Pregnant After Rape...A Reunion

Pregnant after being raped at 14, June was forced to give away her
baby - what happened when they were reunited 40 years later?
By BOUDICCA FOX-LEONARD
29th May 2009

When June Redman picked up her phone to dial the number of the son she
had given up for adoption more than 40 years earlier, her natural
excitement was overshadowed by one awful thought.

What would she say when he asked who his father was? Would it be fair
to tell the truth and confess that his father was a vicious rapist? Or
would it be better to lie and say he was dead?

The dilemma forced June to relive the devastating rape which left her
pregnant at the age of 14 and which her family demanded she forget.

So it was with trepidation that she dialled the number of the son she
had not seen since he was a baby.

'When Paul answered the phone, I said "Hello" and introduced myself,'
says June. 'I was overcome with emotion from hearing his voice and I
said: "I can't believe it's really you."

'My next thought was to say: "Is there anything you'd like to ask me?"
I felt somehow his questions were more important than mine.'

After a brief pause, Paul simply asked: 'Who's my father?'

'I said I wasn't really sure and then blurted out that he was a
stranger who had raped me. In that moment, I feared he would reject
me.

'Here was my long-lost son, who I'd thought about every single day
since giving him up, and I was telling him his father was a rapist.

'I knew he would be horrified and was terrified he would put the phone
down and never want to talk to me again.'

After a stunned silence, Paul, with remarkable understanding, said to
his mother that he had often wondered if such an event had led to his
adoption.

June, 58, continues: 'He didn't ask me anything else about the rape
and I had no idea how he was really feeling.

'I decided to quickly change the subject and ask him about his own
life. I was so relieved when Paul asked to meet. I felt that would be
a much better way to discuss why he had been adopted.'

A few days after their conversation, Paul emailed her some photos.

'Until then, the only picture I had of Paul was one taken of him at
eight weeks old,' says June, a retired retail manager from Runcorn,
Cheshire.

'On the one hand I wanted to see how he looked as an adult. On the
other, I was terrified he would look nothing like my family - but like
his father.

'But a childhood photo he had sent of himself with bright blond hair
was indistinguishable from my middle son Stewart.'

The pair arranged to meet at a pub close to his home in Wilmslow,
Cheshire.

She says: 'From the moment he walked in, all I could do was stare at
him. I even apologised for staring too much. I wanted to hug him but,
fearing he wasn't ready for it, I forced myself just to smile and say
hello.

'I was overwhelmed by how much he looked like my side of the family,
and pleased that he did not in any way remind me of the rapist, whose
features I had somehow successfully managed to push from my mind.

'We talked solidly for two hours. I was desperate to find out
everything about him. I was determined not to think about his father
but, if I'm honest, there were moments when he crossed my mind.

'For example, when Paul told me that he suffered from both glaucoma
and scoliosis (curvature of the spine), I immediately assumed he must
have inherited both conditions from his father, as there is no history
of either in my family.

'But I didn't worry that he would have inherited behavioural traits
from his birth father. I am a firm believer in nurture over nature and
I could instinctively tell he was a kind and gentle man.

'I also never doubted that I would love him, as I still loved the baby
I'd held in my arms 40 years before.

'Paul was too shy to say it outright, but I could tell he was thrilled
to meet me and was full of questions about his half-brothers.

June was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when, in December 1965, she was
attacked and raped by a stranger as she walked back home from a
friend's house in Liverpool, one dark evening.

Dishevelled and shaking with shock and fear, she told her mother, who
took her to the police.

'I was distraught, but the police were dismissive and cold,' she
recalls. 'The attitude back then was that a girl was to blame if she
was raped. What was even worse was that my mum seemed to feel the same
way.'

June and Paul at their first meeting: June said the day was one of the
happiest of her life

Over the following weeks, a police doctor gave June regular medical
examinations, and two months later tests revealed she was pregnant.

'When I was told, I remember feeling as if I was watching it happen to
someone else,' says June.

'All I knew about sex was what I'd heard in the playground and I
hadn't really realised I might fall pregnant as a result of the rape.
My family were very traditional and sex was a taboo subject in our
house.

'I couldn't stop crying, but my mother's reaction was to be extremely
uptight and distant.'

Terrified her daughter's plight would bring shame on their family,
June's mother sent her to a home for expectant teenagers in Chester,
run by nuns.

'No one asked me how I felt about what had happened and I had
absolutely no choice in the matter. My mother and a welfare worker
said I had to go, and so that's what I did,' explains June.

'I was obviously traumatised by what had happened, but times were very
different then. I wasn't offered any rape counselling. All I could do
was block out the horrific memories of that night.'

Housed in a dormitory with six other pregnant girls, June spent her
days washing and ironing all the clothes and bedding for the girls,
babies and nuns.

'I'd never been away from home except to visit an aunt in Yorkshire
for a week,' says June.

'The atmosphere was bleak. Nobody visited me. No one told me anything
- nothing about the changes my body would go through or what to expect
from labour.

'I just watched the other girls in the home get bigger, disappear and
come back with a baby instead of a bump and presumed the same thing
would happen to me.

'All the focus was on the shame I would bring on my family if anyone
were to know about my secret.'

To this day, June has no idea if the police made any effort to catch
her rapist. Her parents refused point blank to discuss it with her and
both are now dead.

'My mother completely shut down over what happened to me,' says June.
'She was an austere woman and we had never been close. Of course, I
wanted to know what had happened but didn't dare ask and she didn't
volunteer the information.'

In August 1966, June was induced at Chester City Hospital and Paul was
born, weighing 7lb 6oz.

As soon as she held him, she felt an overwhelming rush of love. 'I
fell head over heels in love with him. It never crossed my mind that I
wouldn't be able to keep him. I named him Paul Anthony after a cousin
of mine.

'I was a very naive 14-year-old. I'd been told not to think about the
rape, so I tried not to.

'Now I had this baby and, like any mum, I couldn't help but adore him.
As far as I was concerned, despite what his father did, he was always
innocent. But when my mother finally came to visit, she wouldn't even
look at the baby.'

June spent three months at the home caring for and bonding with her
baby, blissfully unaware that her mother was arranging an adoption.

'I took complete responsibility for Paul and had some of the best days
of my life,' says June.

'I learnt to change him and feed him, and spent hours just gazing at
him. Then, suddenly, the Mother Superior announced I was leaving. I
thought Paul and I were going home to Liverpool to live with my mum.'

But June was taken straight to a hospital in Liverpool, where she was
met by her parents. The moments that followed remain etched on her
memory.

'I went into a room and became aware that there was a man and woman in
the next room with a boy who was around two years old.

'Paul was due a feed, so I fed him and changed his nappy, then the
welfare officer said it was time for me to hand him over to the
adoptive parents. I remember looking at him, aghast that I was
expected to hand my baby to strangers.

'I looked pleadingly at my mum, but she just told me to hurry up. I
was made to hand over Paul like he was a parcel. I was so stunned I
couldn't even cry.'

Afterwards, June was taken to a cafe for lunch. To her horror, her
mother pressed her to eat.

'But I felt so sick that I was almost choking,' she remembers. 'Tears
were rolling down my cheeks, but I was told to pull myself together.
My mother even said: "Stop being daft."'

June was warned by her parents not to share her secret with anyone.
She left school and began working in a shop. At 16, she met and fell
in love with Doug, 23, an electrical store manager, and the couple got
engaged in 1968.

Despite her mother's warnings, June told her fiance about her past.

'My mother had always said that no man would marry me if they knew,
but Doug loved me and understood,' she says.

The couple went on to have three sons - Chris, 39, Stewart, 37 and
Douglas, 35 - but thoughts of Paul were never far from her mind.

'I worried about the life he was having. I knew the adoptive parents
had another little boy - the toddler I'd seen with them - and I
comforted myself with the thought that at least he had another child
to play with.

'I was sure they loved Paul and were giving him a good upbringing.'

The passage of time failed to ease June's grief and in 1994 she
stopped talking to her mother, after struggling to come to terms with
the part she had played in Paul's adoption. She died three years
later.

Soon after, June decided it was time to tell her sons about Paul.

'I felt I had a duty to tell my sons the truth and I wanted them to
understand the burden I'd carried with me. My youngest son, Douglas,
seemed to take it all in his stride and hugged and kissed me, saying:
"No matter what, you are still my mum."

'Stewart also took the news well, but for Chris it was harder, as he
always thought he was the eldest.'

For the next ten years, June tried to locate Paul through adoption
forums. Then in December 2005, the law, which until then had stated
that birth parents couldn't apply for information about their adopted
children, changed and gave birth parents the right to trace them.

June contacted the charity After Adoption and two months later, in
August 2007, June received a call saying they had found her long-lost
son.

'I couldn't speak and I was crying with joy,' says June. 'The next
move was for the charity to contact him to see if he was happy to be
in contact with me.

