National Adoption AWARENESS Month: Myths and Facts

Lauren Casper is an adoptive parent whose National Adoption Month blog post, It All Starts With Ashes, exhibits her sensitivities to the losses that precede adoption.

Recognition of the loss, pain and trauma that precedes every adoption is a very good FIRST STEP. Reunification with original family, whenever possible, is a far more important step for adoptees and the families they are born into. 

But, we cannot simply recognize the losses of adoption and continue to perpetuate them. All of us who have become enlightened have an obligation, I believe, to educate others to PREVENT as many future losses, pain and suffering as possible. 

We can either be part of the solution or part of the problem.  To see wrong and not do right is to be party to that wrong.  Far too many adoptions begin with good intent on the part of the adopters, but are accomplished with corruption, coercion and exploitation on the part of those meeting the demand for children for adoption - unbeknownst to well-intentioned adopters.

We who are enlightened about the truths of adoption need to educate those who are still in the dark. 

What better time than National Adoption Awareness Month to help dispel the myths and bring light to the lies perpetrated by the adoption industry and its practitioners whose livelihood depends filling a demand for children. Adoption is romanticized and glamorized (as smoking once was in our society!).  It's encouraged, promoted and supported by laws and policies including tax breaks. Yet, by and large the children used as the face of those in need are left behind as adoption serves its paid clients' desire for young babies, or children from overseas. 

MYTH: Adoption is a win-win. It matches unwanted children with families who want them.

FACT: Unplanned is not unwanted, nor is being pressured to relinquish your rights, or coerced to.  No woman - American or foreign born - dreams of conceiving a child, carry and birthing that child, and giving it away. The vast majority of adoptions are a result of the exploitation of a temporary crisis, most often poverty that could be resolved in ways that help the entire family and allow them to remain intact.

“Unwanted” is a euphemism applied to children and their families who are too poor and have too few social supports. The making of money as a prerequisite for parenthood in a society that privileges the White heterosexual individual is a key component of the continued disenfranchisement of the least powerful. Trading in Babies by So Yung Kim, Aug. 13, 2009, Conducive Magazine

FACT: Worldwide adoption exploits natural disasters, war, and unstable governments.

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .” The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

On an individual basis, adoption exploits poverty and ignorance, taking advantage of people's inability to read or understand english to even the concept of adoption as permanent. Parents are lied to and deceived to believe their children are coming to the US for an education and will be returned to them.

Domestically, mothers are given unenforceable promises of open adoption and are pre-birth matched getting them enmeshed in relationships with those vying for their child in ways that make them feel indebted and obligated.

MYTH: There are 140-150,000+ orphans available for adoption.

FACT: Nearly ninety percent (88.7%) of the children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one living parent and/or extended family.  Families in many nations use orphanages to provide services for their children such as education and medical care that they cannot afford but have no intention, however, of having their child taken for permanent adoption. Nor are these children available for adoption.

"...95 percent of orphans are older than 5. In other words, unicef’s “millions of orphans” are not healthy babies doomed to institutional misery unless Westerners adopt and save them. Rather, they are mostly older children living with extended families who need financial support." E.J. Graff. The Lie We Love, Foreign Policy, Nov./Dec. 2008

The numbers of 'orphans' are intentionally inflated by the adoption industry which uses terms such as "half orphan" or "social orphan" to tug at heartstrings, and encourage religious and humanitarian adoptions.  A half orphan in the industrialized world is a single parent, who ironically can adopt!

"Defining the child as an orphan is frequently done by people who have a vested interest in the final outcome." In an Era of Reform: A review of social work literature on Intercountry adoption, Rotabi and Bunkers

FACT: If there were truly so many children in real need of adoption placement, why do nations such Guatemala, Vietnam, Russia, Nepal, Ethiopia stop International adoption (IA) because of corruption, specifically child trafficking for adoption to meet a demand? Worldwide, babies and children are abducted by child traffickers and passed off as abandoned to foreign orphanages. Consumers - and even reputable US adoption agencies - have no way of verifying that children being offered for adoption have not been stolen, kidnapped, or coerced from unwitting parents.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

FACT:  When nations have shut down their IA programs the number of orphans has not increased indicating clearly that demand creates the "supply." Adoption is market-driven and serves those who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a child, not the children in need who remain behind in orphanages and US foster care.

