Thank you to whomever was doing a search on my old agency..with your Google search I found the interesting news…
Jury awards adoptive parents $409,000
The couple claimed that Elizabeth Quackenbush, the late founder of Adoptions With Love, lied about the circumstances of their sons’ birth at St. Mary’s Medical Center in 1991. They were told the birth mother, while heavyset, was from a “Fortune 400” family and had an uneventful pregnancy and delivery.
Actually, the woman, who now is a real estate agent and lives in North Palm Beach, weighed 260 pounds, was on Medicaid and suffered from hepatitis and various other ills. After giving birth, she spent two weeks in the hospital, including the intensive care unit.
Abnormal newborn test results were dismissed as insignificant, the couple testified.
Then there is this one.
and another…
Wow is all I can say…pretty scarey stuff. Yeah, I knew Liz rather well as she was the director at the time. Now I know she is dead….she wasn’t that old..I wonder. And the agency itself was sued..including Amy whom gave me the lovely call on Max’s birthday. You know, to be completely honest…I didn’t have warm and fuzzy feelings for Liz. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way..pushy like.
Still…even if it was just all very unfortunate and no one knew…which obviously the jury didn’t not see as truth…it is upsetting to find out these bits. “great agency, treated well” all the things I have said before..even with knowing so much that I know now..new info still shakes that kind of thing up. What else dd they do??
Damn, better get a copy of my records now,..they shut down once before..seems like probably when Liz died by the timing.
(((Claud)))
I saw that article, but hadn’t realized it was your agency.
I don’t understand why women who lost children to adoption can’t sue agency for post placement PTSD, etc. Maybe these are the times….
I think the only reason why exiled mothers havent’ sued is that they’ve been taught that “it was their choice” and that “they deserved it” as unwed=unfit. far fewer of us are believing that these days.
Misrepresentation. Fraud. With-holding information. Get copies of the surrender paper and whatever literature you can get and whatever is in your file and find out what emotional consequences (if any) they warned you about. Then sue the a$$es off the buggers for not telling you this stuff — get copies of articles by Condon, Winkler, Rickarby, Kelly, and the rest who have published about the life-long emotioal devastation. Bring this to a lawyer. SUE!!! Everyone else in this nation sues for “emotional distress”. Why not US?
I don’t know, maybe it’s because I am an adoptee but I couldn’t help reading this and feeling absolutely terrible for the boys. What a “lovely” way to meet your mother for the first time. And although I can see the father’s point about them being taken care of financially, and I don’t dispute the fact that they very well should be pissed they were lied to, I think it would be hard as a child (or an adult for that matter) to differentiate between thinking your parents were doing right by you financially and sort of saying “hey, we wouldn’t have taken you if we knew you were f*$&%^ up.” If I were a disabled person I think that would hurt. A lot. Again, maybe me just being adoptee sensitive?
On a more positive note: Claud KICK SOME GASBAG BUTT TOMORROW!!!! The capitol is definately the place to whip out the statistic arsenol!
Oh, and the 1% doesn’t surprise me in the least. It just sucks that my own mother happens to reside there.
What the heck is wrong with being on Medicaid when you have a baby that you put up for adoption? Nothing, People are just so damn biased in this world. So what if you are overweight and have a child. I know the point is that the agency lied to them , but it makes people who are overweight and have put their child up for adoption feel like they are beneath the standard. Sorry that everyone can’t be gorgeous, smart, and healthy. Bottom line, when you choose to adopt don’t be so dang picky. Geez,
i agree with mia and anon. this made me sad for the chidren. yes, you can wrap it all up in the bows of needing financial aid but the way that story is written it makes the adopters look like they were disastified with a car they bought. did they want a child or did they want a perfect child? children are not to be treated like objects and picked out like you do a automobile.
children are not objects to be bought and sold. and they dont come with guarantees or warranties.
just yucky.
I read your blog about once a day to get another birthmother’s insight into adoption. Now I have a few questions that I hope someone can help me with.
Has anyone ever been told that they are mentally ill because of being a birthmom and going through such a deep depression afterwards?
