me and herself. she destroys things and still throws the same violent tantrums like a rag dolls possesed. here it is now she is turning 13 . is now stronger than me and i am fearful. when she is not raging she is a wonderful loving and helpful daughter. but if i catch her stealing or lying and try to punish her its all over. even at school (special ed) she is throwing these rages for getting in trouble for minor things that most people wouldnt even give a second thought too. i dont know what to do. social services only offers the counseling. there is no respite. i live in calif. i am desperate. i forgot to add she was diagnosed fas at 3 by a geneticist. and i have had in home services twice. In this case, the alphabet soup de jur is FAS. Oftentimes it is one of a litany of common victim-blaming labels placed on adopted children, such as ADHD and RAD, as if inability to bond after years of depravation in an orphanage, never being touched or held is not a 'normal' reaction to the circumstances; as if inability to trust after multiple abandonments isn't a 'normal' reaction to what life has presented. As if the "cure" for children who cannot "bond" as a result of repeated abandonments is to abandon them yet again! As if a label gives the adopter an EXCUSE TO BAIL!  After all, they were not properly INFORMED! It wasn't what they "signed up for" - as if those who raise children we birthed always get a child with a guarantee. The labels serve to shift the focus to a "syndrome" that requires special treatment. In this case it shifts the focus of the mother to become an expert of FAS. Labels shift the focus away from adoption loss as the root of the issue, because after all adoption is what "saved" the child. Adoption is GOOD, not the problem!  Couldn't possibly be!  But what is at the root of every adoption is LOSS and separation. So what about becoming and expert on adoption LOSS and GRIEF? What about considering the POSSIBILITY that not all of this child's problems are attributable to pre-natal alcoholism or "bad blood" but that perhaps her rage and tantrums are a result of early TRAUMA caused by SEPARATION and loss?  Her inability to express her grief and her need to be given "permission" to grieve. I suggest this mother, CandiGirl, and other adopters dealing with challenging children read Primal Wound as well as books by adult adoptees like Jane Jeong Trenka to understand what it is like to be separated and live without knowing who you look like, and WHY you were given away. This is a teen in agony and pain.  This is a teen who is at high risk for substance abuse and self harm including suicide. And the causes are not all organic or hereditary. Adoption loss is a social issue - a psychological issue - that faces ALL who are adopted no matter how healthy their parents were. Recognize the loss and get her help to deal with THAT. Mom says she met her daughter's first mother. Does she ever talk to her daughter about her? Does she ask her if she wants to meet her mom and ask her why she wasn't able to keep her? Or does she assume, like far too many adoptive parents that her child does not care because she doesn't outright asks? Children are very sensitive to unspoken cues and can sense if the subject is difficult for their adoptive parent(s), especially if it brings tears to their eyes, or they quickly change the subject or just avoid it to begin with. Silence equates to shame. Adopted children easily interpret that the subject of adoption is TABOO, thus it means there is something BAD about it and something bad about ME. Their fear of being rejected - yet again - keeps them bound to the secret tone set by their adoptive parent(s). One clever adoptive mother found a simple way to let her teenaged son know the door was OPEN for those discussions by doing little things like when seeing him looking in the mirror saying: "I bet you wonder who you look like. I do."  These little gestures let a child know it is NOT a forbidden subject and that it won't ruin his or her relationship with you to talk about "it" or ask questions, expressive of NORMAL, health curiosity. Another approach might be at or following a family event such as a wedding, or when looking at a photo album, to say: "Gosh, all these people are my blood-related kin, I bet you must wonder about yours!"  Or, perhaps at your son's piano recital or your daughter's soccer game to ask if he or she is curious where he or she got that special talent! Curiosity is normal! Where did I get my nose, eyes, hair or strong math sills?  Why do I hate the sports or political views or food my adoptive family all love?  Recognize it! Don't let it become an elephant you and your child trip over to avoid talking about. Open the door for them. Let them know it's a safe topic of discussion just as you might do to help start a conversation of sex education or drugs in school, or safety on the Internet and 'strangers'.  All of these are tough but necessary conversations for parents to have. Adoptive parents have two added one: adoption and birth families. If it feels too hard to have this conversation, start with therapy to deal with your fears.  Perhaps you have unresolved issues over your infertility; the loss of the child of your "own" you couldn't have. Perhaps you harbor fear that blood is thicker than water and you will loose your child to their "real" parents and become a mere long-term babysitter. While unrealistic, these fears are not at all uncommon and need to be dealt with in order to help your child deal with THEIR fear of rejection and abandonment....which are palpable when you are in fact at the point of considering the option of bailing on them!  When you are thinking and talking about not being able to "take it" anymore.  The more you think that way, the more your child will push and test to see if you will in fact abandon them yet again. Start with some therapy for mom and some reading and educating about adoption loss issues, and then apply some compassion and help for your child to deal with their very issues of loss and rejection and abandonment. Instead of seeing your child as label, as a "patient" with a "disease" or "syndrome" that needs to be treated, think of them as a scared, lost child in pain who needs understanding and acceptance.