FACT: The average cost of an adoption is $40,000. If your goal is altruism, there are many better ways to help orphans rather than plucking them one at a time from their homeland, their culture and heritage while leaving their siblings behind in the same conditions. Donations to organizations such as save the children, Christian Children's fund and UNICEF provide much needed medical provisions, wells, schools and school books.

"...overseas adoption is a kind of child abuse by the state. ....Overseas adoption is the forced expulsion of children from the society where they are supposed to live. In this sense, overseas adoption is a social violence against children. As humans, we exist as part of a gigantic ecosystem. The existence of the biological parents of adoptees can never be annihilated nor denied."Overseas adoption is a forced separation of children from their natural ecosystems, as well as a way of forcing them into compulsory unity with settings different from and unnatural to their genetic and original social systems. Through this forced separation and compulsory unity, not only the adoptees, but also their biological parents, adoptive parents and their family members suffer trauma." Pastor Kim Do-hyun, director of KoRoot 

MYTH: Children who could be adopted from foster care are likely to be "damaged" in some way.

FACT: There are half a million children in US foster care. More than 100,000 of those have no identified family to be reunified safely with and could be adopted. While these are in fact "older" children and some may have disabilities, the same is true of children adopted internationally although the truth of IA child's developmental problems are far more likely NOT to be revealed truthfully or fully.

Many development delays and behavioral problems are not evident until after international adoptions have been finalized. Any child who has been institutionalized is "damaged" and many of the children form Eastern Europe suffer fetal alcohol syndrome. Utilizing foster-to-adopt programs prospective adopters can live with a child before making a lifelong, permanent commitment and it is also easier to obtain family medical histories which are non-existent on children claimed to have been abandoned.

"There is an almost inexhaustible demand for very young children to adopt. People looking to adopt are generally looking to adopt children under the age of three, and preferably under the age of one. That's your essential problem. In America, which is the biggest importer, if you like, there are 23,000 children in the foster system waiting for adoption, but most of them will be aged five to 16. There's a very rich, powerful and well-resourced inter-country adoption lobby in the United States."  Andy Elvin, of Children and Families Across Borders

MYTH: Adoption is the same as if the child were born into his family.

FACT: While the system was aimed at creating and perpetrating this myth, even falsifying birth certificates to list adoptive parents as parents of birth, it is not the same. Adopted children have their own heredity and genes that effect their physical appearance and health as well as their psychological development.

Even legally, adoptees are not equal to children born into their families as the vast majority of US states deny adopted persons access to their own birth certificate for all or part of their lives.

MYTH: Adoption provides children a better life because those who adopt are highly motivated, of higher socio-economic status and better educated, etc.

FACT:  Adoption is a trade-off which usually provides more material "privileges" in exchange for a loss of heritage and genealogical connectedness, often with feelings of abandonment and rejection.

"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE 

FACT: Adoptive parents die and divorce at at least the same rate as all parents and this often leaves a child in a single-parent home with the same disadvantages that brings.

FACT: Because adoption in the US today is privatized, and entrepreneurial, home studies are paid for prospective adopters and are less than thorough. Children have been adopted by pedophiles and other abusers. Children have been beaten, caged, burned, starved, tortured, sexually abused and murdered by adoptive parents.

FACT: Adoptees suffer a disproportionate rate of substance abuse, are disproportionately seen in all types of treatment facilities, and suffer a higher rate of suicide than non-adoptees.

Read about "Post Adoption Issues" in Impact of Adoption on Adopted Persons from the US government's Child Welfare Information Gateway here.

FACT: Approximately 10-25% of adoptions fail and adoptees are abandoned or given to total strangers as detailed in a 5-part Reuters investigative report, Sept, 2013.

The FACT is that every adoption starts with a tragedy - a family who failed to find the resources they needed to remain together.  To promote or encourage more loss is immoral. Chemo helps many people survive cancer, but we don't stop seeking a way to prevent this horrible disease and simply put more and more people on harsh drug, and radiation therapies or expose them to surgeries.

Humane societies need to regulate adoption so that it is safe for the most vulnerable of their citizens and enact Family Preservation measures to reduce the number of children redistributed.

"The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guides UNICEF’s work, clearly states that every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. Recognising this, and the value and importance of families in children’s lives, UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for him or her...." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption

The FACT is that adoptions based on lies and government committed fraud to promulgate those lies in the form of falsified birth certificates and denied access to the accurate vital record of the birth, are a violation of human and civil rights and need to be outlawed.

How can any society promote what amounts to indenture and laws that discriminate, applying only to SOME citizens and not others, based solely on what was done TO these people without their knowledge or approval? 