'Fortunately he was, and for the next three months we exchanged
letters and emails before that first meeting in December.'

Paul has since met the rest of June's family. 'He hasn't asked any
more about his father,' she adds. 'I think we both feel that we are so
lucky to have found each other, there is no point dwelling on the
negative.

'The most important thing for me has been to tell Paul that I'd never
wanted to let him go and that losing him had broken my heart.

'From my point of view, over four decades have passed since the rape
and time has helped heal the scars.'

Thankfully, says June, Paul had a happy adoption. He always knew he
was adopted and his father, who ran a watch shop, and mother, a nurse,
had provided him with a comfortable upbringing.

Now June, Paul and her sons meet regularly and they talk on the phone
every Saturday morning.

'Last August, the two of us spent his birthday together,' says June.
'It was the sort of simple pleasure that I had almost given up hoping
would ever happen.'

For more information about After Adoption, call 0800 840 2020 or visit
www.afteradoption.org.uk

Whose Calling Who Stupid?

May 31, 2009
Court takes child of ‘stupid’ mother
Daniel Foggo

WHEN Rachel celebrated her daughter’s third birthday three weeks ago
the little girl was a picture of happiness. Yet for her mother it was
a bittersweet occasion.

Rachel had to squeeze in the celebrations with family court hearings
in the morning and the afternoon. The judge was to decide whether to
reduce Rachel’s contact with her daughter in the run-up to her
adoption in three months’ time.

The verdict came back days later. “The judge said I should have my
contact with my daughter reduced from once a fortnight to once a
month, with the amount of time going down from an hour-and-a-half to
just five minutes,” said Rachel.

“Then, when she is with the adoptive family, that will be it. I will
never see her again.”

The 24-year-old single mother has never been accused of physically or
emotionally harming her daughter, who for legal reasons can be
referred to only as K. Even those set on taking her away concede that
she harbours nothing but love for the girl.

She has been denied the right to keep her only child because she has
been deemed to be mentally incapable of caring for her. She is simply
“too stupid”, it was decided.

Rachel protested and secured a solicitor to give her a voice in the
family court. But by the time of the crucial placement hearing her
pleas had been silenced. This was because her “stupidity” had been
used as a means to deny her something else: the right to instruct a
lawyer.

Instead, the official solicitor was brought in to speak for Rachel.
Alastair Pitblado, the government-funded official, is appointed by the
courts to represent the interests of those who cannot make their own
case, such as mentally incapacitated people.

In Rachel’s case it was decided that her interests were best served by
agreeing with Nottingham city council’s application to have her
daughter adopted.

Rachel’s protests over her treatment were dismissed. The official
solicitor had acted “entirely properly” in capitulating to the council
since Rachel’s case was “unarguable”, the Court of Appeal ruled.

The decisions of the family court and the appeal court relied upon
reports drawn up by a psychologist whose verdict that Rachel had low
intelligence and learning disabilities had led to K being put up for
adoption and the appointment of the official solicitor.

Rachel’s “fundamental learning difficulties”, said the appeal court,
meant “whilst [her] love for her daughter is not doubted, her capacity
to care for her independently is seriously deficient”.

However, according to a new report by a leading psychiatrist, Rachel
is far from deficient. He said she had “demonstrated that she has more
than an adequate knowledge of court proceedings”.

“She has good literacy and numeracy and her general intellectual
abilities appear to be within normal range,” he wrote in a report.

“She has no previous history of learning disability or mental illness
and did not receive special or remedial education.

“Rachel fully understands the nature of the current court proceedings,
can retain them, weigh the information and can communicate both
verbally and in writing.”

The psychiatrist’s report, ordered by the court last year to assess
whether she could continue to represent her case for continuing
contact with K, was a reversal of the previous expert’s opinion.

While it was accepted by the family court as evidence of her legal
astuteness, it has cut no ice with the family court judge in respect
of her ability to look after her daughter.

In a separate study last year, Rachel’s overall IQ was rated at 71,
although her processing speed was scored higher at 84. She was
categorised as “border-line”, one level below low average
intelligence. Someone with Down’s syndrome would typically have an IQ
of 50-60. The IQ of an “average” adult is 90-109.

Now Rachel is pinning her hopes on a last-ditch appeal to the European
Court of Human Rights, but time is running out. Once K has been placed
with her adoptive family, any realistic hope of Rachel seeing her
again will vanish.

Rachel’s potential to be a sufficient parent was first placed in doubt
soon after her daughter was born prematurely in 2006. “She had
breathing problems and needed operations on her bowel, eye, heart and
throat,” recalled Rachel.

Social workers were sceptical about Rachel as a mother. They were
“concerned” that initially she was visiting K in the hospital for only
a couple of hours a day.

When K was released from hospital she went straight into care and a
psychologist was appointed to assess Rachel. “[Rachel] has a
significant learning disability, and she will always need a high level
of support in caring for [her daughter],” the psychologist wrote.

“If she were not receiving this support she would pose a high level of
risk to [the girl’s] wellbeing, which is not due to any desire on her
part to hurt [her daughter], but to her limitations.”

Rachel’s brother Andrew and their parents all offered their services
but were rejected for reasons varying from being too old to having
played truant from school.

Andrew, an articulate 27-year-old, said: “The guardian that the court
appointed for K even said that I have learning difficulties, although
she had never met me. These people are ridiculous. What’s worse, the
judges overlook it and still think they are credible professionals.”

Is "Positive" Adoption Language Deceptive?

© Photographer: Nruboc | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"No denying a mother's love in adoption choice"
 by Jacquielynn Floyd

Embracing new attitudes about moms is a huge part of making adoption
more acceptable.

The all-too-commonly used phrase "give a child up" and similar
derivatives must be completely removed from our vocabulary.

The words "give up" insinuate surrendering, abandonment and
cowardliness -- a far cry from the reality of an adoption decision.

"Making an adoption plan" explains the time, consideration and thought
behind this responsible decision. Making an adoption plan is a mature
act of total selflessness, requiring great courage and the ability to
put the child's welfare above pride and peer approval. Let's start
today embracing birth moms and their wonderful decision to "make an
adoption plan."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is an interesting discussion about Positive Adoption Language vs. Reality:

Posted by Laurel @ 5:45 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Yes. Letting someone else raise your child is brave and loving and responsible. That's why everyone does it. In fact, whenever I love anyone very much, I make sure to get them out of my life as quickly as possible, because to do otherwise would be selfish...not.

Actually, I really do tend to push away those who love me. Why? I'm adopted, and I grew up hearing "Your mother loved you so much she gave you up." Think about that. Think about getting raised with the notion that love=removing yourself from the beloved's life. It's almost always a lie, and it damages children.

The "reality of the adoption decision" is that your gain is someone else's loss. Adopted children also suffer loss, and we suffer unnecessarily when our adoptive parents tell us lies to spare our(or their own)feelings. There is enough secrecy in adoption. Secrecy causes shame.

But yes, let's do embrace these women--at least until we've got what we want. It's very transparent, this "love-bombing" someone who has or had something you want badly. Something that, if you've already got it, might make you feel the tiniest bit guilty about benefiting from a "wonderful decision" very few women have ever wanted to make.

I do agree that "terminology can make or break attitudes toward embracing adoption." That's why I loathe the term "birthmother" or any variant thereof: it reduces women like my mother to breeding machines for the convenience of the higher-class infertile. It's also often applied to women who have not even given birth yet as a means of coercion. Nobody is a "birth mother" until she has given up her child.

Yes, my mother _gave me up_. There is no better or more accurate term. Had I been born at a time when giving birth out of wedlock was not so heavily stigmatized, I would probably not have been adopted. Now that the stigma is gone, most women keep their babies. I guess they would rather have their own family than help form someone else's. Selfish creatures! Don't they know they could be mature, selfless, courageous soopa-heroines?

Posted by Anonymous @ 4:40 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
You can change the wording all you like, but it's a wasted effort. Why put lipstick on a pig? People will still think exactly what luc has expressed about women making "adoption plans", and adoptees will still be raised with the stigma that their mothers are insensitive, drug addicted losers. What's worse, as long as records are closed, they may never have the opportunity to learn the truth of their own origins. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and adoption does not smell like roses.

Posted by Andraya @ 5:30 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
Giving up is exactly what it is, candy coating the wording will NOT change that.

In order for a mother to "make an adoption plan" she must first give up. She must give up her desire to parent, her ability to believe she is worthy of raising her child. In order to surrender our children we must first give up on ourselves.

Eleven years ago I gave up on myself, I gave up on being "good enough" to parent my son and I gave up my own self esteem. If I hadn't given up those things "giving up" my son would have also caused me to give up on living. Unless you feel unworthy of raising your child how could you live with yourself knowing you couldn't be bothered to fight for your own flesh and blood? The adoption industry depends on us giving up... If we don't they will go broke.