MORE UPDATES on Baby Veronica and the Evil Christie Maldonado

Christie Maldonado, the evil mastermind, perpetuator and non-stop bitter bitch in the case of Baby Veronica is NOW suing the federal government to take down the IWCA as unconstitutional

The public, media and adoption reformists focused the blame between Dusten Brown (who was labeled a dead beat dad who signed his rights away) and Matt and Melanie Capobianco, rightly accused of dragging the Baby Veronica case on and on and not just simply letting the child be with her father who loved her, wanted her and was perfectly capable of raising her...

Yet, throughout it all Christie Maldonado, Veronica's mother, was spared the controversy, barely ever mentioned in the media except as “the natural mother.” She was protected and spared all blame and culpability, unjustifiably in my sole opinion. She is the unspoken of elephant in the middle of this fiasco that the public, the media and even we in adoption reform have left unscathed. And it is Christie Maldonado, Baby Veronica's natural mother, in my opinion who is THE most culpable person in this debacle

The Capobiancos were dead wrong, but they never would have been in the picture, much less able to succeed had it not been for the choices made and reaffirmed every step of the way by Christie Maldinado. Christie chose the Capobiancos, and not just encouraged them, she insisted that they never give up relentlessly, giving them justification personally and publicly. With her on their side, they were not taking a child away form her father, they were upholding the never wavering wishes of the child's mother. 

The Capbiancos motivation was to have a baby girl.  Christie’s motivation was to USE them to keep her child from the child's father. Pure evil.

It was Christie, the natural mother, who set the entire fiasco in motion. It was she and she alone who decided on adoption of a child who had a father. She alone put the whole adoption plan in motion through deceit and less than honest and open communication or informed consent to Dusten. She disregarded him from the start and then blamed him for not being involved. She was less than honest in her intent, leading Dusten to believe he was signing custody over to her, without revealing her intent to place the child one she had him sign off on his rights. She tricked him!!  This was an evil and immoral thing to do and showed from the start of the process her lack of ability to put the needs of her child over her anger at this man she created this innocent baby with.




Christie sent Dusten a text message asking if he would rather pay child support or relinquish his parental rights. He responded via text message that he relinquished his rights, not ever hearing one word about any plan for adoption, he assumed he was allowing Christie to have sole custody, as opposed to joint custody.

Dusten was totally unaware that months prior to the baby's birth, Christie had begun to work with an adoption attorney to place the child with Matt and Melanie Capobianco of South Carolina. Although Oklahoma law requires that when the case involves a child of Indian decent, the tribe be notified, Maldonado's attorney misspelled Brown's name and provided an incorrect date of birth, so the tribe was not put on notice of the proposed adoption. After receiving permission from Oklahoma authorities, based in part on the identification of the child as Hispanic instead of Native American, the Capobiancos took the child to South Carolina.

Christie attended every court proceeding aligned with and supported the Capobiancos, and went as far as telling "the state court that she would nullify her consent to the child’s adoption if Veronica were not to live with the Capobiancos." 

Dale Dove, the attorney who represented Christie for the Supreme Court proceedings said, “This is a case that promotes the rights and choices of the birth mother who’s taking the lion’s share of the burden. I am thrilled that they’ve decided it in a way that protects the adoption plans of birth mothers.”

Even those of us within the adoption community who are as far as we can be philosophically from the pro-adoptionists and the Industry … were so focused on solely blaming the Capobiancos and so wont to ever see a birthmother as anything but the wounded party - as she too often is - that we unintentionally have painted a not well-intentioned, innocent, coerced mother with the same brush we use for those whose vulnerabilities are exploited by the adoption machine.

Christie Maldonado, of all people, could have used whatever leverage she had to help resolve this case through a mediated open adoption or at the very least a demand for visitation, Instead she - like the Capobiancos and the law - saw the child as a piece of merchandise to dispute ownership of.  

She of all people, as a MOTHER, should have and could have fought for her CHILD's best interest over that of all the adults. Instead she orchestrated the battle and acted throughout to destroy the possibility of a reunification of a child and her kin, her heritage and a father who loved and wanted her, acting like far too many divorcing couples who use children as weapons in a perceived war.  She was angry mother in a divorce and she used the Capobiancos to do HER dirty work of taking her child from Dusten!  And she used the Capobiancos to do her dirty for her and pay all the legal fees.  

It is hard for me to say these things – to point a finger of blame at a “sister” birthmother who “lost” a child to adoption, but no generalizations can be made about any group of people. There are good and bad in every race, religion and there are good and bad adoptive parents and good and bad birth parents.

I recognize and award adoptive parents who do the right thing in order to encourage more to do so. And I recognize when a mother does the WRONG thing, as is the case here. I am able to admit that there are some mothers who are incapable of making safe, healthy choices for the well being of their children, often because of substance abuse or mental illness. I encourage extended family care in such cases, but to ignore the reality and claim or believe ALL mothers and fathers should have custody of their children, is dogmatic and inherently wrong and makes anyone saying it lose all credibility and paints adoption reformers as stringent anti-adoptionists who defend mothers right or wrong.