"It should matter to everyone that adopted people, on reaching the age of majority, cannot automatically obtain their own original birth certificates like the rest of us. We should care, and we should feel outraged, for the same reason so many men supported suffrage for women and so many white Americans joined the civil rights struggle -- because we should find it offensive when any minority group in society is deprived of equal rights." “A Civil Right: Adoptees Should Have Access to their Birth Certificates” by Adam Pertman, The Huffington Post, 1/12/11 

RESOURCES:

• Profit, not care: The ugly side of overseas adoptions  
  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/profit-not-care-the-ugly-side-of-overseas-adoptions-2293198.html
• Adoption as Supply-and-Demand for Infertile Couples  http://www.americanmamacita.com/blog/adoption-as-supply-and-demand-for-infertile-couples/
• Profit not care: the ugly side of overseas adoptions  
  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/profit-not-care-the-ugly-side-of-overseas-adoptions-2293198.html
• Orphaned or Stolen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/orphaned-or-stolen-the-us_b_825451.html
• Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/
  Duped-by-Indian-adoption-agency-US-family-cautions-couples/articleshow/5964751.cms 
• Julia Rollings story at: http://bittersweet-story.blogspot.com/
• The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/11/the-lie-we-love
• The works of David Smolin on child trafficking: works.bepress.com/david_smolin/1/
• The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce
• Finding Fernanda by Erin Siegal
• Romania: For Export Only by Roelie Post
• The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka
• Outsiders Within by Jane Jeong Trenka
• Fugitive Visions by Jane Jeong Trenka
• The STORK MARKET: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry by Mirah Riben

Many good articles exposing the underbelly of adoption are published at DissidentVoice. To see a complete list, use this link.

RE CHINA:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/10/world/asia/china-baby-trafficking-twin-girls/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2012/06/17/344625/China-sentences.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8939661/Chinese-police-rescue-178-children-after-mass-child-trafficking-ring-bust.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/

http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased 

http://livingwithdeadhearts.com/

Re ETHIOPIA:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201208061002.html

 http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6211026n

http://www.ethicanet.org/ethiopia-to-cut-foreign-adoptions-by-up-to-90-percent

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rani-hong/human-trafficking-prevention-month_b_1199395.html

Inside Ethiopia's Adoption Boom  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577368243366708110.html

"To focus on these children without focusing on their families or communities thus becomes an ignoble hypocrisy; as if to say, 'give us your huddled masses–but only if they are cute children and can be indoctrinated from an early age'.” 

http://www.necn.com/11/07/13/Ethiopian-girl-lands-in-Maine-after-long/landing.html?blockID=857139&feedID=11106

RE RUSSIA:

Nineteen Russian children have been MURDERED by American adopters.

http://adoption.about.com/od/adoptionrights/p/russiancases.htm

The Language of Respect

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.                          George Orwell, 1984

As a nation, among the many things we are divided on is "politically correct" language. Some feel it is being shoved down their throats and it makes them defensive. We saw this in the Paula Dean bru-ha-ha.  I like to say to those opposed to "political correctness" that PC stands for POLITE and CONCERNED. I think it's all a matter of respect.

When I was told that referring to human beings as "Orientals", as had been accepted in the past, was no longer so...that rugs are oriental but people are Asian... I simply changed my wordage so as not to be offensive, albeit unintentionally. Others balk and act as if the mere suggestion of being respectful of how people wish be defined and addressed is a violation of their free speech.

My Grandma felt she was too young to be a grandmother. We were asked to call her Molly and did. It never confused our relationship with her. If a neighbor's child tells you that it hurts his feelings to be referred to as retarded, would you persist in doing so?  Bigoted slurs in conjunction with a brawl can change the legal dynamic of a simple assault into a federal hate crime.  In the workplace as well discriminatory or sexist language can rise to a legal offense, civilly if not criminally. Obviously the language we use is important and there ARE limIts on our freedom of speech.

Speaking of Adoption

Within the adoption community labels have always been contentious.  A young child, upon learning a playmate is adopted, will nine times out of ten blurt out a very simple and logical follow-up question: "Do you know who your real parents are?" It's as innocent and natural a question as asking a resident new to your community or a new classmate where they moved from. yet for adoptive parents - and adoptees - it raises issues and the hair on the back of their neck.