Posted by Amyadoptee @ 8:08 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
As an adoptee, I have an issue with this so called positive language thing. How about we use honest language here? It is a relinquishment. It is not an adoption plan. An adoptee will always look at it as surrendering and abandonment. An adoptee will always look at love forever in a warped way. She loved me so much that she gave me away. So love equals abandonment. Sorry that just does not work for me.

Posted by Mara @ 8:47 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
As an adult adoptee, I think adoption should be made less desirable until all adopted people are restored their civil rights and not treated as second-class citizens in this country.

In 44 states, in the land of the "free", adult adoptees are denied access to their Original Birth Certificates. This document was sealed from them when they were adopted not surrendered "given up". They were issued false documents AKA Amended Birth Certificates that list their adopted parents as their biological parents.

The lies must stop. The records must be unsealed. No one should be kept from their own biological identity. It's barbaric. It's a crime for any citizen to forge a legal document but not "the state". Scary and WRONG.

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration is July 21, 2009 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Please support your fellow American citizens (who just happen to be adopted) and help restore to us our civil rights.

Posted by Anonymous @ 6:27 PM Wed, May 27, 2009
Having a "Blank slate" health history almost killed my firstborn. He was suffering from what the doctor's originally categorized as bad croup but was truly an asthma attack. It got worse and worse until one day he turned blue and was rushed to the E.R. The doctor was hesitant to diagnose my infant son with asthma because neither my husband's family nor I have the disease.
Imagine my surprise years later when I met my natural mother and learned that asthma runs in her family.
With that knowledge, my son would have had the treatment he needed much sooner and his life would never have been at risk.
Sealed records and "blank medical histories" affect not just adoptees but their children and their grandchildren. It is anything but a gift.

Posted by Mara @ 9:02 AM Thu, May 28, 2009
Adoption in this country is still based on secrecy and LIES. It's called "Open Adoption" now, but it's all a marketing campaign, it's not really open. There is nothing legally binding the adoptive parents to keep a connection between the biological parents and the child they share. Many adoptive parents SHUT OUT the biological parent as soon as they possibly can and keep their "commodity" all to themselves. That's right, a commodity. The multi-billion dollar adoption industry views us as commodities, not feeling human beings with rights. And when we grow up and complain we're told to shut up and be GRATEFUL.

I want my rights as a United States citizen restored to me. They were taken away from me when I was a one year old and my adoption was finalized. I never agreed to the adoption and I never agreed to have MY original birth certificate altered out of gratitude for my adoption!

I'm bitter? You bet I'm bitter. Come with me to the vital records office when I ask for my original birth certificate, you'll hear how bitter I really am.

Posted by Addie Pray @ 9:33 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Changing what you call something doesn't change what it is.

"making an adoption plan"
"relinquishing a child"
"giving up a child"
"giving the gift of a child to a infertile couple"
"terminating parental rights"
"giving a child away"
"abandoning an infant"
"being a willful participant in a campaign to end any parental connection to a child born to you"

They all mean the same thing, and all have the same result.

Posted by Mirah Riben @ 10:30 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
I write as a mother who has lost a child to adoption and as Vice President of Communications of Origins-USA. i have spent the pst 30 years in the fields, supporting and comforting women dealing with the lifelong irresolvable grief of having lost a child to adoption.

A rose by any other name...You can call bombs peacemakers, but the still blow up and kill people.

Adoption is a tragic loss and should always be a last resort after all measures of helping families remain intact have failed. Why try to promote it or make it more appealing with language? There is only one reason:

Sugar coating the loss of a child with newspeak is a marketing technique used to obtain more babies for an multi-billion dollar industry that is struggling since the supply has dwindled as mores change and resources are made available for single moms.

For those at peace with their loss, God Bless. But it is still a major loss. One can know that they are dying...but that doesn't mean it was their plan to die anymore than it was any woman's plan to get pregnant in order to lose her child (except perhaps a paid surrogate.) No more than anyone marries planning to divorce.

And when a love done dies and is gone, no matter how much time we had to "plan" and prepare for the loss - we still grieve. It is still a loss.

And many adoptees feel it as an abandonment.

Posted by Jenna @ 10:41 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Call it whatever you want, but "making an adoption plan" is still abandoning your child for others to raise, and most importantly it FEELS that way to the adoptees who live the adoption experience their entire life. I say rather than sugarcoating it, trying to make it more palatable to the general public, we call a spade a spade and begin to deal honestly with adoption and the myriad of emotions and complexities that are wrapped up in it, rather than blowing smoke up people's...

Posted by Marlo @ 10:54 AM Wed, May 27, 2009
Why would we ever want to make adoption more acceptable? I guess since I don't agree with that goal, I'm sure not going to agree with the coercive language being suggested here to separate more babies from their families.

I'm an adult adoptee. I had a 'good' adoptive family, and like many I was told I was loved so much I was given away. Sorry but that doesn't make any sense and it does a number on a kid to hear that kind of thing.

We are separated from our mothers and families and that causes us great pain. We feel abandoned (wonder why?). We are expected to be happy about all of this, because at least we were allowed to live. Our birth certificates are lies. We have no right to our names and our heritage or our truth.

I ask again - why would we want to make adoption more acceptable?

I ~was~ given up. I ~was~ relinquished. I ~was~ abandoned. And monkeying with the words to make it easier for the general population to choke down the rainbow and kittens view of adoption doesn't change reality. I much prefer honest language. language that doesn't turn adoption into this wunnerful thing, language that doesn't turn a first mother into breeding stock. I think this "positive adoption language" hooey is just adding to the coercive tactics arsenal agencies have to woo a mother from her womb wet infant.

Adoption stripped me of my family, my heritage, my language, my band rights, and my rights to be a whole person with the same access to my information as anyone else. It taught me that people who love you leave. I lost count of how many times people told me that my first mom gave me up out of love. What a twisted idea of love to impart to a child! Someone else made a decision for me that I had no part of, and I'm still picking out the shrapnel.

What should be embraced is enabling women to raise their children, in the event that they truly cannot or will not parent, said child should be raised still in the fold of their family if possible. Adoption should always be the last resort. Always.

Posted by beegirl73 @ 11:14 AM Thu, May 28, 2009
SB, how dare you say your adopted friends are "COMPLETE" you have no idea how they truly feel. We adoptees grow up saying what people want to hear. I did it for years. We don't want to hurt our adoptive parents feelings by admiting that adoption has damaged us and that we would rather have not been adopted. I don't care who you ask or how complete you think the adoptees you know are, who would choose to be separated from their families and raised by strangers? Do they accept it? Yes. Do they say that they are fine with it? Maybe. Are they free from self-doubt, abandonment issues, lack of medical history, and identity issues? No.

Open your mind and try to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Not all of the adoptees who make comments on sites like this one are angry, bitter adoptees who had bad adoption experiences. Many of them are like me, adoptees with great adoptive parents, who lead great lives but want to do what they can to educate people so that other adoptees don't have to grow up feeling the pain that we did and still do.

And this my friends is how it is.

Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher in southern California, was doing some personal work on her own family tree. She discovered that Harry Reid's great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory.

On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this inscription: 'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'

So Judy e-mailed Congressman Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle.

Believe it or not, Harry Reid's staff sent back the following biographical sketch for her genealogy research:

'Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.'

NOW THAT is how it's done folks!

That's real SPIN!!!!

Ties that Bind

Richard Wright
From Saturday's Globe and Mail, Sunday, May. 24, 2009 12:11AM EDT

On the evening of Feb. 7, earlier this year, I was climbing the stairs
to my third-floor den in a melancholy mood. On the way up, I looked in
on my 10-year-old daughter, reading herself to sleep after another
hard day in Grade 4.

Even in repose, she had a quizzical look, imposed on her by eyebrows
that peak like a roof, just like mine. "Those are my eyebrows," I said
to her.

"No they're not," she laughed. "They're mine."

She had heard this before. I'm sure she knew, in her 10-year-old way,
what I was getting at - the reassuring physical evidence of our
kinship, which is so precious to me. My daughter is attuned to my way
of dressing up serious feelings in jocular garb. (Does that come down
through the genes, like the eyebrows?)

Before I left her door, I declared that she's my favourite daughter.
"Dad," she retorted with feigned impatience. "I'm your only daughter"

It's another joke we like to share. And she was right, of course. She
is my only daughter. But she's not my only child. What was making me
melancholy that night was the memory of another child, born 40 years
ago that day. His mother (who is not my daughter's mom) named him
Graham.

Graham is my only son, but it's hard to say he's my favourite son.
I've never looked in on him at bedtime. We've never shared a joke. In
fact, I saw him just one time, for only a few minutes, behind layers
of glass in the hospital maternity ward. He was one of perhaps 15
newborns arranged in rows in their bassinettes, but even at a glimpse
I recognized him beyond any doubt. His eyebrows were peaked too.