Loving, caring parents who are capable should maintain their rights and that was the case here with Dusten Brown. Dusten was duped by Veronica’s mother who put her anger above her child’s best interested and insisted she be raised by strangers rather than her own blood kin. And that started and ended this case for Veronica. It was what encouraged the Capobiancos to continue to pursue no matter what and influenced all the court decisions.

Where was court ordered mediation, as is done in divorces and custody battles? Where was a guardian ad litem to represent the child's interest throughout this or any disputed adoption? Where was court ordered visitation or slow transition for any of the transfers of this innocent, tiny human being tossed about like a ship in a storm, hither and yon, calling different sets of people Mommy and Daddy so many times in her young life, and suffering abandonment upon abandonment? Will she ever be able to trust again? Where were her interests in any of this?

Christie, mother of two other children, orchestrated this cruel circus every step of the way from her very first deceit to Dusten, to choosing the Capobiancos, standing by them to this day, and publically slandering her child’s father. I say shame on Christie and some stones should be cast where they need to be.  Bad mother of year award goes to Christie Maldonado for putting her anger before the best interest of her child, for deceiving and berating her child's father, and now, not satisfied with ruining her daughter's life, taking her from her loving father and sister and grandparents, she is trying to remove protection for all native American children!

UPDATE 7/28: "Feminists" - women who have NEVER supported mothers in crisis who are pressured and coerced to relinquish their children or have them taken wrongfully... women who have never supported adoptee equality, are now supporting this BE-ATCH, Christie Maldonado who acted in ways that are counter the the well-being of Veronica and her two other children.  These are people who BLINDLY support any mother who fights a father over custody.

UPDATE 7/28: The Notorious "Fat Lady" has yet to utter her swan song....HOPE remains fro veronica and her RIGHTFUL Blood Kin FAMILY as the case goes BACK TO COURT!!

A personal view into a failing adoption....

I have a friend who is 95. She is a former school teacher and very sharp and active. She is no stranger to adoption, as her sister, who I also know, is a former social worker who prides herself on being on the forefront of helping to get inter-racial adoptions accepted and adopted two boys of another race.

These are bright, well educated, liberal, savvy and well informed women.

My friend tells me today that a "VERY DEAR" friend of her and her husband's (who is now gone) - called her to share the latest update on their adopted 20 year old son. He was adopted in Texas and is from Mexico. (Maybe Gladney, maybe private, I didn't ask, and I also don't know how old these "very close" friends of hers are.) They also have a biological child.

The boy has had 'difficulties' in school, etc and has been in treatment for emotional problems and drugs and has attempted suicide. He has just finished his latest rehab and they "don't know what to do for him or with him anymore."

These people are of the same caliber as my friend and even more so, perhaps. The wife/mother is medical director of some prestigious hospital and the father is a prominent psychologist or psychiatrist. One of them flaunts an Ivy league degree.

All my friend knew was how much they loved him from day one and that they had "tried everything" and were at their wits end and didn't know what else to do -- to the point they actually asked a 95-year-old woman if she would take him!  She told them she could barely take care of herself!

They cried to her that they had no other family and she was the closest thing they had to family and they didn't know where else to turn!!

I finally said to her, well if they tried EVERYTHING, I wonder of that included helping him search for his original family who might be able to share some pertinent medical history and also may be able to offer some emotional support and answer some questions for the boy, even if she has shown no interest in the subject. She at first totally pooh-poohed the idea. "They're in Mexico!" "He knows he's loved."

I told her that adoptees had a far higher than average rate of all kinds of emotional probelms including substance abuse and suicide, and that this was primarily because they feel a deep sense of loss, rejection and abandonment and they are never allowed to speak about it and everyone simply ignores their loss and grief because everyone is just focused on how happy THEY are having him in their family and assume he feels the same.

Being interracially or internationally adopted, I told her, adds an additional layer because they act as if it makes no difference but he looks in the mirror every day and knows that's not true and all his friends at school see the difference and make him know he is different. And he keeps all this in, too. And that having a biological sibling is an extra challenge. All of this was amazing news to her - even having had two inter-racially adopted nephews, now both adults....sons of her sister with whom she has always been close friends and lived near.

In today's New York Times Parenting blog, Nicole Soojung Callahan writes;

"My parents always seemed hesitant to discuss my adoption. My mother would tell me, “You’re ours, and that’s all that matters.” My father might say, “We didn’t care if you were Asian, or black, or purple with polka dots.” We joked about the fact that we looked different, that others had curious, sometimes invasive questions about it. We were all united in wanting our family to be seen as normal. But while my parents did not seem to think much about my adoption, my unknown birth parents, or the fact that I was a Korean child being raised by a white family in a predominantly white town, I was always aware of these things, and thought about them constantly."