If you are living with and being raised by people who ADOPTED you, then you were not born to them and obviously have some genetic roots elsewhere. Ten-year-olds know this quite naturally. yet adoptive parents get bent out of shape when adults ask them the same question, even when asked about their very obviously, racially different, child. Many adopters report finding the question invasive and offensive. Mostly it is the use of the "real" - as in "do you know your child's 'real' parents?" that is troublesome for adopters.  They object to biological creation being - rightfully - described as "real" and "natural" thus making adoption unreal and unnatural, which it is is.  Many say they respond to such questions with a quick: "I am his REAL mother!" which of course is legally true and verified by a falsified birth certificate that says so. Step parents, it seems, even those who have raised a child since infancy, are far less defensive in revealing their step-parent relationship.

The problem with this and so much sensitivity in adoption language is taking a real fact of the PROCESS of adoption and making it personal. Adopters take the fact that they are not the real or natural parents of their child as a slight against them, as if it makes them "lesser" instead of just having created their family differently. The roots of this defensiveness lie in unresolved feelings of inadequacy of having not been able to conceive and birth a child of their own...or, in other cases from wanting to paint a "color blind" attitude that portrays just how much they love all of their children - home grown and adopted - equally.

"Adoption is not identical with producing one's own child into one's own family.  Not to recognize this reality is to romanticize adoption, and adoption literature abounds in such pretense." John Triseliotos, author of In Search of Origins.

"The traditional blood-kin family is composed of one mother, one father, and their child or children. The adoptive family is composed of two mothers, two fathers and a child common to them. Although society, and to some extent adoptive parents, would like to pretend that it is exactly like a traditional family, it is the differences that are extremely significant in each member's life." Dr. Herbert Wieder, Pyschiatrist with decades of experience working with adoptive families, testifying for Assembly Bill 2051 (Adoption) in Trenton, NJ, December, 1981.

It is recognizing these differences that are crucial to healthy inter-family relations in adoptive families.  The reality that the world sees is that every child is born to a set of parents with whom he or she shares DNA that makes that connection very real in a way that cannot be denied by thought, wishes or language. The connection is one formed in nature and is thus natural as opposed to legal arrangements made for the care of children subsequently.

The Flip Side

Another aspect of hurtful language is the use of the term "bio."  While I have never objected to being referred to as a birth mother, I find "bio" extremely and intentionally COLD and distancing. Recently I heard a euphemism that was new to me: LIFE GIVER.  It doesn't seem too bad except that it was said repeatedly as LIFE GIVER - in caps - and never "my life giver." And, in context, it was clearly the female form of SPERM DONOR which was used in the same piece, also in caps.

As my Mom used to say: "It's not what you say, but how you say it." You be the judge at this link, to what is for me a clear case of she doth protest too much about not caring. (Note, too that as a child this woman yielded to her a-mother's tears and then in true "good adoptee" behavior she learned as a child, "obeyed" her husband's wishes as well to leave it all alone.)

Some adoptees on Facebook were quick to defend that this is how they feel and thus they should be able to use language that expresses how they feel. Even if it is hurtful or offensive, I ask. Some defended it because they had never met LIFE GIVER.We all have ancestors we've never met.  Some may be perfectly lovely folks and others may be horrid. But we don't disdain them. Others have met and dislike their original parents, for whatever reasons. Is it even then necessary then to use demeaning language to identify their connection to you?

If I decided to refer to my firstborn child as GIVE AWAY, and said and wrote things about having met GIVE AWAY when she was sixteen and that then GIVE AWAY attended Syracuse university.... would adoptees not find that cold and a tad offensive???  What does it say about me? Does it indicate some unresolved issues? What if I called her DISCARD? or, "unwanted"?

For some mothers, the child they lost or who was taken from them for adoption is their "kidnapped" child. Many feel very strongly that their child was abducted, not adopted.  How would referring to their child as ABDUCTEE fly? "ABDUCTEE and I were reunited last year and I got to meet ABDUCTEE'S spouse and children." Does it sound warm and friendly, or as harboring of some UNRESOLVED ISSUES?  If you were left with the task of writing an obit, or purchasing a grave marker for the person from you are adopted-separated, would you want it to read: here lies LIFE GIVER..perhaps next to a stone marked "SPERM DONOR."

How about if mothers, not only spoke about our children this way, but addressed our children with these labels? Is it not depersonalizing and dehumanizing on the level of A Boy Called It?

Adoptive parents, and adoptees, can call us "birth parents" or "biological parents" and we may feel like or be strangers, but we maintain a unique blood and genetic connection to our children that makes us REAL and related in a way that adoption does not replicate. This reality must be recognized and dealt with. 

