Adoptees Face Sting of Discrimination

Adoptees Face Sting of Discrimination
Adoption Study Says Identity Questions Last a Lifetime; Urges Open Birth Records
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Nov. 23, 2009

Kate St. Vincent Vogl first learned she should be ashamed when her sister got into a fight with a neighbor boy who retaliated, "Yeah, well, you're adopted!"

Her sister ran home and confronted their mother, who admitted it was true. The news that both were adopted stunned Vogl, now a 43-year-old writer from Minneapolis.

"I took one look at her blond hair and blue eyes and said, 'Maybe you are, but I'm not,'" she said. "I'd seen Sesame Street. I knew which one didn't belong. It was as if I knew already at age 8 that being adopted was not something you'd want to be."

Vogl is one of an estimated 6 to 8 million Americans who are adopted. Many now tell the Evan B. Donaldson Institute that they were stigmatized as children and struggled with their identity and self-esteem well into adulthood.

The study, "Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Positive Identity Formation in Adoption," examined two adult groups -- Korean-born adoptees and white adoptees, but the findings have relevance to adoptees of all races, according to executive director Adam Pertman.

"This is the biggest and deepest study of its kind," he told ABCNews.com. "There are big universal truths and we are finally getting at some of them to help us be better parents, better professionals and people who grow up to be healthy human beings."

Many of the 468 adult respondents said they experienced discrimination. More white adoptees (35 percent) than Korean (21 percent) indicated teasing simply because they were adopted.

About 86 percent said they had taken steps to find their birth parents and that finding them was the single factor that helped them gain a positive adoptive identity.

"We would never deride people based on religion or a handicap or another piece of who somebody is," Pertman told ABCNews.com. "But we do in the adoption world."

"There is institutional discrimination in our culture," Pertman said. "We watch TV shows and some kid is adopted and they'll say he's a bad seed and suspect from the get-go. Or when people ask, 'What happened to his real parents?' How do you think that makes kids feel?"

Pertman hopes the study will help promote laws, policies and practices to give adoptees greater access to information about their birth and to help erase stereotypes to improve their lives.

For Vogl, knowing she was adopted didn't change the love she felt for her family, but she also learned it was the "elephant in the corner, not to be talked about.

"I suppose you could say that adoption-related discrimination began from the moment adoption became a part of my life," she said. "My sister then dialed up all of her friends to confess she was adopted, like it was some sort of terminal disease."

The study also revealed that only 45 percent who sought out their birth parents were successful.

Adoptees told ABCNews.com that they were largely stymied by state laws that guard the secrecy of birth certificates and adoption records or the expense of hiring searchers.

Some were also rejected by their birth parents.


Secret Shame of Adoption
The secret surrounding her own adoption took a devastating toll on Joan Wheeler, a disabled social worker from Buffalo, N.Y. The last of five children born to a married couple, she was adopted as an infant when her mother died of cancer.

"Distant relatives of deceased mother kept it as a secret, raising me as their only child," she told ABCNews.com. "I knew I was adopted, but I didn't know I had brothers and sisters. I am still paying for it."

Her siblings sought a reunion when she was 19, but dark secrets and jealousies prevented them from bonding.

Now 53 and a disabled social worker, Wheeler has a troubled relationship with both her adoptive and biological families, who have chastised her for openly talking about the family's past in her upcoming book, "Forbidden Family."

Her identity struggle was so painful, she doesn't even believe in adoption, wishing she had been placed in foster care or a guardianship so she could have had access to her blood relatives.

"Babies are not commodities, they have lives and identities," Wheeler said.

Today, birth parents often welcome contact, but before the 1970s and 1980s closed adoptions were the norm and records were sealed tightly at birth.

Now, experts see those policies as archaic, robbing adoptees not only of vital medical records, but of their sense of identity. Only Alaska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Alabama, Tennessee and Delaware have broad access to original birth certificates.

Melinda Warshaw, a 62-year-old musician and art teacher from Pound Ridge, N.Y., is active in the fight to open closed records in her state.

"I feel like it's the last civil rights struggle," she told ABCNews.com. "There is a bias toward the adopters who are looked on as saviors. They are the ones that get attention at the expense of the adoptee and their birth relatives. We don't count."

Without her original birth certificate, Warshaw, author of "A Legitimate Life," said she feels like she has a "fake identity."

She was adopted in as an infant in 1947 after her birth mother had a "revenge affair" during a separation from her philandering husband.