This is classic! We hear it every day from internationally adopted persons. It's easy to be "color blind" through white privileged eyes. (For more, read the books of Jane Joeng Trenka)

I told her that no therapist is going to help him unless that therapist is an expert in issues of adoption loss (though more likely his aps would find the kind of "expert" who labeled the kid with an alphabet soup of 'disorders' that blamed him for not bonding.)

She had never even thought about the fact that curiosity of your genealogy, your ancestry is normal and adoptees are supposed to simply ignore their curiosity!

She said, if they find no other help, she MIGHT tell them and have me talk to them. Likely they'll simply resolve THEIR problem by finding a place to dump him, since that seemed to be the reason they called her. That and to get some sympathetic "You tried your best."

The Baby Veronica Fiasco Blame Game

The agonizingly long drawn out case of Baby Veronica seems to have reached it's end with father and child torn apart.

The case of Baby Veronica began before this now four-year-old child was born.  Veronica was born in 2009 to Christy Maldonado of Oklahoma, a self-described Latina single mom of two other children.  It has wound it’s way through the South Carolina Courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court who sent it right back to SC who recently made the latest what appears to be the final decision regarding the permanent care and custody of this innocent child.

Supporters on the two sides of this baby battle agree one thing: that it has been horrific for this child. And there seems to be plenty of blame to go around.

The Adoption Culture

In order to fully understand this case, one must view it within the framework of the extremely pro-adoption culture we live in the US today where the general consensus, by far, is that adoption is a child-saving miracle that should be encouraged. Among many Christian churches you are not a goof Christian until you have “saved” an alleged “orphan” via adoption.  It is encouraged and supported by hefty tax credits…regardless if the child is actually an orphan or if he is being torn from a parent or parents who are fighting desperately to keep and care for their flesh and blood child.

This case is set upon a backdrop of adoption good; deadbeat Dads - like the old stereotypical coke whore mother - are bad.

In this extremely pro adoption culture are those of us who  see through the smoke and mirrors, the lies and fabrications; we see behind the curtain the child-destroying aspects of adoption: that it begins by nullifying the child’s identity, heritage, medial history, ancestry; that it treats the child as merchandise in a sale; that it keeps the adoptee forever infantilized and denied equal status to al non-adopted citizens in the vast majority of states by keeping his or her original birth certificate from him for life; that it treats adopted persons as suspicious and creates discriminatory laws and statuses that apply only to them in defiance of the fourteenth Amendment….

Those of us who see it and report on the atrocities within the adoption industry, the fallacies and injustices in our laws, policies and practices that govern child adoption within the US and Internationally – are quickly slapped with the label “anti-adoption.”

Yet few cases shine a clear bright light on adoption as a crisis of imbalance weighed heavily against families of blood connection, than the removal of Baby Veronica from her natural father who has fought for her from the start, who is perfectly capable of providing a safe, healthy home for her and who has gone to extreme lengths to do so for the past eighteen months. Like a piece of furniture she is being taken away yet again.

Who's to Blame?

  

The Indian Child Welfare Act

Veronica’s father is a member of the Cherokee nation and as such asserted his rights under The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) that was enacted in 1978 to protect Native American children from being adopted away by non-tribal members. Tribal nations had been losing as many as 25 to 35 percent of their children to removal from their homes, and consequently from their tribal culture. In some cases, the per capita rate of Indian children in foster care was nearly 16 times higher than the rate for non-Indians.

On the Dr. Phil Show, however, Matt Copobianco made the opposite, absurd claim that, “The Child Welfare Act is destroying families.” Another adoptive father named Johnston, on the same totally one-sided show, said of the ICWA: “I think it’s an unjust law. I think it’s a racist law, because we were white, and the kids were considered Indian…”

They are not the only pro-adoptionists to point a finger of blame at the ICWA. Adoptive father John Culhane, writing on Slate.com, claimed it “contributes to the destructive narrative that an adoption is never a sure thing, and could make even more difficult the search for adoptive parents.” He went as far as to say: “It’s tribalism in its most literal, and block-headed, sense.” 

Sure, anything that preserves natural families and reduces adoptions is seen as a negative in our pro-adoption culture that is all about child snatching under a saving pretext as it was from the start and what caused the necessity of the ICWA.

Dustin Brown

Dustin and Christie became engaged to be married in December 2008. Christie informed Dustin that she was pregnant a month later, January 2009. On learning of the pregnancy, Dustin sought to marry Christie and refused to provide any financial support until after the two had married. In May 2009, Christie broke off the engagement by text message and cut all communications with Dustin.

Four months after the birth of the child and just days from deployment to Iraq, Dustin was served with notice of the proposed adoption of his daughter. Dustin signed a document, believing that he was relinquishing rights to Veronica over to her mother, Christie. Once Dustin realized what he had signed, he immediately tried to retrieve the document, and failing that, contacted the Judge Advocate General at Fort Sill for assistance. Seven days after being notified of the proposed adoption by the Copobiancos, Dustin obtained a stay of the adoption proceedings under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and he deployed with his Army unit to Iraq. Dustin also invoked his right as a Cherokee and continued to fight tooth and nail leaving no stone unturned in a costly legal battle. He won his cases in trial court and on appeal with the State Supreme Court. The case finally wound up in the US Supreme Court where it was sent back to SC and veronica taken from her father who by then had had physical custody of her from 12/31/11 to July 2013 - 19 months. Complete timeline here. 