There is a balance between our individual and personal right to express how we feel toward others in our lives and simple respect. It is also incumbent upon us to recognize and work on the damage and in some cases havoc adoption has created in our lives; the deep irresolvable hurt.

What a nicer world if we each did our work and tried to be respectful.

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...

The Legacy of Veronica’s Tears and Traumas

Those dedicated to family preservation, child welfare, human decency, morality, father's rights, Indian rights, and ethical adoption practices are shedding tears over the culmination of Dusten Brown’s long, brave and determined battle to simply be a Daddy to his beautiful daughter, Veronica. Still facing a lawsuit, extradition and charges of felony custodial interference, he has very sadly lost the battle for his beloved Veronica.

Veronica – the child whose years-long legal custodial battle riveted a nation – has just turned four. Having happily settled in to life with her devoted Daddy and a large, loving extended blood-related family – not to mention her Cherokee Tribe - Veronica is now being made to suffer their loss in her life while simultaneously having to get to know people she has totally forgotten.

In the final dissenting decision, Justice Noma Gurich wrote: 

“We cannot ignore the fact that (Veronica), at the age of 27 months, has already been moved from one set of ‘parents’ to another, after lengthy judicial consideration of her best interests… Under the issues present to this court, an immediate change of custody without any consideration of her best interests will require a four-year-old child to resolve her feelings of loss and grief for a second time.”

Dr. Naranjan Karnik, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago’s Rush University, commenting on the final decision to disrupt veronica’s life yet again, spoke of the courts to consider her best interests at all. Dr. Philip Fisher, a psychologist specializing in childhood trauma at the University of Oregon, said the final change in custody at 4 years old could result in “traumatic changes can actually hamper development in the part of the brain that helps someone make good decisions.”

There are many issues yet to play out while this child adjusts to the insanity of a life that just may disprove the old adage that you can never have too many people love you!

Will there be visitation?  How can we anticipate such an arrangement to be

voluntarily carried out now when Matt and Melanie Capobianco who have already initiated a half million-dollar lawsuit against Dusten for their legal fees?

They have initiated a lawsuit to recoup their expenses in the drawn out legal battle they CHOSE to continue instead of doing the moral – albeit difficult - thing and ending it the day they learned that Veronica had a father who was duped and wanted custody of HIS DAUGHTER!  Every penny they spent from that point forward was of their own choosing and opposed to the best interest of the child they coveted. Both Dusten and the Capobiancos should sue Christie Maldonado for orchestrating the whole thing and for perpetrating FRAUD.

Will Veronica have had the opportunity to know her Daddy – to see and FEEL his love? To hear HIS side of the story? If they do allow visitation, what will this child think?  If not, in ten years, when teenaged Veronica is at a computer and enters her name into a search engine…. what will she think?

It is hard to imagine how the Capobiancos can spin this into something that makes sense to Veronica and justifies their actions.  After all, it's not like they can say your mommy and daddy died...or, "they" CHOSE us...or, we "rescued" from an awful life of abuse and neglect, poverty...  Yet, one must assume that they justify it to themselves every day, and have since the start.

Will they continue the vindictiveness that Christie Maldonado engineered, put it into motion with deceit, and kept it going for years out of sheer vengeance? Will Veronica spend the rest of her life being brow-beaten by Christie and the Capobaiancos to the point of not being able to decipher truth form lies; a classic Stockholm Syndrome victim? How else can they justify their actions but to deify Dusten?

Adoption reform, Indian nation, fathers rights, and family preservation Bloggers must keep the truth out there for her to find. We must revisit the truth every year on her September birthday by sharing her daddy's parting words with her.

The Broader Legacy and Implications of Veronica’s Traumas

The effect on the Indian Nation and their national sovereignty is loud, clear and palpable. This case set devastating precedent for the ICWA – all but gutting it entirely, rendering it another treaty trampled on by US courts. 

The effect on adoption practice and it’s continued war against family preservation – and most viciously, the war on fathers – has intensified.

“Once these agencies and lawyers get the birth mother on the hook ... they tell these birth moms not to answer any calls from the dads,” said Shannon Jones, the Charleston attorney who represents Simmons (Desaray’s dad and grandmother) and Brown. “Of course, then they argue the dad is a deadbeat.

“It usually wins the day.”

Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute and an adoptive parent, said of the current state of adoption: 

“It’s a system that deep-sixes the rights of birth moms and dads.” “We give lip service to the best interests of the child, then we do things that constantly prove that the adoptive couple are the only people we’re concerned about.” 