"The shame forced her into secrecy," Warshaw said of her birth mother, who turned to the Cradle Adoption Agency in Chicago where wealthy parents like Bob Hope adopted.

"Her sister drove her under cover of darkness to the agency where she stayed until she gave birth to me," she said.

Warshaw began a complicated search for her birth parents that eventually led her to the Chicago adoption agency, where she was told, "Sorry, we can't tell you anything."

"It was against the law for me to find out who I was, and it just drove me insane that I wasn't allowed to find out even my name or ethnicity," she said.

"It was just cruel and many adoptees feel like we are aliens and don't belong," said Warshaw. "We're just lost."

In 1980, at the age of 33, she found her mother.

"She was ridden with shame and feared what friends, family and community would think," said Warshaw. "After several conversations with her and hearing her cold-hearted words of rejection, I ended my attempts to truly be her daughter."

Eventually, Warshaw was able to connect with her half brother, an artist like herself. And this summer, she met 12 third cousins in Iowa.

"It was like I flew home," she said. "It was so healing and wonderful. All the women had the same body style and walk and eyes. I feel totally complete."

Reunions are challenging, according to Craig Hyman, a 51-year-old adoption triad life coach from New York City who found both his biological parents 27 years ago.

""But the richness and advantages far outweigh the complications along the road."

Buvetta Bryant struggled with her identity her whole life, before a reunion with siblings this year at the age of 67. "I felt a part of me was missing, an empty feeling."

Now she has met some of the 10 siblings on her birth mother's side and six more from her father. "This has been an experience of a lifetime."

Marlou Russell, a Santa Monica, Calif., psychologist who specializes in adoption, said, "It's natural to want to know your roots."

She was adopted in 1950 and given an amended birth certificate naming her adoptive parents as birth parents. By 1991, she searched and found her birth mother, with whom she has a "positive relationship."

"Telling adoptees about their history validates their experience, that they were there," Russell told ABCNews.com. "Only in adoption is it considered strange or abnormal to want to know where you come from.

"Searching for birth family is not a statement about adoptive parenting. It is a statement of wanting to know one's self."

Reunions With Birth Families Positive
Many adoptees and adoptive parents feel more connected after a reunion with the birth family, according to both Russell.

Such was the case with Kate Vogl, who had no desire to connect to her biological parents -- "a couple of college students who got into trouble."

But late one night, at 28, she got a call from her birth mother -- just two months after the death of her adoptive mother.

"She found me through my mother's obituary," said Vogl, who remembers her father's reaction to the reunion: "There's always enough love to go around."

"I'm not sharing holidays," Vogl insisted. "I was really reluctant at first because of my strong loyalty to my adoptive mother."

Now, 15 years later, she describes in the book about her journey, "Lost and Found: A Memoir of Mothers," the first holiday with the woman she calls, "Val."

"I know she would like me to call her mother, but she's not my mom" said Vogl. "The wonderful thing about this is I've lost my mom and I've had Val, who is a wonderful person, come in to my life."

Though she sees discrimination as a "loaded word," she said knowing the negative experiences of adoptees can help educate society about their struggle for identity.

"I don't think that the instruction needs to be on adoptive parents' side, but society as a whole," Vogl said. "The thing that really gets to me is how people feel that the bonds formed in adoptive families are not as strong as the bonds with biological families.

"It breaks my heart that someone would think she couldn't love me enough."

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

Who is speaking here?

© Photographer: Willeecole | Agency: Dreamstime.com

You know those days when you don't really know how to begin or take everything in...this whole week has been one of those. Just things. Emotions catching up after events and moments.

I got to eat lunch with a cousin in my birth family who was actually adopted into the family in the 60's, when I was adopted out. Whoa. We had never really connected or got to know each other at the beginning of my reunion. It was really something to get to sit and talk and feel that connection of "being adopted"...but with an ironic twist of family ties. She was warm and sweet and we had a great time.
But goodness.

What I really wanted to write about tonight are two comments made to me this week that have really impacted me...one by my son, and one by my birth father.

It was GREAT seeing my father tonight and spending time with him at the miniature golf course. We had such a good time. When we were leaving he made a quick statement, so quick I almost missed it with the hulabalub of hugs and goodbyes going on between all of us. It wasn't until later tonight did it hit me, the impact of his statement. He said, "Thank you for being a good daughter." I'm almost speechless, just sitting here shaking my head and fighting back tears. To be able to hear this from my father who I was separated from since birth. But am blessed to have had a beautiful reunion with.