Dustin is a man of integrity and ethics who has remained in an amicable relationship with his former wife who credits him for being a good, involved father to the child they share.

Dustin was fully supported by the Indian community, but in the court of public opinion there is no doubt who to blame: Dustin Brown.  Dustin has been trashed in the media as a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to be father and signed his rights away. To adoptive parents and most of the public, the blame begins and ends with him for wanting his own daughter!

Matt and Melanie Copobianco

Apparently, unbeknownst to Dustin, Veronica’s father, Christie chose to give their child for adoption to the Copobiancos of Charleston, SC. She said she felt an immediate connection to these unrelated people she had located looking through ‘files’ and allowed them in the delivery room to the cord after delivery. They raised her in an adoption that was open to Christie for 27 months.

The public rallied around the couple all throughout the battle with websites like Saveveronica.org.  The media portrayed them as loving, distraught “parents” who were having “their” child taken from them and the public ate it up. The entire adoptive parent community and adoption industry media machine was behind the Copobiancos.

Yet, reformers any within the adoption community were – and still are - outraged with fury and point all ten fingers of blame squarely on the Copobiancos calling then selfish and entitled continuing to pursue a child they knew from the start was wanted by her father.  And they were fully supported and cheered on in this child snatching by a pro-adoption culture that permeates and has totally brainwashed our culture backed by a mega-billion dollar industry media machine that puts a spin on anything and everything adoption related, changing language and lying all to keep the babies and the money they bring flowing. And the public eats it up like hot dogs at a baseball game!  Cheering hooray for adoption! 

The Copobiancos are loudly and vehemently cast as the villains for keeping this child in a tennis match in which she was both the ball being bounced back and forth and the coveted prize when they could and should have returned the child the minute they knew the child had a capable father who was protesting the adoption and certainly should have left her with him once they lost custody and the child was removed and formed a bond with Dustin and his wife.

The anger for them among adoptees and mothers who have lost children to adoption is off the charts rage and pure unadulterated hatred! They and they alone are painted as THE monsters in this case by the adoption activist community for not letting go from the start or after the court decision in Dustin’s favor…but dragging it on and on now, when Veronica is four years old and old enough to really form clear cognitive memories. 

Their behavior is nothing less than despicable, some say reprehensible.

The Courts

The courts certainly bare culpability as well. The failed this child again and again flip flopping back and forth with black or white choices and no comprises. Under adoption law there are winners and losers and no way to compromise. It is preposterous that a case involving a child can go back and froth with arguments being made about her custody as if she were an automobile and her adoption just a contract for her sale. 

Family court denied the request of guardian ad litem that favored Dustin back in 2011.

Supreme Court Judge Scalia had scathing words for the decision on this case:

"The Court's opinion, it seems to me, needlessly demeans the rights of parenthood. It has been the constant practice of the common law to respect the entitlement of those who bring a child into the world to raise that child. We do not inquire whether leaving a child with his parents is 'in the best interest of the child.’ It sometimes is not; he would be better off raised by someone else. But parents have their rights, no less than children do. This father wants to raise his daughter, and the statute amply protects his right to so do. There is no reason in law or policy to dilute that protection."

The courts clearly failed this child.

Christie Maldonado

Christie, the one who put the whole adoption plan in motion through deceit and less than honest and open communication or informed consent of Dustin...is never mentioned by either side. Never held culpable. Never blamed. She gets off scot-free.

Christie sent Dustin a text message asking if he would rather pay child support or relinquish his parental rights. He responded via text message that he relinquished his rights, not ever hearing one word about any plan for adoption, he assumed he was allowing Christie to have sole custody, as opposed to joint custody.

Dustin was totally unaware that months prior to the baby's birth Christie had begun to work with an adoption attorney to place the child with Matt and Melanie Copobianco of South Carolina. Although Oklahoma law requires that when the case involves involves a child of indian decent, the tribe be notified, Maldonado's attorney misspelled Brown's name and provided an incorrect date of birth, so the tribe was not put on notice of the proposed adoption. After receiving permission from Oklahoma authorities, based in part on the identification of the child as Hispanic instead of Native American, the Copobiancos took the child to South Carolina.

The Copobiancos were dead wrong, but, Christie Maldonado, Baby Veronica's natural mother, in my opinion is THE most culpable person in this debacle. Christie chose the Copbiancos, and not just encouraged them, she insisted that they never give up. She attended every court procedure, at their side, speaking on their behalf, defending their right to her child as her sole wish, deriding Dustin Brown. She steadfastly waged a campaign of public character assassination against Dustin and supported the Copobiancos every move; every battle to keep the child away from Dustin. Her motives were pure hate for her ex.