As I watch my daughter grow, I am haunted by my son. For 40 years, he
has been lost to me. Days after he was born, he was gone, hustled off
to the waiting embrace of the Children's Aid Society. At four months
old, he would move on to his adoptive home - as his mother and I had
agonizingly agreed should happen - and out of our lives forever.

Or so we believed. But that is about to change.

On June 1, new legislation comes into effect in Ontario - An Act
Respecting the Disclosure of Information and Records to Adopted
Persons and Birth Parents, also known as the Adoption Information
Disclosure Act or simply Bill 183, which was passed last May.

For many years, the cardinal rule of adoption was secrecy. Once an
adoption was finalized, the law declared in 1927, the records of the
event were closed, severing the relationship between birth parents and
their children.

No information that could lead to either party learning of the
identity or whereabouts of the other was supposed to be released from
the government's files.

In recent decades, however, attitudes have shifted. Open adoption has
become commonplace and next month - following the lead of
Newfoundland, Alberta and B.C. - Ontario will open the closed files
and lift the veil of secrecy.

Adopted adults will be able to apply for copies of adoption orders and
birth registrations. Birth parents will be able to apply for
information from these documents.

After 40 years, we will be able to find Graham and he will be able to
find us.

Graham is one of 250,000 children placed for adoption in Ontario since
the province began to keep records in 1921. His mother and I are
therefore among the half-million birth parents who gave their children
up. The other corner of what is called the "adoption triangle" would
involve roughly the same number of adoptive parents. And surrounding
the triangle are legions of siblings and other relatives.

All of us are facing a future with a new relationship to the past.

Certainly there will be pain in the wake of June 1. There will be
birth parents whose anguish at giving up a child has long since
scarred over and will now find the emotional wounds gaping open again
- Graham's mother, for one. Even though she is a historian, she felt
for a long while that in this one matter the past should remain past.

But now her view has changed. Hoping that revisiting an unhappy
chapter in her life may lead to a happy ending, she is, nervously,
eager to reconnect.

I, too, have wondered how the delicate equilibrium of my present life
will be affected. A child who has been an abstraction to me will
become real. What new complications might this bring? And my daughter?
She will suddenly have a sibling, after years of flying solo. Will she
want this? Do I? I certainly wonder.

There will be other families forced to face secrets they were sure
were safely buried, the ones who fear "the knock on the door." And
there will be some, on all sides of the triangle, who do not wish to
restore broken links or to invite the unpredictable into their lives.

Remember that 40 years ago, when Graham was born, women who were
pregnant "out of wedlock" were shrouded in shame. To protect such
women from a lifelong stigma, and to protect their "illegitimate"
children from odium, "unwanted" pregnancies reached term (abortion
still being illegal) during a convenient absence to some faraway place
- for an Ontario girl, preferably Victoria.

Pregnant girls and women were said to be "away at school" or "visiting
relatives" while they waited for their secret children to be born.
These distant relatives were often relatives of convenience.
Ironically, my own mother was such a (totally unrelated) relative to a
number of girls "in trouble." They came to our household as mother's
helpers who looked after my brothers and me, making lunches and doing
light household chores for someone else's children while they grew
ripe with their own unacknowledgeable offspring.

Although the language now seems quaint, it is still potent for some.
The "knock on the door" lobby, supported by the province's privacy
commissioner, successfully opposed the opening of adoption records in
Ontario for more than a decade.

However, for Marilyn Churley, champion of the "open book" position,
the privacy rights of both birth and adoptive parents are trumped by
the rights of the adopted child when he or she comes of age. "Once you
turn 18," she said, "you're an adult and you have the right to know
your own background, the right to have a relationship with your birth
parents, if that's what you want."

'MOTHER CHURLEY'

As an NDP member of the Ontario Legislature from 1990 to 2005, Ms.
Churley repeatedly introduced bills to open adoption records. Finally,
she helped Liberal MPP Sandra Pupatello draft the original version of
Bill 183, which passed on Nov. 1, 2005.

Two days later, though, the bill was quashed by the Ontario Superior
Court. A group of adoptees and birth parents represented by Canadian
civil-rights lawyer Clayton Ruby, citing potential complications such
as stalking or the reappearance of abusive birth parents, argued that
the law constituted a violation of privacy.

The legislation was amended to include a disclosure veto, allowing
either party to stop the release of identifying information to the
other. Ms. Churley viewed that as a great mistake, believing that
adoptees in particular have a right to know their roots. (Early
warning of inherited diseases, for example, can make a life-and-death
difference.)

Nonetheless, people refer to Ms. Churley as the mother of the amended
bill we have today. But she is also a mother in another sense - as a
young woman, she gave up a child for adoption. As I wrestled with my
own dilemmas and prepared to write this piece, I met her to swap
stories in a coffee shop in the Toronto riding she once represented.

Ms. Churley and I are of the same vintage, both born in 1948. And in
1968, a year before Graham was born, she also had a son "out of
wedlock" (she mimed the quotations in the air with her fingers).

Yet, unlike my partner and I, Ms. Churley struggled alone - the father
of her child denied responsibility and took off. She became one of the
young women of the era who vanished from the public eye for some part
of nine months.

She lodged in a small town with a charitable family and gave birth in
a hospital attended by less-charitable health professionals who, she
says, took moral exception to her "predicament. "

Decades later, she decided to try to find her child. In 1996, she and
William, then 29, were reunited. But the difficulty of that search
made Ms. Churley the fierce champion of freer access to adoption
information she became.

There have always been openings in the shroud surrounding adoption
records, some deliberate and some unintended. In the 1980s, the
Ontario government became the first jurisdiction in North America to
set up machinery to reunite willing birth parents and their adult
children.

When adopted children reached adulthood, they could notify the
Adoption Disclosure Registry of their willingness to be put in contact
with their birth parents. If either or both birth parents also
registered, the parties would be brought together - at least in
theory, as Graham's mother and I were to discover.

Like Ms. Churley, we had decided we wanted to find our child. And so
on Feb. 3, 1987, four days before Graham's 18th birthday, we filled
out an application. But there was a catch - three catches, actually.

Catch 22-A: Graham would apply to the registry only if he knew he was
adopted. Did he?

Catch 22-B: Graham's adoptive parents could withhold consent for him
to receive our contact information.

Catch 22-C: Even if everything was in place, the government admitted
it could take a long time for an overstretched registry staff to link
his name to ours - up to four years. Ms. Churley, who was at one time
the minister in charge of the registry, said that was an
understatement: The wait could be as long as a decade.

So we waited. And we waited. And while we waited we drifted apart,
formed new partnerships, changed addresses and married other partners.
The registry, of course, had no means or motive to track these
vagaries. And in all the bustle, neither of us thought to update our
registry information until very belatedly. If Graham did register, he
may well have met with a series of dead ends.

Our experience was not atypical. The registry reported that in 2004,
of the 57,000 people on its rolls, only 887 achieved a reunion.

Ms. Churley had been more savvy: She had applied to the government for
what was termed "non-identifying information" about her son's adoptive
family, including ages, occupations, interests and miscellaneous other
data. Although it wasn't supposed to, that provided her with enough
clues to find her child.

"It took about a year," she remembered.

Graham's mother and I also received non-identifying information about
our son: His adoptive parents were both teachers living on the
outskirts of the city. His new father was born in 1928 and his mother
in 1931, and they were married in 1953. He enjoyed fishing, she liked
to knit and they both liked reading and gardening.

When their first son was born in 1957, the wife became a homemaker,
but took university courses in Russian, French and English and excelled.

After blood-type complications prevented them from having more natural
children, they adopted a daughter in 1961 and, of course, Graham in
1969. The first summer he was with the family, he went camping and
"seemed to thrive on the trip."

It was distressing to read about this other reality he had entered, as
if he had gone through the looking glass. It made it more real, more
final. At the same time, it was a comfort to believe that he had gone
to a good place where intelligence and strong values prevailed.

While this was not enough information to make finding our son easy, it
may have been enough to make it possible.

But at that juncture, 12 years ago, we blinked.

For me, the sticking point was whether Graham wanted to be found. He
had not apparently entered his name in the registry. But perhaps he
didn't know, couldn't find us, was fearful - the perhapses were
paralyzing.

Ms. Churley sipped her coffee at the café on the Danforth in Toronto
and shared some things experience has taught her: Graham probably does
know he is adopted, she says. By the 1970s, most parents were telling
the truth to their adopted children - and if they did not, the
neighbourhood grapevine would eventually deliver the news.

If he failed to enter the registry, however, it should be no surprise,
she said. The fear of a second rejection is frequently too
discouraging for all adopted children.

Male adoptees particularly often will not take the initiative to seek
out their birth parents. "Frequently when they do, it's their wives or
girlfriends pushing them."