After you have given birth and suffer from a mental breakdown does that justify you to sue?
My birth son is with good parents whom I trust, but since I went through such mental anquish after his birth and adoption will they love him less because he might or might not suffer from some kind of depression like his birth mother did?
Why do people hate you so much when you are a birthmom?
I’ve had someone actually tell me I am mentally ill and that I never gave birth to a child because no one ever saw him. This is very hard on me, my life, and it might cause me to have another nervous breakdown. Are these things I could sue about?
Cohen said she hopes the Alberts will spend the same amount of time and energy they’ve put into the court case into helping the boys “heal” after hearing their parents say publicly that they would not have adopted them had they known they may have disabilities.
“It’s an awful and sad thing to be dealing with,” Cohen said.
To make a legal argument, the Alberts had to frame it that way, Robert Albert explained.
“One thing our kids never question is our love for them,” he said.
His wife said she has made it clear to the children that it boils down to a simple issue.
“This case is about when people don’t tell the truth, there are consequences,” she said.
I agree that being a child and hearing your parents use the words, “We wouldn’t have adopted you if we had known,” would be hard to stomach.
BUT, I’m still glad they sued. Hearing about adoption agencies that pull shit like that (and get away with it) is just sickening.
I don’t think Medicaid is mentioned in a degrading way, I think it’s to show how much the truth was stretched — the leap from “Medicaid” to “Fortune 400” is a pretty big one.
I wonder how much media slant is being used to manipulate our response to the situation. Could things have been worded differently? Do we really have so much faith in “agencies” and corporations in this country, that it’s easier for us to think, “oh, the adoptive parents are really the bad guys”? Is the article phrased so that we focus on the “we never would have adopted” statement from the a-parents instead of focusing on the blatant LIES told by the agency?
Just a thought.
“Has anyone ever been told that they are mentally ill because of being a birthmom and going through such a deep depression afterwards?”
It’s a known consequence. Has been for the better part of 40 yrs now. If you weren’t told about it when you surrendered, you were lied to.
Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief, by Evelyn Robinson, MSW
Dr. Rickarby’s Testimony – 1
Dr. Rickarby’s Testimony – 2
Dr. Rickarby’s Testimony – 3
Human Rights Abuses in Adoption, By Mary E. MacDonald
Scarred by Adoption, by Jennifer Doane
Not By Choice by Karen Wilson Buterbaugh
What They Knew and Didn’t Tell Us
The Trauma of Relinquishment – J Kelly, M.A. Psychological Disability in Women Who Relinquish a Baby to Adoption – Dr. J.T. Condon(pdf)
“Why do people hate you so much when you are a birthmom?”
Because surrendering a child is legalized abandonment and signifies to society that that the child was unwanted and the mother was callous enough to ‘give it away’. Society instinctively recoils from this unnatural act, not realizing that “choice” was often nonexistant.
correction: The Trauma of Relinquishment
On the bright side… I’d rather the parents sue then kill the twins, which seems to be a pretty popular way to go too.
” A grief reaction unique to the relinquishing mother was identified. Although this reaction consists of features characteristic of the normal grief reaction, these features persist and often lead to chronic, unresolved grief. Conclusions: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions.
Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions.”
— page 395, “Postadoptive Reactions of the Relinquishing Mother: A Review.” By Holli Ann Askren, MSN, CNM, Kathaleen C. Bloom, PhD, CNM. In the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4):395-400
Claud:
I’ve found other moms who went through that agency. I told them about your blog.
Hugs
Ohh heather!!! One already found me!! soo cool…Spread the word!!
Ok..funny I forgot to add this then…the part about medicade??? Umm, Adoptions with Love put me ON medicade. I would think that they put all “their” birthmoms on medicade. They sure knew how to do it! My beleif is that it was part of the plan…state pays for cost of birth, more $$$ to agancy or perhaps out of wealthy parents pockets?? But I would bet that the adoptive parents think they are paying for expenses…hence the fees. I am told that they are known as a fast, white baby, but costs alot kind of agency.
I wrote about it. and I’m fucked off.