Christie not only GAVE the Copobiancos motivation to continue, relentlessly, she gave then justification personally and publicly. With her on their side, they were not taking a child away form her father, they were upholding the never wavering wishes of the child's mother. 

Christie attended every court proceeding alligned with and supporting the Copobiancos, and went as far as telling "the state court that she would nullify her consent to the child’s adoption if Veronica were not to live with the Copobiancos." 

Dale Dove, the attorney who represented Christie for the Supreme Court proceedings said, “This is a case that promotes the rights and choices of the birth mother who’s taking the lion’s share of the burden. I am thrilled that they’ve decided it in a way that protects the adoption plans of birth mothers.”

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/07/21/5038614/rock-hill-attorney-involved-in.html#storylink=cpy

Even those of us within the adoption community who are as far as we can be philosophically from the pro-adoptionists and the Industry … are so focused on solely blaming the Copobiancos and so wont to ever see a birthmother as anything but the wounded party - as she too often is - that we unintentionally have painted a not well-intentioned, innocent, coerced mother with the same brush we use for those whose vulnerabilities are exploited by the adoption machine.

Christie Maldonado, of all people, could have used whatever leverage she had to help resolve this case through a mediated open adoption or at the very least a demand for visitation, Instead she - like the Copobiancos and the law - saw the child as a piece of merchandise to dispute ownership of.  

She of all people, as a MOTHER, should have and could have fought for her CHILD's best interest over that of all the adults. Instead she orchestrated the battle and acted throughout to destroy the possibility of a reunification of a child and her kin, her heritage and a father who loved and wanted her, acting like far too many divorcing couples who use children as weapons in a perceived war.  She was angry mother in a divorce and she used the Copobiancos to do HER dirty work of taking her child from Dustin!  And she used the Copobiancos to do her dirty for for her and pay all the legal fees.  

It was Christie, the natural mother, who set this all in motion by making a sole decision for the adoption of a child who had a father. She disregarded him from the start and then blamed him for not being involved. She was less than honest in her intent, leading Dustin Brown to believe he was signing custody over to her, without revealing her intent to place the child one she had him sign off on his rights. She tricked him!!  This was an evil and immoral thing to do and showed from the start of the process her lack of ability to put the needs of her child over her anger at this man she created this innocent baby with.

It is hard for me to say these things – to point a finger of blame at a “sister” birthmother who “lost” a child to adoption, but no generalizations can be made about any group of people. There are good and bad in every race, religion and there are good and bad adoptive parents and good and bad birth parents.

I recognize and award adoptive parents who do the right thing in order to encourage more to do so. And I recognize when a mother does the WRONG thing, as is the case here. I am able to admit that there are some mothers who are incapable of making safe, healthy choices for the well being of their children, often because of substance abuse or mental illness. I encourage extended family care in such cases, but to ignore the reality and claim or believe ALL mothers and fathers should have custody of their children, is dogmatic and inherently wrong and makes anyone saying it lose all credibility and paints adoption reformers as stringent anti-adoptionists who defend mothers right or wrong.

Loving, caring parents who are capable should maintain their rights and that was the case here with Dustin Brown. Dustin was duped by Veronica’s mother who put her anger above her child’s best interested and insisted she be raised by strangers rather than her own blood kin. And that started and ended this case for Veronica. It was what encouraged the Copobiancos to continue to pursue no matter what and influenced all the court decisions.

Where was court ordered mediation, as is done in divorces and custody battles? Where was a guardian ad litem to represent the child's interest throughout this or any disputed adoption? Where was court ordered visitation or slow transition for any of the transfers of this innocent, tiny human being tossed about like a ship in a storm, hither and yon, calling different sets of people Mommy and Daddy so many times in her young life, and suffering abandonment upon abandonment? Will she ever be able to trust again? Where were her interests in any of this?

The case may have reached its end. There is a slim chance Oklahoma refuses to hand over the child based on the time time, her age, and the bonds she has formed with her FAMILY. 

Who is to blame for this tragedy? The razor sharp divisiveness continues with the divide remaining as a battle between Dustin Brown and Matt and Melanie Copobianco, with Christie never mentioned, never dragged into any of the controversy, barely ever mentioned in the media except as “the natural mother.” She is protected and spared all blame and culpability, unjustifiably in my sole opinion. She is the unspoken of elephant in the middle of this fiasco that the public, the media and even we in adoption reform have left unscathed.

Christie Maldonado orchestrated this cruel circus every step of the way from her very first deceit to Dustin, to choosing the Copobiancos, standing by them to this day, and publically slandering her child’s father. I say shame on Christie and some stones should be cast where they need to be.  The Copobiancos never would have been in the picture, much less able to succeed had it not been for the choices made and reaffirmed every step of the way by Christie Maldinado.

Bad mother of year award goes to Christie Maldonado for putting her anger before the best interest  of her child, for deceiving and berating her child's father.

Collateral Damage: Innocent Victims

And in the wake of this war, like any war, there is are innocent people hurt. Veronica's sister and grandparents are among them.   Also, Dustin's current wife who totally her role as mother to Veronica and who the child called Mommy for a year. 