Lip service indeed. Spoken by the king of adoption lip service himself, who like the attorneys in these cases has a livelihood dependant upon the continuation of the redistribution of children through adoption and cannot bit too hard on the hands that feed him.  Yes, adoptive parents are the only ones the system favors because they are the only paying customers. It is their demand that sets the wheels in motion and it is they who pay all the bills for the scum-sucking baby brokers and “facilitators,” industry lobbyists and spokespersons.

Desaray: Another Veronica?

Another case already looms: that of Desaray Simmons, being challenged by the Absentee Shawnee Tribe. The contested adoption of Desaray begins by following in the same footsteps as Veronica, involving  OK and SC and employing the very same South Carolina attorneys: Raymond Godwin and James Fletcher Thompson. One difference that hopefully might prove major: the couple trying to adopt Desaray did NOT secure interstate compact approval before leaving Oklahoma with her. Shawnee attorney Charles Tripp of Owasso, Okla., has argued that the baby was removed secretly, that neither the tribe nor the father got proper notice of the proceedings. An Oklahoma judge has since ordered Desaray’s return, but Godwin is fighting the move in South Carolina.

Godwin gets referrals from pastors, hospitals, attorneys and businesses that advertise for pregnant women. He then, conveniently sends them to his wife’s agency:  Nightlight Christian Adoption. Which in turn steers women toward what they consider one of the best options — and the one that pays both Goodwins’ fees - adoption.

“If she decides to parent, she’s going to be living in a life of poverty,” says Beauvais-Godwin, the attorneys wife and head of Nightlight, a statement that indicates the brainwashing applied to mothers in crisis and contradicts that the agency’s major concern is preventing abortion. “Savior” wanna-be adopters are allowed, in South Carolina, to pay: down payments on housing or a vehicle, rental fees, food and utility bills, in addition to medical expenses.

Remove profit in adoption and remove tragedies such as Veronica and Desaray,

Adoption reform is in dire need of more than lip service. There is far too much money to be made and far too few laws in place to curb abuses in private adoptions.

Put an end to pre-birth matching and direct payments from pre-adopters to expectant moms and loopholes on “expenses” – all of which is contrary to laws against pre-birth contracts. Pre-birth matching creates false expectations for adopters and expectant moms creating feelings of indebtedness and obligation.

Disallow the accepted predatory practice of adopters in the delivery room and allow new moms a time to bond and make a decision based on a real, live human descendant in her arms, not a concept.

Set appropriate time limits for taking a relinquishment and for the mother to revoke her consent. Even car sales have a cooling of period! SC, is here too one of the most lax states and why it has one of the largest number of adoption agencies and why they – and Utah - snatch expectant mothers from other states, a practice which should be outlawed.

But all we do is give lip service to each tragedy as it unfolds and then go right back to business as usual – taking people’s children through deceit and deception, using whatever means possible to coerce and exploit to get the desired COMMODITY to an ever-increasing market, now doubled by the acceptance of same-sex adoption in all but some religious agencies and some countries other than the U$.

In Conclusion

Veronica’s case, sadly, stands as proof that deceit can win. It is a testament to pure unadulterated vindictive mother vengeance triumphing. It is a flagship win for entitlement by virtue of paying for an adoption – celebrated by baby-snatchers far and wide who see natural parents as nothing more than a impediment, a road block to their heart’s desire to be pulverized and plowed over. See “Adoption Entitlement and Class Warfare: What makes the Capobiancos and others like them tick"? 

Veronica's Fourth Birthday - in Oklahoma with, her family, The Browns

Veronica’s case stands to demonstrate clearly that lies and deceptions, coercion, whatever – can, and too often are – victorious in the end. All you need is money, a whole lot of STUBBORN, and an equal amount of selfishness and a self-centered lack of concern for your child’s best interest or his or her roots, heritage etc.…. and you will prevail

In denying the Capobiancos’ first appeal, the S.C. Supreme Court noted the birth mother’s vengeful and deceitful attempts to conceal the adoption. 

Christina Maldonado first indicated on a form her hesitancy to identify the father, Dusten Brown, because of his ties to the Cherokee Nation. When she went to an Oklahoma hospital to give birth, Maldonado was on “strictly no report” status, preventing inquirers like Brown from learning that she had been admitted.