Ms. Churley's final advice was this: "In your situation, I would do
everything I could to let him know that you want to know if he's okay.
That has to be your goal."

Questions and answers

That is my goal now. I've dealt with my reservations. I've spoken to
my daughter, who says it's "cool" to have a brother. Time is getting
short and there is much to catch up on.

I have often imagined our meeting. I have tried to anticipate the
questions he will ask and the answers I will give. Absurdly, perhaps,
I have superimposed my 10-year-old' s boundless curiosity on the now-40-
year-old Graham; on the other hand, maybe it's a family trait.

I can tell him about his roots - his ancestors from Poland and the
Scottish Highlands, and the English inventor who first thought of
perforated postage stamps. I can tell him about his great-great-
grandmother, the famous Impressionist painter, and his infamous great-
uncle who absconded with a crate of her better paintings and ran away
to Belize. I wonder if he'll identify. I wonder if he's an artist too.
Or a scallywag.

I can tell him about his great-grandmother, the celebrated Toronto
bookseller, and his grandmother, the Varsity Sports Hall of Famer.
Perhaps he's a reader, encouraged by those adoptive parents who also
liked to read. Maybe he's a sport.

I can tell him that his mother is a formidable intellect and a great
beauty - if he wants, he can see for himself. I can tell him that he
was conceived in love by parents who remain devoted friends; true to
our natures, we bucked convention, scandalized our community and lived
together until he was born. (Maybe that's his nature too.) I can show
him that he comes by his angular eyebrows honestly.

He may have more penetrating questions, for which I have no ready
answers. The most challenging one would be about regret.

Expectant couples know how long nine months can seem as they wait for
the birth of their child. That is how I feel as I wait for my adult
child to be reborn into my life. Soon after June 1 - very soon, I hope
- Mother Churley's bill will present Graham's mother and me with a
bundle of joy, maybe; certainly one of challenge, complexity and high
emotion.

Forty years of thwarted curiosity, arrested yearning and suppressed
love will be over. We will be able to look into the face of another
human being, and recognize ourselves.

Richard Wright is a Toronto-based writer.

20-Yr Adoption Puzzle Solved

Phoenix woman solves 20-year adoption puzzle
25 commentsby Mary Beth Faller - May. 22, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Kathy Suszczewicz will no longer have to look into every new face she meets for
clues to her own identity.

After years of dogged and resourceful searching - she even used Scrabble tiles
to decipher misspelled names - the 43-year-old Phoenix woman has found her two
brothers.

The three met for the first time in March, the emotional culmination of two
decades for Suszczewicz.
"It was immediate joy," she said.

The three were given up by their Japanese mother, adopted by American soldiers
and their wives and brought to the United States.

Suszczewicz's brothers, Greg Berube, 44, of Victorville, Calif., and Scott
Kimbrell, 53, of Orlando, were raised as only children and still marvel at
saying "my sister" and "my brother."

Suszczewicz was adopted by a Japanese woman and her Air Force husband stationed
in Japan at the time. They moved around, finally settling in Sierra Vista when
she was 11.

Her Japanese-White appearance never seemed odd; though tall and big-boned, she
realized she looked nothing like her younger sister or her tiny mother.

After marrying at age 20, Suszczewicz searched for her certificate of
naturalization so she could change the name on her Social Security card. On the
back of that certificate was a stranger's name.

According to the document, the name was that of her birth mother.

Suszczewicz had no idea she was adopted. Shocked and reeling, she confronted her
parents, who were unwilling to discuss it with her.

"With my mother being Japanese, I had to respect her privacy," Suszczewicz said.
"She was very reserved. She only spoke of it a few times."

One of those rare instances occurred just after the birth of Suszczewicz's first
child in 1988. Suszczewicz and her mother shared a bed, relaxing on a hot day,
when her mother spoke.

She told her daughter that, in 1964, the woman who gave birth to Suszczewicz
gave her up without even looking at her. The midwife wrapped the baby in a towel
and handed the newborn to the woman who would raise the child as her own.

"It was a nice gift for her to tell me that," Suszczewicz said.


Complications to search

As Suszczewicz and her husband, Kim, raised their five children in Phoenix, she
never stopped wondering about her birth mother.

In 2000, on a trip to Japan with her mom, she visited a hall of records and
obtained a family tree. It was, of course, in Japanese.

When she returned, her father asked to see the documents so he could copy them.
He never gave them back.

Six years later, she finally sent away to Japan for translated copies of the
documents. That's when she discovered that she had two brothers.

Unbeknownst to Suszczewicz, the papers contained several errors, including the
names of the families who adopted her brothers as well as one brother's birth
date.

Her older brother was listed as James Monroe, rather than Scott Kimbrell. Greg
Berube's family name was noted as Velub.

"When I started this, I thought I would do it in my free time or when I felt
like it," Suszczewicz said. "When I got frustrated, I would shelve it."

But seeing her kids kept her at it. "There are those little things you see in
them and wonder where it came from, especially their physical traits."

The search that started with a few minutes here and there would stretch over
years, that tickle at the back of Suszczewicz's mind always there.


Reaching out on the Web

Armed with listings on such Web sites as whitepages.com and anywho.com,
Suszczewicz would call as many as 60 strangers all over the country, including
every James Monroe Kimbrell she could find.

She left a lot of messages, and the people who answered were almost always kind,
wishing her good luck. One man sent her his family tree.

She stayed up late, tapping out queries on every genealogical and
adoption-reunification Web site she could find.

And she kept looking into strangers' faces to find herself.

Three months ago, the pieces started falling together.

Suszczewicz often posted on Internet forums devoted to adoption or missing
people.

On Feb. 17, she stumbled across a woman in Atlanta who claimed to have a knack
for finding online information about people. Suszczewicz gave her the
information she had, still having no idea it was riddled with inaccuracies.

Hours later, the woman gave her Kimbrell's name and information, success partly
due to working on the assumption that adoptive children's first names usually
are changed.

Suszczewicz sent an e-mail to the address the woman supplied, and 20 minutes
later, she received a response from Tammy, the woman who would turn out to be
her sister-in-law. Tammy's short reply was that Suszczewicz had indeed found her
brother and that she'd call him.

After reading those few sentences, Suszczewicz collapsed onto her keyboard.

The day had come.


First contact

Kimbrell received an odd call at work. His wife said he had to come home right
away. She was waiting in the driveway when he pulled in.

He had received an important e-mail, she said. From his sister.

"My what?" he said.

That night he spoke to his sister - still such an odd word to him - on the
phone.

"There was no awkwardness," he said.

Fueled by success and adrenaline, Suszczewicz was determined to find her other
brother.

Months of dead-ends made her realize the name Velub couldn't be right, so she
tried to puzzle it out. She knew that a Japanese speaker would mix up v's with
b's and l's with r's.

So, she fiddled with Scrabble tiles while her husband went into another room to
do the same.


Unscrambling with Scrabble

In a flash, it came to her - Berube.

At roughly the same time, her husband emerged from the bedroom. "I think it's
Berube," he said.

It was a surname they'd heard before and is fairly common in the Northeast where
Suszczewicz's husband grew up.

With that, Suszczewicz returned to her online helper from Atlanta, who soon
found a phone number for the parents of a Greg Berube in California.

One phone call later, she had the number of the man whom she hoped would
complete her long-lost family. She left a message and waited.

Berube, an industrial engineer, was at work when his daughter called, telling
him about the message. Like Kimbrell, Berube knew he'd been adopted and was
content with that knowledge. As he listened to the message, he was at first
skeptical. But soon, he was intrigued.

He thought, "There's a brother, too?"


Siblings reunited

Over the next few days, the three siblings talked for hours and hours on the
phone. But Suszczewicz wasn't done. She had to complete the cycle.

She told Berube she was using her tax-return money to buy them each a plane
ticket to Florida. Days crawled by as each anticipated the meeting.

"We must have talked four times a day until she finally got here," Kimbrell
said.

Their airport meeting in Orlando was just as joyful as they anticipated.

"I felt like I was looking at myself 10 years ago," Kimbrell said of Berube.

"We meshed immediately," Suszczewicz said.


Bittersweet moments

There were bittersweet moments during the weekend visit, as well.

Kimbrell had a photograph of their birth mother, taken the day she gave him up
for adoption at age 1. It was the first time Suszczewicz had seen it.

"I could see myself in the shape of her face and shape of her hand," she said.

The photograph lay on a table for two days before Berube could look at it.

Suszczewicz also learned that Berube's mother had rushed to the hospital to try
to adopt Suszczewicz when she was born but that she was already gone.

The men are in awe of their sister.

"She's been on this conquest, like Columbus," Kimbrell said.


Final piece of the puzzle

Suszczewicz's dogged determination also uncovered the final mystery. She has a
name and a Florida address for a woman she believes to be their mother.

In 2006, she sent a Christmas card to the house. The woman's husband called and
told her she was mistaken, though he lingered on the phone, asked about her
family and expressed his good wishes.