UPDATE: Christie Moldinado has sued the federal government, saying a law governing the placement of Indian children is unconstitutional
Read more: http://journalrecord.com/2013/07/25/mom-sues-u-s-government-in-indian-girls-adoption-law/#ixzz2aA5lGAcr                                                             

Supreme Injusitices

As happy as I am about the Supreme Court decision regarding DOMA, I cannot feel celebratory in the wake of the S.C. gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act and another very recent racist decision that favored White entitlement: http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2013/06/supreme-court-rules-against-indian.html. 

This decision is so overshadowed by news of DOMA that no one has heard of it, yet it is a monumental blow to the rights of Native American and the Child Welfare Act that protects their children.

I am supremely happy for the victory of gay rights and the one step forward, and do not want to rain an anyone’s parade, BUT… I am at the same time terribly dismayed at two recent - almost simultaneous - steps backward against equality and the rights of non-white Americans.

We are not free until all are free. We are not equal until all are equal.  I am sad, disappointed and a shamed to be an American when we can so easily stomp on the rights of peoples who have suffered such oppression.

Not to mention the fact that all adoptees are denied equality in terms of access to their own birth certificates – a human and civil rights denial in our own state – that is also ignored not just by the press, but by social justice activists as we focus all of our resources on one group. Read what NJ Senator Diane Allan has to say about this civil and human right issue here: : http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/the-last-and-least-recognized-americans-denied-equal-rights/  

Again, sorry to be a party pooper, but I just can’t dance in the streets with my gay friends while Texas took just two hours to limit voters rights, a child is torn from a loving father, and the rights of adoptees go totally ignored.

Baby Steps in Adoption Education!

The other day, I fell into a slump...feeling what's the sense of it all?

After nearly forty years of working to end the corruption, exploitation, coercion and profiting in adoption and seemed to just keeping worse instead of better. And there were such a precious few of us cared about anything beyond access for adult adoptees!

I’m a HUGE advocate for equal access, but there is so much MORE that needs to be done. And I was feeling hopeless, helpless, useless…

Then, today, in my doc’s waiting room I picked up a copy of a mag you only see in doctor’s waiting rooms. It’s called WebMD and has articles about the latest treatments advertised therein!

I never expected to turn a page and see an article on adoption and still have no idea what it was doing in a medical magazine…but there it was…I looked at the title with dread “What to expectwhen you’re thinking about adoption”

I could not believe my eyes when I read the opening paragraph:

"Adoption is created through loss," says Linda Hageman, executive director of adoption services at The Cradle, an Illinois adoption agency.

That's a statement you don't often see among the pretty pictures of giggling babies and happy families in adoption brochures. But it's true. The child loses his or her first parents. The birth parents face the loss of their child. And the adoptive parents often lose long-cherished dreams and expectations about having biological children.

An amazingly good start!   Unfortunately it went on to ONLY discuss the losses experienced by guess who? You got it…the only paying customer in the transaction!

Good advice is offered on dealing with feelings of loss of fertility, BUT…the idea that the child has also suffered a loss (never mind the original family) is never mentioned again in the short, one page article.

So it is far less than ideal… and it comes from The Cradle so is probably intended to give expectant moms warm fuzzy feelings about them as an agency that "gets it." (I have not gone mad and totally lost my objecgtivity, sense of reality, and even a bit of healthy cynicism)....but, just for today, I choose to take as a BABY STEP in the right direction! 

After all, ten years ago, even five…you would never see an opening line like that in print – or anywhere other than on FB or a blog!

So for today, I choose to see this as a positive step in the right direction and pat us all collectively on the back and say:  We Are Being Heard!!! We are being heard! We are being heard!

“Adoption is created through loss”

Nearly 40 years of saying this and it IS beginning to be heard and spreading to main stream media.

for tgoday I choose to be HOPEFUL.

Raising Awareness in the Struggle for Adoptee Rights

For quite some time I have written here and on FB comparing the adoption rights movement to the gay rights movement in an attempt to discover why they were so much more successful than we are; to learn and replicate strategies for success. I attributed our lack of progress, as compared to theirs, to fear and reluctance of adoptees to come forward in the huge numbers as gays do and say “We won’t take it anymore!” “We demand our rights restored.” I identified Stockholm Syndrome – fear of biting the hand that feeds them; fear of being rejected “again” - as a contributing factors that held adoptees back and made them often, if they did search, do so in secret or only after the death of their adoptive parents. And just search; maybe find out some facts and then close the box. Or, even if they have a reunion that is ongoing, few of those even join in the political activism to create changes for others. It’s kind of a “hooray for me” thing. I did what I needed to do to satisfy my curiosity and that’s that.

I was not wrong about any of that. But I had my eyes really opened recently. After 40 years of deep entrenchment in the adoption community; 40 years of adoption being the central focus of my life... I thought there was nothing really new or surprising. I write today to say I WAS WRONG.