Vindictive vengeance, deceit, duplicity and fraud that led to Dusten’s name being misspelled and thus no proper notification to the tribe of an impending adoption. Accident?

Just as in other types of US court cases - including the most notorious OJ Simpson murder trail – it’s always about who has the better lawyer, not right and wrong.

Will Desaray be another victim of corrupt adoption and the failure of the courts to consider the best interest of children and the constitutional right of parents to nurture their own children unless proven unfit to do so?

Children are born to (at least) two parents. U$ adoption practice too often negates that fact.

Adoption is supposed to serve the needs of orphans and children who are abandoned, abused, neglected or unwanted….or whose parents – BOTH - are convinced that adoption is their willing choice.  Neither Veronica nor Desaray fit any of those categories. Both have loving, capable blood-kin who never abused or neglected any child and who never consented to an adoption.

In both cases, their adoptions should have been halted the moment a willing and able father – and/or extended family – stepped up to the plate and demonstrated in court a desire to overturn a pending adoption from being finalized. PERIOD!

We mourn with you, Dusten and we pray for Veronica....and Desaray...and for every child torn from loving family to become a prized commodity...

Adoption Entitlement and Class Warfare

What makes the Capobiancos and others like them tick?

Beyond adoption entitlement, bred by and fed on entitlement, lie predatory behaviors. They are subtle.

The following was posted on an adoption.com forum:

Can they really keep aunt away?

---

So yesterday we had our monthly meeting with baby girl's caseworker. It seems that nothing much has changed over the last month except vists are back on, but I really feel like that won't last very long. Baby girl is now just shy of 3 months and has only had 2 vists with mom, and alleged dad is completely out of the picture...he actually has insisted mom mgive baby girl up for adoption. Mom has another case in a bordering state for her 1 year old that has been in grandma's custody since birth. Mom completed parenting classes for her other case, but has done absolutely nothing else. Baby girl's caseworker stated that if the 1 year olds case was in our county...they would have already filed for TPR! So basically mom has done nothing in ether of her cases, and really doesn't look like she is going to change anytime soon. However; the caseworker did state that mom's aunt has called several times this week requesting temporary custody of baby girl. The caseworker said that something about the whole situation just didn't sit right with her, so she called the original case investigator to see if she new anything about aunt. Well, it seems the investigator had absolutely nothing nice to say about the aunt...I guess she was at the original staffing meeting and was going off on everyone. So baby girl's caseworker stated that there was absolutely no way she was granting temporary custody to aunt because she believes she will just turn the baby over to mom. So I guess my question is...can the caseworker actually refuse aunt? It seems she would have to at least request that she have a home study done...

The problem begins when a person or persons who feel entitled to a child - something the adoption industry instills in all infertile prospective adopters, ensuring them that there is a child for everyone (like a chicken for every pot). It then blossoms into full blown, blind, lustful, unstoppable predatory behavior when a child is identified as potentially "theirs."  

Once in the clutches of the adoption machine, well-meaning persons first are made to feel entitled by virtue of the fact that all of society deems them more "deserving" of a child than the sluts and dead beats that get "knocked up" by accident and "don't want" their kids.  While mothers are being brow-beaten into submission as to how undeserving they are, the paying clientele are whipped into a frenzy of belief that this is "their" baby and they must fight like a mother lion whose cubs are in fatal danger if they and they alone do not come to their rescue. Some have the additional backing of BELEIF that God himself has ordain this particular child to be theirs and they are doing HIS work to fight to protect this child and ensure it is whisked away to THEIR home and no other.

Then, just as the war machine turns innocent, well-meaning, patriotic young men and women into killing machines capable of committing MASS MURDER - shooting up villages, gassing them, or pushing people into ovens - and feeling JUSTIFIED having turned "others" into "the enemy"....the same is done to prospective adopters.  And make no mistake about it: this IS WAR! It is one of many aspects of class warfare being practiced in the U$A....  It's imperialism when babies are trafficked from overseas and washed clean and made legal by stamping the word "adoption" on what is done, and plain and simple class warfare when done within domestic borders and the exploited are our own citizens. In both cases it is the making of the underclass handmaid breeders for those who can affords to pay for their services and are made to feel ENTITLED to do so.

Matching cinches the deal.  

Once they are matched with a baby - born, unborn, or even just  a photograph of a child in an orphan overseas - any obstacle in the way is to be fought fiercely using any and every weapon available. Money is no object at this point. The goal is now an obsession and all is fair in this war in which they feel more than justified. The child is "theirs" in their mind and it triggers behavior beyond rational reasoning. They become totally convinced that the life of the child depends on THEM having THIS child!  They act - and perhaps feel on some level - that their own lives depend upon it.

