Regardless of how an individual discovers that they were adopted – finding a hidden letter, revealing medical documents, or perhaps through a deathbed confession of a relative or parent – the truth eventually surfaces by one means or another. In many States, such as Pennsylvania, a Court will not allow the child to open their adoption records until both birth parents are deceased; however, the Court may permit the release of non-identifying family history information. What can make the task of opening adoption records more arduous or nearly impossible is when the adopted child cannot determine the hospital, facility, or location of their birth, let alone the Court that Finalized the Decree of Adoption. This blind and dubious search may often continue to only provide dead-ends and thousands of dollars in attorney costs to petition many County Courts in one or more States.
Throughout my 10 years of searching, sleuthing investigations, and enduring the discovery process through 2 years of Federal Court Litigation, I uncovered the basic facts, which may answer many adoptees’ questions regarding why they cannot find the location of their birth or the Court that finalized their adoption. Furthermore, an adoptee’s searches may never provide this sought-after information because there was never a Court Adoption Decree or Finalization and, therefore, there will not be a Court administration record for an Amended Birth Certificate that denotes the birth parents names. In other words, the child was never legally adopted through the protections of a State Court. As it is with any “Adoption Law” there are loop holes, which circumvent the Federal Laws and State Statute protections for illegitimate children, and these unlawful procedures are deemed to be substantiated for the monetary interests of lowering welfare costs to the State and/or the Federal Government.
Most of the public is well aware of the seedy tactics utilized by International Black Market Baby sales, or desperate parents selling their child on the Black Market… but there is yet another duplicitous professional method that is used by Hospitals, Doctors, and Attorneys, called “gray-market baby adoptions”. A “gray market baby adoption” implies that this method parallels a black market adoption, however, it is conducted through white-collar professionals whom unlawfully operate above the Law and in concert with State and Federal Authorities – this procedure has also been defined in case law as an “unadoption”. In most cases the Hospital works as the covert State Authorized Agency to broker babies of unwed mothers, to adoptive parents whom could not meet the State’s screening requirements to adopt a child otherwise. A hospital or doctor will have access to indexes of unwed expecting mothers, and selected attorneys will have an index of parents who want to adopt a child but the parents neither meet the State requirements nor have the monetary affluence to do so. This baby brokering method has been documented by Court Case Records to exist in the USA as far back as the 1920s in Florida:
http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/70500/op-70500.pdf
Baby Brokering has also existed in several Counties in Pennsylvania, and most likely in many other States as well. However, even after many of these unlawful adoptions are discovered by the adoptee or his/her unwed birthmother, and challenged through a Civil Action, most of these Civil Litigations are quickly settled and the Court documents/records are permanently sealed. However, since my case was not handled through an attorney I have retained all my correspondences, Court Records, and Documents of Evidence.
All States have many illegitimate babies who need parents and there are many parents who wish to adopt them, but these States have such a high standard of screening requirements to adopt a child that many prospective parents are not State-eligible to adopt these orphans (e.g. low income, poor home environment, parent’s lack of education, both husband and wife work, etc.). It is contended that the State Department of Health turns its head and doesn’t enforce its own rules and laws that were intended to protect orphans because the unlawful brokering of illegitimate children removes the States’ financial burdens of housing, clothing, and feeding their growing orphan population, and also removes the expense of providing foster parent care for an illegitimate child. The State and Federal Authority’s blind posture is focused on ‘dollars and cents’ - not ‘common sense’. The Adoption Laws were created to protect the welfare of the illegitimate child; allowance for the unlawful brokering of illegitimate babies defeats the purpose for the creation of the State and Federal Laws which provide these protections.
In most States, an illegitimate birth registration is filed with the local County Registrar of births, and the Court administrates the Decree of Adoption. The adoption process is then finalized by the Court and it issues an Amended Birth Certificate when the adoptive parents take custody of the illegitimate child. But in the general procedure for a gray market adoption, an illegitimate child is not given the Court’s protection because the Hospital or facility where the child is born files a falsified birth registration that denotes the adoptive parent’s names and the amended name of their “unadopted” child. By filing a falsified birth registration in this manner, the lawful requirement for the Court’s Decree of Adoption and Finalization is bypassed as well as the requirement for the Court’s administration to amend the illegitimate child’s birth certificate. If an adoption is unlawfully administered in this manner, the Hospital that the child was born in will be the only accessible source of record for the adoption; however, the adoptees will need to know the name/location of the hospital that they were born in to pursue these medical/birth files.
Hospitals that broker gray market baby adoptions will generally create a secured embedded file that contains the birth mother’s records and her illegitimate child’s records, but the hospital will also create a “falsified” embedded maternity/birth file that denotes the adoptive mother’s name instead of the birth mother. However, the hospital will always need to keep all the birth records because the adoption was illegal and the Hospital is the Official Birth Registrar of the adoption - not the County/State. The hospital may also require these records in the event that their worst fear unexpectedly surfaces, because there will always be the possibility that any of the parties in a hospital-brokered gray market unadoption may reveal the truth… even 40 years after the illegitimate child’s birth. Please note that baby brokering is an unlawful act, whether it is conducted by an underground smuggling ring or a prominent hospital, and all whom were a party to this action could be criminally charged. This is the primary reason why these records are stored in a separate, secured hospital filing facility and these records are very hard to obtain without a Court Order.