The siblings decided not to confront her.

"She gave birth to us, and we found each other," Berube said. "That's how I look
at it."

When the story of their airport reunion appeared in the Orlando Sentinel,
Suszczewicz made sure a copy made it to the woman's house.

Boy Next Door

(CNN) -- For years, Candace Eloph searched for her half-brother, who was given up for adoption in 1977. She found him -- living across the street.

"I never thought it would happen like this. Never. Ever," Eloph of Shreveport, Louisiana, told CNN television affiliate KTBS.

Three decades ago, Eloph's mother gave birth to a boy at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. She was 16 and gave him up for adoption.

"They took him from me," said Eloph's mother, Joellen Cottrell. "I only got to hold him for a split second."

Cottrell searched for her son over the years, without success.

She eventually left Louisiana and had other children. But she did not keep her son a secret.

"My girls always knew they had a brother," she told KTBS. "I always told them. They knew it from the very beginning. And I've always looked for him."

Fast forward three decades.

Eloph moved into a house in Shreveport. Across the street lived a 32-year-old man named Jamie Wheat.

"We were sitting one day, talking, and she said, 'You know what? I had a brother born January 27, 1977, that was adopted,'" Wheat said. "I was like, I'm adopted."

Surprised, Eloph mentioned that her mother was 16 at the time. His mother was 16, too, Wheat replied.

All the details fit, and Cottrell and Wheat decided to take a DNA test.

The results: There's a 99.995 percent probability that the two are related. Watch family open DNA results for first time »

Wheat's adoptive parents are excited about this new stage in their son's life.

"It just almost knocked me out for the joy," Wheat's adoptive mother, Ann, told KTBS.

Added his adoptive father, Ted Wheat: "It was just surprising that they lived across the street from us for two-and-a-half years. When they told us, we said, 'This is the greatest news it could be.'"

Reunited with his birth mother, Jamie Wheat plans to make up for lost time.

"I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me," he said. "I can move forward. Like a new beginning." (*click on "Boy Next Door" title above to see touching video link).

© Photographer: Jwissing | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Quilt of Holes
Author: Unknown

As I faced my Maker at the last judgment, I knelt
before the Lord along with all the other souls.

Before each of us laid our lives like the squares
of a quilt in many
piles; an angel sat before each of us sewing our
quilt squares together into a tapestry that is our life.

But as my angel took each piece of cloth off the
pile, I noticed how ragged
and empty each of my squares was. They were filled with giant holes. Each
square was labeled with a part of my life that had
been difficult, the
challenges and temptations I was faced with in
every day life. I saw hardships that I endured, which were the largest holes of all.

I glanced around me. Nobody else had such
squares. Other than a tiny hole here and there, the other tapestries were filled
with rich color and the bright hues of worldly fortune. I gazed upon my own
life and was disheartened.

My angel was sewing the ragged pieces of cloth together, threadbare and empty, like binding air.

Finally the time came when each life was to be
displayed, held up to the the scrutiny of truth. The others rose; each
in turn, holding up their tapestries. So filled their lives had been.
My angel looked upon me, and nodded for me to rise.

My gaze dropped to the ground in shame. I hadn't
had all the earthly fortunes. I had love in my life, and laughter. But
there had also been trials of illness, and wealth, and false
accusations that took from me my
world, as I knew it. I had to start over many
times. I often struggled with
the temptation to quit, only to somehow muster the strength to pick up and
begin again. I spent many nights on my knees in
prayer, asking for help and
guidance in my life. I had often been held up to
ridicule, which I endured
painfully, each time offering it up to the Father
in hopes that I would not
melt within my skin beneath the judgmental gaze of
those who unfairly judged me.

And now, I had to face the truth. My life was
what it was, and I had to accept it for what it was.
I rose and slowly lifted the combined squares of
my life to the light.

An awe-filled gasp filled the air. I gazed around
at the others who stared at me with wide eyes.

Then, I looked upon the tapestry before me. Light
flooded the many holes,
creating an image, the face of Christ. Then our
Lord stood before me, with
warmth and love in His eyes. He said, "Every time
you gave over your life
to Me, it became My life, My hardships, and My
struggles.

Each point of light in your life is when you
stepped aside and let Me shine
through, until there was more of Me than there was
of you."

May all our quilts be threadbare and worn, allowing
Christ to shine through!

Due Process in Adoption? Hardly

Due Process in Adoption? Hardly
William H. Mild III

Adoption is generally perceived as a positive thing — hope, love and new
beginnings. We prefer not to dwell on the negatives that usually precede an
adoption — anguish, anger and severing of family ties. The purpose of this piece
is to look at the due process implications of making a child available to be
adopted. I am not addressing the process whereby the New Jersey Division of
Youth and Family Services may obtain involuntary termination of parental rights
because of abuse, neglect and/or other parental unfitness. Although some of the
concerns expressed herein are also applicable to intra-family adoptions and
approved agency placements, this piece will focus on the adoption process
arising out of non-agency placements with potential adoptive parents who are not
part of the child's original family, commonly referred to as private placements
or private adoptions.

The parent-child relationship has long been recognized as a fundamental interest
in which parent and child are each protected by the due process requirements of
access to counsel, notice and a higher burden of proof — clear and convincing,
rather than mere preponderance. For instance, see In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1
(1966); Crist v. NJDYFS, 135 N.J. Super. 573 (App. Div. 1975); NJDYFS v.
Wandell, 382 A.2d 711 (J.& D.R. Ct. 1978); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745
(1982).

As a custody or termination proceeding inevitably affects fundamental interests
of both parent and child, both are indispensable parties, Bruno v. Mark MaGrann
Associates, 909 A.2d 768 (App. Div. 2006). Because contact with other family
members can also be important, grandparents and siblings have been granted a
limited statutory right to apply for visitation, N.J.S.A. 9:2-7.1.

Private adoptions are almost always based upon the voluntary relinquishment of
birthparents and their consent to an adoption. Relinquishment is a difficult,
emotion-laden process for birthparents. Many relinquishing parents are unmarried
and in their teens and early 20s. Many are immature, naïve, depressed and
economically dependent upon their own parents for physical necessities and
guidance. Parents of birthparents often feel acute embarrassment at an
out-of-wedlock pregnancy and push birthparents toward relinquishment. Other
relatives, clergy, teachers and family friends may convince a vulnerable
birthparent that the child will be "better off" with an adoptive family with
"more to offer". Suggested reading is Ann Fessler's The Girls Who Went Away: The
Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades
Before Roe v. Wade. Very few relinquishments are "voluntary" in any cheerful
sense.

To be valid, a surrender document cannot be signed by a birthparent before the
birth of the child or within 72 hours of the birth. It is the rare birthparent
who can afford access to independent legal counsel in a private adoption. Only
the adoptive parents have an attorney and it is their attorney who prepares all
the documents. The formal surrender document may contain waivers of counseling,
legal representation and/or further notice concerning the adoption proceeding.
The adoptive parents' attorney will probably give the birthparent(s) a Notice of
Intention to Place which formally advises the birthparent(s) that they will
receive no further notice of subsequent proceedings and will have no right to
object to the adoption unless he/she files a written objection with the
Surrogate of the county within 20 days, or 35 days if a nonresident. The Notice
of Intention to Place process relies entirely upon the integrity of the adoptive
parents' attorney and offers an opportunity for fraud, if the particular
attorney is so inclined and especially if the birth parent(s)or the adoptive
parents reside outside of New Jersey. The Notice of Intention to Place becomes
the basis of what is essentially a default judgment of adoption. The attorney
represents only the adoptive parents, not the birthparent(s) or the child at a
time when independent legal counsel is urgently needed.

However well-intentioned, the adoptive parents' attorney who explains legal
documents to a birthparent has an inherent conflict of interest. Regardless, the
birthparent(s) is/are typically dependent upon the adoptive parents' attorney to
explain the documents' contents and answer any legal questions.

Birthparents, like the public at large, generally understand that they are
surrendering a child to be adopted and raised within a substitute family without
interference. They do not realize, however, that they are de facto, as the
child's legal guardian, also surrendering the child's right to know and be part
of his or her original family.

They do not understand that their signature will, following completion of the
adoption, lead to the permanent sealing of their child's original birth
certificate, well beyond the scope of their parental rights, which normally
"expire" when the child becomes an adult. The child's adoption record, including
the child's original birth certificate, will remain sealed against the child for
the rest of his or her life, unless he or she can sustain the burden of proving
to a court that there is "good cause." As "good cause" is not defined, the
outcome will likely depend upon the personal predilections of the judge. See
Backes v. Catholic Family & Community Services, 509 A.2d 283 (Ch. Div. 1985),
which denied access to sealed medical or genetic information because the adult
adoptee's mental condition was deemed insufficiently pathological.