This is where the Capobiancos and all other adopters in contested adoptions begin from and this is the position they maintain to the bitter end.

The attitude and behavior exhibited by adopters in contested or potentially contested adoptions is akin to that which we witness on “Survival” or “Big Brother” TV shows. It is what we see in women at a bargain basement 2-hour-only sellout sales on wedding gowns where it’s every woman for herself, pushing and shoving - claws out - to get the desired commodity. Every other “player” a rival for the gold ring, the prize, the “gotcha”, the WIN.

The first obstacles to overcome in the battle are the mother and the father. In this case, the father presents no threat to their goal. It is interesting to see how the mother, who presents little to no threat still needs to be painted as the enemy of this child…someone all parties involved need to work to keep from getting her hands on her own infant child, despite the fact that this sounds like a “voluntary” relinquishment with no abuse or neglect mentioned regarding either of the mother’s children.

The bigger threat here is the baby’s blood-related aunt, an adjunct to “the enemy”; an ally whose biggest threat is that she would conspire to give the child to evil birthmother! Thus the aunt’s insistent behavior is described in terms making it seem pathological and dangerous rather than the normal concerns of someone witnessing her sister being railroaded and her niece snatched away.

Time is viewed through distorted lenses in this mad dash for the finish line. Three months is felt as an eternity for the wanna-be child-snatchers rather than seeing it as a time for the mother to recover from childbirth, regroup, catch her breath, get her life together and figure out what she wants and what she needs to do to be a mother to her newborn child.

Yet the same time period is viewed very differently when judging the mother. In that regard, language is manipulated to subtly subvert the normal into something evil and suspicious. Instead of saying the mother visited twice in three months, note the seemingly insertion of the word “just” – minimizing her visitation to make her appear unloving, uncaring. The fact that the mom did “nothing” regarding either of her children is reported as if she had committed child abuse or neglect, and in fact blatantly ignores the two visits.

Of course, in the upside-down backwards, Catch-22 world of adoption anything a mother does or might have done overtly would be reported as inappropriate if not insane, just as the aunt’s behavior is viewed as other than a healthy, normal reaction to the coercion and exploitation of a member of your family. After all, our social mores say that once someone has CONSIDERED placing a child for adoption, they are defective, immoral, and UNFIT to parent.…(unless of course, they are adoptive parents who are “struggling” with a child who is “oppositional” and refuses to bond with them and behave; a child who cannot act as if they’ve experienced no trauma, experienced no rejection.)

There is thus not an ounce of human compassion for the mother, father or any extended family (such as the aunt in this case) as human beings in need and in pain.  They are totally dehumanized. Simply impediments standing between the goal of obtaining the prize and not.

In their heads, the prospective adopters are not fighting loving family to take their child away for them to fill their own greedy needs and desires.... but "saving" the child from an imaginary boogie man “enemy” of their own – and to a large extent society’s - creation. They create the lies about the original family and they firmly believe every one of them.

Far more importantly than depersonalizing the family as obstacles and enemies, is the fact that there is not one thought about what is best for this newly born infant child....just the assumption that, of course, adoption is "better" option. Just look at how much more money they have for lawyers to fight for what they want!

And, of course today, all of this is being done privately with “counselors” salaries dependent upon the completion of the adoption transaction. Thus, the “counselors” – baby broker facilitators -  are not asking about the child best interest, let alone asking the paid client to consider it when an extended family steps up to the plate challenging the ensuing adoption. No, the facilitator sides with the client in seeing this blood kin as an obstacle and an enemy of the goal of the completion of the legalized child abduction. They side with the client and instigate the we/they competitive war. Same for their attorney.

When they succeed, for adopters, adoption is sheer joy – the answer to their prayers; the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams. Most are incapable of thinking beyond or seeing any other perspective. Their joy blinds them to the pain and suffering their choices caused or the trauma and loss their child has experienced. No, they now create a new myth to cling to: "love" will heal all that. They feel lucky and blessed and are deliriously happy with their acquisition and since they lack the ability to any other perspective but their own - or see anyone else in the equation but themselves - they believe the child feels exactly as they do and is just as joyous.

In adoption, entitlement of those able to afford the fee, and the predatory behavior many display when things get tough, are as insidious as is White Privilege.

See also: Adopter Entitlement - The Brave New World is Here