I'm emotional today for other reasons too. My beloved Pastor passed away this morning. I remember writing a letter to several pastors years ago asking sincere questions as a new believer. He was the only one who took the time to write me back personally, and I still remember how special that was to me. I could feel the love and compassion in that letter as he genuinely cared about my questions. He really displayed God's Love.

So hearing these words tonight from my father have really affected me. Emotionally.

They reminded me of the other statement my son made a few days ago. We were driving somewhere in the car and I was trying to get him to drink his Pediasure. I'm always trying to get him to eat or drink Pediasure to put on weight, you see. Anyway, I'm used to this and was expecting his usual response, of "No Mom, I don't want to". I don't know what made me try a new approach, instead of using my usual tactic of trying to convince him of the benefits of drinking it ~ "it will make you strong", etc. Instead, I just said, "But I want you to", not really expecting a great response to that one (lol). Was I blown away, when his immediate and unquestioning reaction was "OK!", as he drank away! I just sat there amazed. I didn't have to convince, or argue, or threaten, or plead.

I have felt like God is trying to teach me through these little moments and statements...I so want HIM to be able to say to me, "Thank you for being a good daughter". What an amazing statement to hear from my Heavenly Father. I so want to learn obedience, and not continue to go my own way, whether out of fear, fatigue, or distraction. He is teaching me so much about His unconditional Love, that my desire is to trust Him more.

Wouldn't it be a different world if our obedience to God when He said, "But I want you to" was as immediate and unquestioning as my son's response was to me. Lord, please help me. Give me your grace to obey.

...Family Ties Tug

Adopted as infant, family ties tug at Villanova's Reynolds

By Marlen Garcia, USA TODAY

VILLANOVA, Pa. — Scottie Reynolds made the most dramatic play of last season's NCAA men's basketball tournament.
With a chance for Villanova to go to the Final Four, Reynolds weaved his way upcourt, dribbling until he released his winning shot with a half second left against Pittsburgh in a 78-76 win.

That secured his place in Villanova and tournament folklore, but there is more to Reynolds, 22, a senior point guard who seems capable of again leading Villanova (2-0) to the Final Four. It's his compelling life story that inspires strangers to stop Reynolds on the street to say thank you. He has spoken for years about being adopted and his desire to meet the birth mother who gave him up. Finding the right time to do it is complicated.

Born in Huntsville, Ala., Reynolds was adopted as an infant by Pam and Rick Reynolds, an Alabama couple who already had three biological children. The tight-knit, racially blended family has lived in Herndon, Va., for eight years. His parents and three older siblings are white. His younger brother and sister, both African American, also were adopted.

There are two chapters to his life, Reynolds says. The first embodies his adoptive parents, who are fixtures at his games and in everyday life. "My parents made me the young man I'm becoming today," he says.

The second chapter — about his biological mother — has tugged at Reynolds since he was a child.

"I know that one day, both my mothers will be sitting together watching me play basketball," he says. "I think it will be one of the significant things in my life."

His biological mother gave him up and the records are sealed. She was located three years ago by a private investigator hired by his adoptive family. His birth mother doesn't know who he is, Reynolds says.

In interviews during the last two NCAA tournaments, Reynolds said he planned to contact his birth mom once the season ended. But after each season, Reynolds did not reach out to her.

"Last year, I just said it so people wouldn't ask me," he says. "I plan on it. But deep down, I was like, 'I don't know.' "

As a child, finding his birth mother became a mission. He recalls breaking down in tears after school in the fourth grade because of upsetting remarks his classmates made about adoption.

"I was like, 'I have to find her,' " he says. " 'I have to bring her to school.' I wanted to prove to everybody that I knew who my mother was."

He says he cried until midnight, and his mom wept with him as she consoled him. After that, he decided he would not cry again about it for fear of hurting his parents.

"They've done an unbelievable job," he says of his parents. "They were probably feeling bad about themselves. I was like, 'I can't make them feel bad.' "

The desire to meet his birth mother, however, never waned. His parents told him once he turned 18, they would search for identifying information for her in Alabama.

"If he needs that in his life, I want that for him," his mother says in an interview at her home. "I want him to be whole."

The family assumed Reynolds could seek the information at 18. Then they found out Alabama law requires adults be 19.