I had my eyes opened to a large segment of the adoptee population I have hitherto only seen and heard tiny snippets from here and there and somehow in my mind had not recognized the enormity of this segment of the adoptee population: The Happy Adoptee!

Somehow, with one click of my mouse I found myself in a FB Adoption Reunion Stories group where it is commonplace and very much acceptable to use the term BIO and talk about “my bios” who, like stray dogs, had been found…given a pat on the head and…whatever. Some were allowed to remain for differing periods of time. When I suggested it was a hurtful word, I was accused of bashing them and their opinions.

For the first time I had real insight into the mindset of this population who desperately cling to their blindfolds and earplugs to ward off any aspect of adoption they judge as negative. Fingers firmly implanted in ears its lalala all the time! Sunshine and rainbows.

The adoptees I encountered needed to demean their “bios” in order to maintain their good adoptee status and not shatter the myths and lies they were told about “those people” and why they were placed. When you live in a house of cards built on a foundation of lies, stereotypes and misperceptions… one slight breath of fresh – true air - could destroy your whole world. The fear of shattering the illusion is enormous because it threatens their very identities and fragile egos; who they are. If I am not the me I have always known, who then am I? If all my life is a lie and not reality, what is real? Therefore, “they” and the life the adoptee might have had, must remain at arm’s length. Other. Separated by cold dispassionate language. Never a warm fuzzy term of endearment that is reserved for the protectors who rescued me from abandonment.

This of course is the happy female adoptee. The angry male adoptee is another manifestation of the same fears.

And unlike the closted gay alone in his shame, they form groups and feed off one another's right to steadfastly stay ensconced in their bliss.

I made the grave mistake of trying to explain that the phrase “adoption sucks” is both a personal reality for some adoptees as well as a commentary on the INDUSTRY and adoption PRACTICES which have nothing to do with, and does not negate the fact that any particular adoption – theirs or any other - or perhaps even that most adoptions are happy and loving.

I tried to tell them that things like denied access to their original birth certificate SUCK; that the corruption, coercion and exploitation of adoption including kidnapping and child trafficking SUCKS.

I was dismissed as a raving lunatic who was “bashing” them and their opinions, an unwelcome guest crashing their happy little party.

WHAT TO DO?

If we as activists are to get anywhere and move this movement forward we need to look at our role models and begin the educational process within. We need to all watch the stirring movie MILK and see how one man, Harvey Milk, stirred up the content and “accepting of the status quo” gay community of San Francisco and sowed the seeds of the gay rights movement by reaching his people and getting them angry and motivated enough to come out and speak out for their rights.  

In the 1970s, second wave feminism began with Consciousness Raising Groups designed to help complacent, happy housewives see their plight as oppressed women. If you are unaware of the difference in pay scale – that still exists – between the genders, you won’t write or call a legislator or sign a petition to change it. Until you know that there is a problem and what the problem is, you are not about to combat it!

If you don’t know that a man speaking to you as trash is abuse, you stay and take it. When abused women are asked why they stayed as long as she did, the answer is always the same. At first they hoped it would change and then they stayed because the fear of leaving was greater than staying and enduring the abuse. And think about the language used by domestic abusers: “Where will you go?” “No one else will ever love you or want you.”  For the adoptee the fear of hurting their rescuers is great. The fear of rejection and abandonment strikes deep into their foundation, the very life core of their being, and so is  well guarded.

This is where we are at and the challenge that faces us.  Until we awaken those who see no problem with their own lot in life, we will never have a viable and visible movement. We will instead remain as we are now viewed: a handful of malcontents. This is where we’ve been stuck for more than 40 years since Jean Paton first spoke out. A handful of bitter, unhappy, ungrateful adoptees and moms who the media and public can easily dismiss.

Until we get the masses among us to understand the issues of the laws that discriminate against them, we will never get the public to know, understand or care about it either. No one is interested in or needs to help people who see nothing wrong with their lives and are not seeking any help! It would be like “helping” an old lady across the street when she wanted to stay where she was or teaching a pig to fly.

We need to do internal education and consciousness raising.  The good news is that we can simultaneously educate within and without: adoptees and the public. But we need to put focus on education and awareness that there is a problem, before we can seek to change the problem. The average American, including the average adoptee has no clue, and worse still some don’t want to know.

We need a national organization focused on education. But let us not ignore that the 1970s consciousness raising groups were held in living rooms. Our search and support groups – in person and online – have a captive audience who along with search and reunion help need to have their eyes opened to the political issue here. We, who they come to for help, are in a posiiton to help them also see the bigger picture: that denied access is a violation of their civil and human rights as per the fourteenth amendment. They need help in developing some righteous indignation about the injustice, not just resolving their own personal search!

Those of us in search and reunion roles have the golden opportunity to begin that process by using the langauge of civil and human rights injustice when spekaing with those who seek our help. Bloggers who share their personal reunions likewise need to do likewise. Alll of us who are a part of the post adoption community play a role in awakening the sleeping, raising awareness, and stirring some righteous indignation.