Unless the adoptee is later able to learn his biological identity by some other
means, the long-term effect of relinquishment is to strip the adopted person of
his or her natural identity, including their genetic and medical background and
their family and ethnic heritage, for their entire lifetime. None of this is
explained in the surrender documents the birthparent(s) are given to sign.
Indeed, the attorney for the adoptive parents has no reason or obligation to
explain it.

The right to obtain a copy of one's own birth certificate is routinely exercised
by all citizens, unless you were adopted. Although parent-child relationships
are supposed to be fundamental and constitutionally protected, children's
relationships with their parents, grandparents, siblings and other family
members are routinely and permanently severed, first, by the inadvertent effect
of the unrepresented birthparent(s)' signature on surrender documents and,
second, by a court's judgment of adoption. The child has no guardian ad litem,
attorney or other qualified person to represent and protect his or her interests
and the adoption statute does not require it.

In fact, the only time the adoption statute requires the appointment of a
guardian ad litem in a private adoption is if the court-appointed agency
recommends a child be removed from the home of the proposed adoptive parents,
N.J.S.A. 9:3-48a(2)(c). Apparently, our legislature sees no need for a guardian
ad litem before a private placement is made.

After the surrender papers are signed, the child is placed with the adoptive
parents who are required to file a Complaint for Adoption within 45 days of
receipt of the child, according to N.J.S.A. 9:3-44. Neither the complaint nor
any notice thereof is served upon the birthparent(s) if they were given a Notice
of Intention to Place and failed to file a written objection. Upon the filing of
the complaint, the court is required to fix a date for a preliminary hearing and
to appoint an approved agency to investigate and submit a written report. This
presents the agency with a bit of a fait accompli because, by this time, the
child has been in the adoptive home approximately 45 days.

At the preliminary hearing, assuming the agency report is favorable to the
adoptive parents, the court terminates the birthparent(s)' parental rights,
schedules a final hearing and appoints an approved agency to supervise and
evaluate the continuing placement of the child. If the final report of the
approved agency recommends that the adoption be granted and the court is
satisfied that the best interests of the child will be served thereby, the court
may dispense with the final hearing and enter a judgment of adoption
immediately.

It seems to me that a significant number of New Jersey adoptions, particularly
private adoptions, are on shaky legal ground. A court's termination of parental
rights based primarily upon the Notice of Intention to Place and the report of
the approved agency is considerably weaker than the "clear and convincing
evidence" required to pass constitutional muster. Birthparents should not have
been expected to navigate these labyrinthine statutes without independent
counsel. Without counsel, birthparents have virtually no way of knowing the
long-term effect of their relinquishment and the post-adoption sealing of the
court's file, including the child's original birth certificate, pursuant to
N.J.S.A. 9:3-52.

The child is an indispensable party and requires independent counsel to protect
his or her own fundamental rights and interests — including adult rights and
interests — from being needlessly compromised.

Due process in adoption? Hardly.

William H. Mild III served for 23 years as a deputy attorney general within the
New Jersey Division of Law representing the Division of Youth and Family
Services in numerous guardianship and civil child abuse/neglect cases. He
retired from the Division of Law in 1999.

Buying Children...

Couples accused of buying children after trying to adopt Egyptian Children
Jonathan Spollen, Assistant Foreign Editor
May 15. 2009

Three Americans and an Egyptian accused of child trafficking are
expected in court today, and face up to seven years in prison if found
guilty, in a case that highlights Egypt’s lack of adoption laws and
which critics say could be politically motivated.

Their defence lawyers say the four, who are all Christian, were merely
trying to adopt the children and have fallen victim to the absence of
adoption legislation in Egypt, where the constitution is based on
Sharia, or Islamic law.
“Islamic law doesn’t allow for adoption, but Christianity does,” said
Neguib Guebrail, one of the defence lawyers. He said the lack of any
clear adoption laws for Christians had forced the community to resort
to forging documents.

Early last year, Suzan Haglouf, a US citizen of Egyptian origin, and
her Egyptian husband, Medhat Metyas, adopted a newborn from a Coptic
Christian orphanage.

The couple admit to forging documents to say Ms Haglouf was the
biological mother because Egypt has no legal framework for adoption,
but they insist they did not “pay” for the child, making only a US$70
(Dh260) donation to the orphanage.
They were arrested in December when applying for visas to visit the
United States.

The US Embassy asked for a DNA sample to prove the child was theirs
and when Ms Haglouf declined they notified the Egyptian authorities.

The other couple, Iris Botros, 40, and her husband Louis Andros, 70,
from Durham, North Carolina, came to Egypt last autumn and “adopted”
newborn twins from the same orphanage.

They too forged documents to say Ms Botros, who is Egyptian, gave
birth to the twins and also donated $4,600 to the orphanage, their
lawyers say.
They were also arrested after applying for visas at the US Embassy
when Ms Botros admitted she was not the twins’ biological mother.

The prosecution accuses the two couples, as well as their accomplices,
of human trafficking, forging documents, buying children and trying to
smuggle them out of the country.
At least 13 people are on trial, including the two couples, at least
two doctors who wrote certificates for the three children, a nun who
ran the orphanage, an official there who helped with forging the
parental documents and an Egyptian banker who had put the couples in
touch with the orphanage, according to defence lawyers.
All have been in custody since their arrests in December and January.

The children, meanwhile, have been placed in a child welfare institute
not affiliated with the church.

The trial is the first of its kind in Egypt.

Mr Guebrail, the lawyer, claims the charges have been brought by the
government in response to a recent campaign within Egypt’s Christian
community to establish clear adoption laws for Christians.
He added that he was not optimistic about the outcome of the trial and
expected each of the defendants to receive sentences of between three
to five years in prison.

Adoption is known to occur within the Christian community, though the
government usually turns a blind eye.

According to defence lawyers, Ms Botros had also asked workers at the
orphanage if adopting a child was illegal and they had insisted it was.

Suddenly Siblings

Suddenly, siblings
Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune

How would you like to welcome a new sister or brother into your family
-- at the age of 45? As laws change and stigmas soften, more adults
who were adopted are seeking and finding their birth parents. The
meeting of birth mother and newly found "child" is often, if not
always, joyous. For children born later who now must adjust to having
a new and older half-sibling, feelings can be more complicated. We
talked with several Twin Cities families about their experiences, and
some (nonscientific) patterns emerged.

Almost all of the adoptees expressed concern regarding sensitivity to
the parents who raised them. It seemed much easier for families of
babies placed after the 1960s to adjust, because before then, it was
more common for a child to be placed and never spoken of again. And
the oldest child of a family welcoming a new, older sibling was more
likely to accept it if they were opposite genders, particularly for
girls.

From strangers to poker buddies
Brother and sister John Hengen and Penny Stodolka attended the same
Coon Rapids high-school prom in 1986. Neither one had any idea --
because they didn't know each other.

Hengen, 42, and his twin brother, Jim, were adopted by the same family
as infants. Their teenaged parents later married and had two girls,
Stodolka, now 39, and Katherine Helmin-Sapp, 37. Their father cut ties
when they were young girls. Their mother remarried, and had their half-
sister, Jennifer Lewis.

Last year, the brothers initiated a search and sent their birth mother
a certified letter. She was so overcome with emotion, it was her
daughters who wound up first calling the Hengens.

"I had known about them since I was 25 when my aunt let something
slip," Stodolka said. "Since then, we had made
half-hearted attempts to find them, but this all happened long before
the Internet made searching easier. We could have paid $2,000 to
Catholic Charities with no guarantees. And my mom was reluctant. With
her generation, you just didn't bring it up, you left it in the past."

For their first meeting after that phone call, two weeks later, the
group decided that bowling at the Mermaid in Moundsview would be a
good icebreaker. And it was: "We saw right away that we had tons of
similar interests and
personality traits," John Hengen said.

"Everything about them is familiar to me, the way they move, their
dry, sarcastic sense of humor," Stodolka said. "We like to tease each
other a lot."

That was last September. The siblings live in different suburbs and
exurbs stretching from Lino Lakes to Eagan, yet
they now see each other two or three times a month, including a
standing poker night. In April, they went to Florida
to visit their birth father, whom the twins had never met and the
daughters hadn't seen in 35 years. They're ready for
another first next month -- all are running together in Grandma's
Marathon.

High-school confidential
Ten years ago, St. Louis Park High freshman Amy Lewis felt like she
was having a "Back to the Future" moment. The older boy she'd just
passed in the gym looked so much like her father. She pointed him out
to her friend. One week
later that friend, who was dating one of the older boy's pals, called
her and said, "No wonder. That guy's your brother."

His name was Brady Pask. They had grown up only five blocks apart and
shared a father. At 30, his mother told her then-lover, 17, that she
didn't need anything from him. She later married a man who legally
adopted Pask.