"Some people are like, 'I'm 18. I can smoke,' " Reynolds says. "I was like, 'I'm 18. I can find my mother.' When I found out I had to wait another year, it burst my bubble a little bit. It sucked."

At 19, as Reynolds started his freshman season, the private investigator located and contacted Reynolds' birth mother.

"She was like blown away," Reynolds says. "I know it was an emotional time for her."

He had waited for years to meet the woman, but after hearing this, Reynolds decided he would wait longer.

When an adopted child receives information about a biological parent, the child usually needs time to digest the information, says Eileen McQuade, president of American Adoption Congress. Putting off a reunion is not unusual, she adds.

"It's just a question of processing this stuff," McQuade says.

Asked whether it was difficult to delay his reunion, Reynolds doesn't answer but says: "I thought maybe I should just focus on college basketball. The biggest thing when I hit college was to be the best player I could be. I didn't want nothing to interfere with that."

Enduring the taunts

Reynolds has flourished in basketball — he is on pace to surpass 2,000 career points — despite enduring potshots on the road from opponents' fans over his adoption. Reynolds says at times he has been jeered with the title words of the punk rock song Scotty Doesn't Know.

"It's as bad as I've ever heard," Villanova coach Jay Wright says. "There are times I want to go after somebody, but Scottie sets the example."

Reynolds, he says, has never acknowledged the taunts, nor has he complained privately.

"It's never affected his play," Wright says. "It's amazing."

Some players might be tempted, in light of the harassment, to gloat after a victory or great play, but Reynolds doesn't play that way, the coach adds.

"I've talked to the team about it and said, 'You all hear it,' " Wright says. " 'We all feel for Scottie, but the way he handles it shows how strong he is and how strong we can be.' "

Reynolds says that in his sophomore year, he heard cracks in a game at Pittsburgh that he found especially mean-spirited.

"Some of the stuff I'd never heard before," he says. He listened for the first time to jabs about the biological father he assumes he will never know.

"That's the only time it really got to me," he says. He wanted to act out but instead went into the locker room to keep his cool.

Reynolds says he has learned to compartmentalize his emotions to keep them in check. He chooses his words carefully when he speaks and says his reactions are programmed.

"If I didn't have mental toughness and know how to turn it on and off, I probably would have cried at Pitt," he says. "For me to do that in a big game ... that's not going to help anybody."

The reunion question

Reynolds does not discuss the adoption with teammates. "If we're in class, and (adoption) is a subject, he feels open and talks about it," teammate Corey Stokes says. "He's proud of the parents he has. He's happy. I don't ever bring it up."

His impact on other adoptees is not lost on him. "There are so many people I meet on the street saying, 'I'm adopted; you've helped me with this,' " he says.

Some want to thank him; others want him to be a sounding board. Reynolds says he wants to lend an ear. "I'm in this position," he says. "Why not help?"

As a child, Reynolds says, he felt confused about the adoption. As a teen, he realized his birth mother made a brave decision to give him a chance at a better life.

Reynolds says he must personally thank his biological mother. "In the worst-case scenario, if she didn't want to have nothing to do with me, if she didn't want a hug, I could understand it," he says. "I would just shake her hand and say thank you. I have to get that off me."

He really has no timetable to reach out to her. "I'm more worried about her than me," he says.

In their interview with USA TODAY, Reynolds' parents expressed frustration at the publicity Reynolds gets about the adoption and the questions he faces, from reporters as well as friends, about reuniting with his biological mother. They fear he will feel rushed to meet her.

"He hasn't done it, and that ought to be a message," his mother says. "You know what? He may never contact her. And if he doesn't, that's fine."

Reynolds sometimes is definitive about a reunion. Other times, he uses the word "if."

"I can wait," he says. "Sometimes I wish both my mothers were in the stands watching me play for Villanova, but I don't really think about it that often."

If the reunion takes place, he'll finally release the emotions that for years he has kept bottled.

"The only time I'll ever cry again," he says, "is if and when I meet her."

Child Migrants Apology Planned

UK child migrants apology planned
Gordon Brown is to apologise for the UK's role in sending thousands of its children to former colonies in the 20th century, the BBC has learned.

Under the Child Migrants Programme - which ended just 40 years ago - poor children were sent to a "better life" in Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

Officials are consulting with survivors of the programme so that a statement can be made in the new year.

On Monday, Australia's prime minister will apologise to the 7,000 UK migrants living there for the mistreatment.

He will deliver a national apology to the "Forgotten Australians" and recognise the mistreatment and ongoing suffering of some 500,000 people held in orphanages or children's homes between 1930 and 1970.

As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were told - wrongly - their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them.

Many parents did not know their children, aged as young as three, had been sent to Australia.

Care agencies worked with the government to send disadvantaged children to a rosy future and supply what was deemed "good white stock" to a former colony.

In a letter to the chairman of the health select committee this weekend, Mr Brown said "the time is now right" for the UK to apologise for the actions of previous governments.

"It is important that we take the time to listen to the voices of the survivors and victims of these misguided policies," he wrote.

Kevin Barron, chairman of the select committee which looked into what happened, said he was "very pleased" to have received a written commitment from Mr Brown.

"After consultation with organisations directly involved with child migrants we are going to make an apology early in the new year," he said.

Baroness Amos, Britain's high commissioner in Canberra, said an apology was an important part of addressing the damage.

She told the BBC: "We've always said that this was an absolutely shocking period in our history and it's important that there is an apology.

"The trust has campaigned for over 20 years for this kind and degree of recognition. For child migrants, of course, it has been all their lives and for their families.

"This is a moment - a significant moment - in the history of child migration.
The recognition is vital if people are to recover."

*Adult adoptees in America REMAIN stripped of recognition for being withheld the same right as every other American citizen to obtain our original birth certificates. What a day it will be when all 51 states restore that unconditional right to our citizens. We and our children after us deserve this ~ "now is the time". "What sorrow awaits the unjust judges and those who issue unfair laws. They deprive the poor of justice and deny the rights of the needy among my people. They prey on widows and take advantage of orphans. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause and fight for the rights of orphans and widows. For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing. I will faithfully reward my people for their suffering and make an everlasting covenant with them. Everyone will realize that they are a people the Lord has blessed."Isaiah 1:17,10:1-2,61:8-9

...Not a Commodity

DIANNE DEMPSEY
November 15, 2009

Maggie Millar has a problem with Deborra-Lee Furness' work. Supported by her movie star husband, Hugh Jackman, Furness has cranked up a campaign to open up overseas adoption for Australian couples. Part of this campaign has been creating National Adoption Awareness Week, which will be running this coming week.

Maggie Millar is an artist and an actor, too, though she never reached the heights of fame of Furness and Jackman. Millar has been a stalwart of Australian theatre and has been praised by critics as warm, lusty and downright brilliant.

One reason, perhaps, for the brilliance of her acting was that she had plenty of practice, even as a little girl. You see, Millar was adopted and she never quite got the knack of being part of her adoptive family. ''All of my relatives were like aliens to me; as I no doubt was to them,'' she says.

It wasn't until many years later, when she read a book by Nancy Verrier, that she finally understood her anguish. Verrier is a US psychotherapist specialising in adoption issues. She is also an adoptive parent.

According to Verrier, the infant and mother are still connected outside the womb - physiologically, psychologically and spiritually. The infant, she says, knows the mother's smell, voice, heartbeat, energy and skin. On adoption, the separation results in a terrible feeling of abandonment that is indelibly printed upon the unconscious mind of the child. The grief of separation is so profound that it causes a searing wound, a primal wound.

It is because of the fear of being abandoned again that adopted children often display two types of behaviour. They will either be provocative, rebellious and angry, or they will become withdrawn, compliant and forever on guard. Sometimes they will display a combination of both behaviours.
Millar says the pain of separation and the subsequent loss of identity is accentuated for inter-country adoptees. ''The statistics around these adoptees are only now coming to light and they are disturbing,'' she says. ''They have much higher rates of suicide and depression than children who are adopted within their own countries. Many of these adoptees go back to their country of origin but even there they do not feel at home, they are dispossessed, their identity stolen.''

Furness' organisation is called Orphan Angels. She has quoted UNICEF figures claiming there are 103 million orphans in the Third World. That number is a misrepresentation. UNICEF defines an orphan as a child who has lost one parent. The true figure for what most of us would regard as orphans is closer to 13 million children, and most of these are living with extended family - in poverty.

Trafficking, kidnapping and exploitation of children and their parents abounds when agencies offer huge sums of money in an impoverished country. Graphic cases of corrupt practices connected to the adoption industry in Ethiopia were exposed by the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program in September.