"One time, before I knew who he really was, he drove his car so close
to me I thought he was going to run me over," said Lewis, now 25. "He
was just trying to get a closer look."

Pask had known since he was in fourth grade that he had a half-sister,
but never said anything until the siblings' social
circles got too close for comfort.

"She always used to have a little attitude around me," Pask said. "We
had mutual friends, and I finally just decided to throw it out there,"
knowing she would find out eventually.

The two have developed a familial bond. For Lewis, an only child, Pask
is "all I could ever ask for in a brother," she said.

Pask, who has two other sisters, said his advice to others is to "do
all the catching up you can." He sometimes felt like he wanted to slow
it down a little when Lewis would go through photo album after photo
album, trying to catch up on each others' lives. "But I'm really glad
I could be there for her."

Sweetness and regret
Katie DeCosse, 52, lives in northeast Minneapolis. Her birth mother,
Jackie Maher of Brooklyn Park, had her at age 20. DeCosse was placed
with an Orono couple who had two other adopted children. Maher went on
to get married and have five more kids. After Maher hired a detective
to find DeCosse, the two became close and are now co-writing a book
about their reunion. Among DeCosse's half-siblings, however, reactions
have varied. They did not find out about her until two years ago.

Watching them eat pizza around her dining room table, it's clear
DeCosse and her husband get on well with Tom and Tim Maher, two of
three half-brothers who are 14 and 15 years younger. She
affectionately calls them "the brothers T."
Her two half-sisters, who are eight and 10 years younger, who did not
want to comment for this story, have not been as interested in
developing a close relationship, she said.

"Obviously I have five new siblings and there is a little bit of
everything there. The other half-brother was at first
enthusiastic, then changed his mind. I met one sister and that did not
go well, and the other sister is still reluctant to
meet. I couldn't imagine someone wouldn't want to meet me. I'm still
trying to let some of that go." If the oldest sister
in the Maher family had found out that she had had an older brother
instead, "that might have been better," DeCosse
said. "I think it's hard to find out you're not your mother's oldest
girl."

Because of the age difference, DeCosse seems like an aunt to the
brothers. But Tom Maher says he doesn't look at her
that way, or quite like his other siblings either: "She's the
accommodating stranger who feeds me," he said, laughing. "She got more
than she bargained for with us."

The brothers agreed with DeCosse that what they've learned from the
experience is not to be pushy.

"Be open, take it as it comes," Tim Maher said. "Be aware that the
other person might not be as interested as you are."

There's no question of the mutual interest in this recently blended
family.

"Even if I broke up with Jackie," DeCosse said, looking back and forth
between the brothers on either side of her, "I'd still have you."
Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046

It's Never Too Late

It's never too late: Mother/daughter reunion is 50 years in the making

By Rachel M. Anderson, Freelance Writer
SATURDAY MAY 9, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS — Growing up, Katie DeCosse, 52, of Minneapolis had every
opportunity to succeed in life. She grew up in a comfortable home,
attended private schools and graduated from college; and among her
favorite memories are the annual vacations to see family in Bozeman,
Mont. Both of her parents are extremely bright and creative people
which lent itself to a very interesting childhood. But something was
always missing from her life.

“My parents told me I had been adopted when I was very young and I
always wondered if my birth mother looked like me, why she gave me up,
if I had any siblings and a myriad of other things,” says DeCosse. “I
thought of trying to find my birth mother several times over the
years, but never took action.”

Turns out Jackie Maher, 73, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., had thought about
trying to find her daughter several times over the years as well.

“But I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” she says. “I was afraid my
appearance in her life after so many years would be disruptive.”

Not to mention, Katie’s very existence was a deep, dark secret. None
of the five children Maher had raised in Robbinsdale and Crystal knew
about their older half sister.

“I didn’t know how to break the news to them after all those years,”
says Maher.

But shortly after turning 71, Maher decided it was time to finally
reveal her secret. She said, “I had reached a point in my life where
all the loose ends began clamoring for attention.”

Maher finally shared the adoption story with her family in March 2007.
Shortly thereafter, the search began.

The decision to give up her baby

Maher says she gave Katie up for adoption for one reason and one
reason only.

“The decision was in the best interest of my child at the time,” she
says. “There’s no way I could have given Katie the life she deserved
in the 1950s. I didn’t have much money, marriage was not an option and
there was nothing worse than coming home pregnant. I didn’t want to
put that shame on Katie or the rest of my family.”

Once she made her decision, Maher, who was 20 at the time, and her
boyfriend, went to the church to ask for help. The pastor sent them to
Catholic Charities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Maher was placed in
a work home and eventually sent to the Catholic Infant Home in St.
Paul where she lived until ready to give birth.

“After I had the baby, I didn’t even get to hold her, remembers Maher.
“They took her to the nursery immediately.”

The only time she ever held the child she had named Melinda Louise was
on the cab ride back to what she refers to as “the home.” The next
morning she returned to her apartment, leaving the baby behind.

“I saw her only one more time after that. On May 12, 1957, the day I
signed the adoption papers,” says Maher.

A few days later, Melinda Louise became Katie DeCosse of Minneapolis.

The search

DeCosse grew up in Orono, the middle of three children who had all
been adopted by Cyrille (Cy) and Barbara DeCosse. She attended
Catholic grade school, high school and college, then after school
worked as a veterinary technician for nearly 25 years.

Meantime, her birth mother, the former Jackie Josephes, met and
married veterinarian Bill Maher, and over the next several decades
raised five children. She thought about the daughter she had given up
several times over the years, but didn’t actually start searching for
her until the spring of 2007.

“At first, it was slow going,” says Maher, whose first step was to
contact the adoption agency that had placed her child. Because hers
was a closed adoption, she was not entitled to the adoptive family’s
name.

“I was told the only way they’d be able to provide that was if my
daughter had come to them looking for me, and she had not.”

Note: Katie had made an initial inquiry in 1979 but, since no
affidavit was on file, Jackie was unable to get information.

Adoption Law in Minnesota

In the 1950s, Minnesota law assumed both birth mothers and adoptive
parents wanted anonymity, unless an affidavit was attached to the
birth certificate stating that contact was allowed.

“No one had ever mentioned that option to me,” sayd Maher. “ It’s a
step I’m sure I would have taken if I had known about it.”

Unwilling to give up, Maher decided to conduct a search on her own.
She got the help she needed from a woman who had herself been adopted,
Gretchen Traylor at the Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform, a
group lobbying to bring Minnesota’s adoption laws up to date; and a
fellow birth mother named Marj.

“I met Marj when Gretchen and I went to a Concerned United Birth
Parents (CUB) meeting and with the information I was able to provide,
which included my maiden name, the date of my daughter’s birth, the
hospital she was born in and the adoption agency, she found Katie
within two weeks,” says Maher, who just two months after revealing her
daughter’s existence to her family made several phone calls.

“I’ve found her,” she said over and over again, and a new chapter in
everyone’s lives began.

A new beginning

After learning the identity of her daughter, Maher decided the best,
and most fair way to initiate contact, would be to write Katie a
letter. It was dated May 12, 2007, exactly 50 years to the day after
she had signed the adoption papers. The letter began:

Dear Katie,

I am sure this letter is coming as a surprise to you. I recently
initiated a private search to locate a daughter I surrendered for
adoption in 1957. The search culminated in finding you...

Katie’s response:

Dear Jackie,

Wow! And I thought it was all downhill now that my 50th birthday
celebration is officially over... I have never seriously considered
searching for you but have always been open to the prospect of a
meeting should you initiate it. To what degree, I can’t say at this
time...

Just 13 days after that first e-mail exchange, Jackie and Katie met
face-to-face for the first time. They’ve spent the past two years
becoming the best of friends.

At the urging of their friends and family, Jackie and Katie, who bear
a strong resemblance, have the same laugh and both love to write,
recently published a book titled Fifty Years in 13 Days: A Mother/
Daughter Reunion (Wow! Publishing Group Inc.). The text includes the e-
mails they exchanged during those 13 days before they met face-to-
face, as well as insight into what it was like to reconnect after so
long.

“I would like to see our book reach others who are at the same
crossroads at which I found myself before I started my search. If only
one connection comes about because of our story it will have been a
worthy endeavor,” says Maher.

“We hope that sharing our story will encourage other birth parents and
adoptees who have been thinking about attempting a reunion to go for
it,” says DeCosse.

Fifty Years in 13 Days: A Mother/Daughter Reunion retails for $12.95
and is available for purchase on the publisher’s website: www.wowpublishinggr oup.com
. After May 19, it will also be available at the Once Upon a Crime
book store at 604 W. 26th Street in Minneapolis. Call 612-870-3785 to
check on availability.

Rachel is a freelance writer who lives in Minnetonka, Minn. She has
written professionally on family matters for the Minneapolis Star
Tribune and Tampa Tribune newspapers.

Copyright © 2009 Dunn County News