When Madonna and Angelina pick out babies from orphanages like dolls from a shelf, they are sending a message that children are a commodity. ''Wealthy people have the power and means to buy a child,'' Millar says, ''but the child and her family have little or no power over what is happening to them.'' Adoptees, she says, are the only people suffering from a profound trauma who are supposed to be grateful.
Millar feels for gay or infertile people who long for a child, but she asks them to think of the rights of the child they are adopting. ''Someone else's child is not a cure for infertility. No one is entitled to a child, especially to someone else's child. Adoption should be a last resort and should be done with eyes wide open. Be aware of the consequences … Be educated and be prepared for a long journey. Not all adoptions are unsuccessful but all adoptions take a lot of work.''

Reform of adoption procedures was a hard-won battle resulting in the 1984 Victorian Adoption Act. This gave adoptees access to their records. When the legislation came into force, some 7000 people in Victoria alone queued up, waiting to find out who they were. Now the general benefits of this hard-won battle are being eroded.

The push for inter-country adoption is generally misguided. People who wish to help children of the third world should start by helping them within their own country, their own culture and their own tribe.

Dianne Dempsey is a Melbourne writer. For more information on overseas adoption, visit NancyVerrier.com, Vanish.org.au.

Anne Fessler "Everlasting"

History is...His Story

© Photographer: Ginosphotos | Agency: Dreamstime.com

He is the First and Last, the Beginning and the End! He is the keeper of Creation and the Creator of all!

He is the Architect of the universe and the Manager of all times. He always was, He always is, and He always will be... Unmoved, Unchanged, Undefeated, and never Undone!

He was bruised and brought healing! He was pierced and eased pain! He was persecuted and brought freedom! He was dead and brought life! He is risen and brings power! He reigns and brings Peace!

The world can't understand Him, The armies can't defeat Him, The schools can't explain Him, and The leaders can't ignore Him.

He is light, love, longevity, and Lord. He is goodness, kindness, gentleness, and God. He is Holy, Righteous, mighty, powerful, and pure. His ways are right, His Word is eternal, His will is unchanging, and His mind is on you.

He is your Redeemer, He is your Savior, He is your guide, and He is your peace! He is your Joy, He is your comfort, He is your Healer, He is your Lord!

Woman Devoted to Helping Unwed Moms

Moroccan woman devoted to helping unwed moms wins $1 million Opus Prize
By Doug Belden and Adam Spencer
Pioneer Press
Updated: 11/05/2009

At key moments in her life, Aïcha Ech Channa has been visited by what she calls "little birdies from God."

A check will arrive out of the blue, or a chance encounter will restore her spirit and help her carry on with her work serving single mothers and their children.

Channa, 68, founder of the Association Solidarité Féminine in Casablanca, Morocco, landed a very large bird Wednesday, when she was announced as the winner of the $1 million Opus Prize, administered this year through the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

St. Thomas scoured the world to find Channa and two $100,000 winners on behalf of the Opus Prize Foundation, which bills the honor as "the world's largest faith-based, humanitarian award for social innovation."

The foundation was established in 1994 by the founding chairman of Minnetonka-based Opus Corp., and the first prize was awarded in 2004.

The foundation partners with Catholic universities, which administer the prize each year.

The two $100,000 prizes this year were awarded to Sister Valeriana García-Martín, founder of an organization in Colombia serving children with physical and mental disabilities, and The Rev. Hans Stapel, of Brazil, who works with people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

For Channa, the $1 million prize, which is nearly double her annual budget, means being able to move her organization to self-sufficiency and hopefully to leverage further donations to expand her work in
Casablanca.

Channa started off small in 1985 and now operates three day care centers and training schools, two restaurants, four kiosks and a fitness center/spa.

Her organization offers single mothers job skills, child care and other kinds of support and attempts to re-establish contact with their families and with the fathers of their children.

Because most children born out of wedlock do not have identification papers from the country, the organization declares the children to the state and gets papers for them.

"Often, these children feel that they have no identity," Channa, who speaks French, said through an interpreter.

Unwed mothers are considered prostitutes under Moroccan law, Channa said, and the expectation has been that children born out of wedlock would be given up for adoption, whether the mother wanted to keep them or not.

As a civil servant in the 1980s, Channa said, she began to realize she wanted to do more to help these women keep their children and become self-sufficient than she could do in her government job.

One day, she was watching a single mom give up her baby for adoption.

The woman was breastfeeding the child, and, as Channa described it in a press release announcing her prize, "at the moment when she forcibly took away her breast from the baby's mouth, the milk sprayed all over the baby's face and the baby cried. This cry was in my head. And that night, I did not sleep. I swore to do something."

When she started the association in 1985, it would have been difficult to publicly announce she was working on behalf of unwed mothers and their children, so she pitched it as general relief for women and children in distress.

"I kind of cheated," she said with a smile.

Attitudes have changed since then, Channa said, and changes to family law in 2004 bolstered some rights for Moroccan women.

Today, she said, children born of single moms go on TV in Morocco to look for their parents, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

"It's a true revolution in Morocco," she said. "The train has started, and it's not going back."

Channa says she plans to carry on "as long as I can," and the recognition from Opus has helped generate interest in her work among young people, some of whom she hopes will continue the work after she's gone.

When her organization hits a rough patch, she likes to tell employees, "I'm going to go home and wait to see what he says," she said, gesturing up to the skies. "There's always an answer."

Mother Reunited with Child

Mother reunited with child she gave away 26 years earlier
October 30, 2009
By Sean Rose
srose@courier-journal.com

She gave up her daughter for adoption in 1978 in a decision fueled by
panic and desperation. In doing so, Marcie Roth, now 54, lost not only
her child but also the love of her life.

And then, almost three decades later, she found one, which helped her
regain the other.

Marcie Roth's life is a story of regret, acceptance, forgiveness, and
finally, joy; of walking away from her child's father, then
rediscovering their love 26 years later; of coming to terms with the
fact that she was a birth mother of an adopted child who was a
stranger to her.

One thing she knew for certain: She needed to search for that child
and reach out to her — if her daughter would have her.

On Father's Day, 2008, she placed the call that she both longed for
and dreaded. She identified herself to a person who answered.

"Momma," the voice on the telephone replied. "Is that you?"

An adoption tinged with regret

Thirty years earlier, Marcie Roth was a divorced, single mother in
Ephrata, Pa., raising one daughter while juggling a full-time job and
school. She didn't know what to do when she found out she was pregnant
again.

Her boyfriend, Roger Roth, told her he wasn't ready to be a father.

With little money and no plan, she confided in her doctor, who
suggested she give up the baby for adoption and arranged the
proceedings with a nearby couple.

It seemed the smart move for Marcie and a blessing for the couple.

But in the hospital, as an exhausted Roth glimpsed her infant daughter
for the first time, and felt her tiny fist wrap itself around her
pinkie, Roth regretted her decision.

Yet she kissed infant Jessica Dale Roth on the forehead and said a
prayer as her baby was taken away.

She said she didn't see Roger Roth for two months. One day as she
walked the neighborhood as a light snow fell, Roger pulled his car
next to her and rolled down his window.

"Want to go to breakfast?" he asked.

She got in. The snow grew heavier. They waited in the car, hardly
speaking. Then Roger took her hand and they both cried over the
daughter they had given up.

He asked if they could get her back, Marcie Roth said, but she told
him it was too late. Their daughter's original birth certificate and all records of the adoption were permanently sealed. Neither knew where she had been placed.

The two got back together, but they never spoke about their missing
daughter.

Marcie Roth felt the loss acutely. She said she would be perfectly
fine, then see a baby on the street and break down bawling.

"When you are a birth mother, it's like something is just ripped out
of you, and it's never acknowledged," Roth said. "And so you go on
thinking, `I made a hell of a mistake.'"

Her anger at Roger Roth for not stepping up to fatherhood immediately
and her inability to turn to him for comfort drove them apart. Two
years after the adoption, Marcie Roth moved back to New Albany, where
she had grown up.

"Somebody dies, you have family, you have friends, you have coworkers,
you have support groups and then there's an end to it, there's
closure," Marcie Roth said. "There's no closure to an
adoption, it's just there.

Daughter struggles to fit in

The child that Marcie gave away, meanwhile, grew up as Kara Gianna
Cerullo. She and her adopted mother, Sandra Cerullo, lived in Berwick
and then Harrisburg, Pa., just hours from where she had been born as
Jessica Dale Roth.

By age 10, Jessica said she knew that she was different. Her blue eyes
and blonde hair did not fit with her mother's dark complexion. And her
loud, outgoing nature did not match the quiet home in which she was
being raised. She started asking questions about her biological parents.

When Jessica Roth was 11, her adoptive father drove her to meet with
the doctor who arranged the adoption, who refused to tell Jessica Roth
the names of her parents.

Instead, he described Marcie Roth to her, telling the young girl she
looked just like her mother.

While Jessica Roth described her relationship with her adoptive mother
as good, she was a troubled teen. She began doing drugs and drinking
at 13, and by the time she was 17, she was a mother herself, she said.
With little money and no father to help raise her daughter, she gave her
first child up for adoption.

Jessica Roth had begun searching for her birth parents as a teenager,
scanning adoption registries online. But two events, the death of her
grandfather, who she was very close to, and her father's death four
years later, made her redouble her efforts.

The urgency to find her own medical history was clear as she Jessica
began experiencing seizures and even suffered a stroke in January
2008, she said.

The odds were stacked against her. Although by now her adopted mother
had given her birth parents' names, Jessica didn't have much to go on.
Because adoption proceedings were closed, Jessica Roth's birth
certificate was sealed under Pennsylvania law.

A majority of states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Kentucky,
require court orders for adoptees to access their original birth
certificate or identifying information about their natural parents as
adults. The three states have some measures to allow access to records
as long as there is consent from the biological parents.

Medical reasons are often not enough for a court to unseal the
records, said Robert Stenger, an adoption and family law professor at
the University of Louisville.

By 2008, Jessica Roth had been searching off and on for more than a
decade — with nothing to show for it.

Re-ignited love spurs search for daughter

Marcie Roth, meanwhile, remained paralyzed with guilt, which kept her
from trying to find to her daughter, she said.

"I felt like I didn't have a right," Marcie Roth said. "Who was I to
go marching into her life after all these years and turn her world
upside down?"

She figured that if her daughter wanted to find her, she could.

Roger Roth changed her mind.

They had not spoken in 26 years, until the day he unexpectedly called
her. They visited each other, and on their first date, he apologized
for not being a father for their daughter. He proposed. She accepted,
and the two were married in April 2008.

Marcie Roth saw a reason behind their reunion and began searching for
their daughter two months before the couple married. For the next five
months, she would stay up late into the night searching online
adoption registries online for any sign of her daughter, she said.
Reading strangers' stories online, she began to open up to others and
learned to forgive herself.

"I punished myself, and that's what every birth parent does," she
said. "You mentally beat yourself up over it, what you should have
done."

On Father's Day, 2008, Marcie Roth received a call from a woman named
JoAnne Stanik. Earlier that day, Roth had registered with Stanik's
adoption search Web site, adoptiondatabase.org.

On it she had left a typed message intended for her daughter:
"If you are looking for me and want to hear your story, I am ready to
tell it."

Stanik started looking, and in just four hours, found Jessica,
who was now Jessica Roth-Jendrick after marrying and had moved to
Florida.

Marcie Roth was stunned, but Stanik assured her that she had verified
her daughter's identity. Stanik gave her Jessica's phone number.

Marcie Roth hung up, picked up the phone again and dialed. It rang and
a young woman answered. Marcie Roth identified herself.

The response was clear: "Momma? Is that you?"

Reunion creates new family

A week later, on a summer evening, at Louisville International
Airport, Marcie Roth and her husband waited at the gate. Jessica
walked forward, surveyed the crowd and — even with no photo —
recognized her mother right away.

"I could spot her a mile away," Jessica Roth said.

That first night, the questions and answers flew as Marcie, Roger and
Jessica tried to catch up on 30 years of lost time. What were her
birthdays like? Did she go to the prom? Any boyfriends?

Jessica stayed for a week. Then she and her parents traded visits
until last June.

She started classes at the end of September at Daymar College studying
medical coding and billing moved into her own apartment in early
October. Cerullo, who'd been diagnosed with liver cancer earlier in
the year, joined her daughter in her new home, as did her husband, who
came from Florida.

Marcie Roth began sharing her story online with others struggling with
adoption. She said she's dedicated to raising awareness about the
anguish the adoption laws can cause.

She is also writing book about her experience and hopes that any
profits will further help Jessica and also go toward Stanik's search
organization.

And when there is friction in their relationship — as there sometimes
is, Marie recognizes it as inevitable as the two get to know each other.

"I just kept saying, `Honey, it's going to get better.' The main thing
is that we're together."