The providers of gray market baby brokering do not consciously give any consideration regarding the family living environment that they are unlawfully placing an illegitimate child into. With gray market baby brokering there is neither screening of the parents to determine their financial and mental stability nor consideration of compatibility issues with other siblings who currently live in the prospective household. Whereas, a Court-administered adoption will provide protections to the illegitimate child through State-investigative screening of the parents and the environmental provisions of the household, which will determine if all the requirements for adopting the child are met. Inversely, the parent who receives a child through a gray market baby broker has no legal recourse in the event that this child has a genetically inherited physical or mental illness nor will the child have a valid medical history regarding their actual birth parents.
While I do denote the presumed logic of the State’s justice system with regard to gray market adoptions, I specifically needed to address the ramifications and legal obstacles from the perspective of an illegitimate child who discovers that he was unlawfully adopted. The means by which an individual’s “legal” adoption is discovered is comparatively similar, and opening their adoption Court Records is just a procedural formality. However, uncovering the truth and recovering records from an illegal and covert gray market adoption becomes a task requiring the individual to have a resilient attitude and relentless determination. The entire aspect of white collar crime, which has existed for decades and encompasses State Department Agencies, doctors, lawyers, multitudes of parents, and multi-million dollar hospital corporations with unlimited defense funds, becomes a giant can of worms in the eyes of the Federal Justice System. The second problem would be finding an attorney that will not fear the risk of losing his or her license to practice law by representing a case of this magnitude; or finding an attorney, who will accept the case, take your money, and sell-you-out in the process. My story started with a tumultuous childhood and my relative family’s cryptic clues, which led to the discovery of my adoption on my 38th birthday. With the help of a paralegal and a sympathetic librarian at the Library of Congress in D.C., I became familiar with the investigative methods of legal researching, overcoming the stonewalling tactics of a hospital records department, vehement intimidations from hospital defense attorneys, and enduring the Federal Court system through a precariously corrupt discovery process. I posted this article in layman’s terms in order to draw a preliminary path that will help similar “unadoptees” avoid the mistakes, hardships, and hurdles that I had to overcome throughout the four year litigation of my case.
I had the rare pleasure to consult with an attorney in Philadelphia who specialized in Tort Law (definition of tort litigation: Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.). This attorney simply said, “I will be glad to accept your $3000 retainer, and charge you $300 per hour to take your case but why aren’t you doing this litigation by yourself; you don’t need an attorney”. This attorney was right because the only person you can trust in an endeavor of this magnitude is yourself. It is hoped that the thousands of adoptees’ in this circumstance will also realize this fact and pursue locating and opening their adoption records without the expense of an attorney… especially when you consider the task of litigation against white collar crime and gray-market baby brokering, which has been illegally conducted in the USA for approximately 100 years.
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4 comments:
Sorry, I'm confused... were you successful in having your original birth certificate and/or your adoption case file released to you?
I'm a Pennsylvania gray market product myself and very interested in reading more. My own petitions for even my non-id have been repeatedly denied by the county, even though S.2905 states I'm entitled to them.
On my 38th birthday (1993) I received a card with a “cryptic” letter from my Great Aunt, which eventually led me to discover that she was my birthmother. Furthermore, her brother-in-law, who I thought to be my Grandfather, was actually my paternal father – it was an arranged conception to provide a baby for his daughter (my half sister) who had an empty womb due to an inverted uterus. A woman was destined to be childless with this medical condition in the 1950s.
After my birthmother and paternal father died, I decided to petition the Bucks County Orphans’ Court to open my adoption file… but no record of my adoption could be found. I hired an attorney in December 2004 to obtain my birth records from the (Doylestown, PA) Hospital where I was born. When the hospital would not answer my attorney's requests, he filed a Complaint in the County Court of jurisdiction but this case just sat there for months. This attorney was just helping the Hospital run-out the clock, to overrun the Statute of Limitations; he just took my money and sold me out. I ended-up dismissing this case and my attorney at the County Court level, and proceeded to the Federal District Court level with a Civil Action.
In November 2005, I filed a Civil Complaint in the Federal District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania (pro-se), and through the Discovery Process I received a copy of my hospital birth/medical file, which showed conclusive evidence that I was adopted illegally, through what is defined in Case Law as a Gray-Market Baby Adoption (or an illegal adoption set-up through the hospital & Doctor that bypasses a Court’s Decree and Finalization of Adoption, and provides an altered birth registration to the County Registrar of births). I also have two different birth certificates issued by the same hospital; one that went to my birthmother and the other that went to my adoptive mother. However both the Federal District Court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals chose to ignore these facts of evidence because this evidence surfaced after the discovery process had ended... but it should have made no difference other than the fact that it was a can of worms that the Courts did not want to be addressed through a jury. The Courts did not seal the Court Files nor give me a “written” gag order that prevents me going public with this information.
The other part of this entire series of events is that my birth mother was ready to provide an Affidavit in April 2004, which would have removed my need of waiting until after she became deceased to get my secured birth records, or the need to proceed with the costly litigation to open the hospital’s concealed adoption records. My birth mother's death certificate showed her cause of death to be congestive heart failure; however, my wife (who works in the Medical Field) and I, both visited my birthmother 12-days before she died. My wife alleges that my birthmother was a victim of euthanasia before she could complete her Affidavit. My birthmother’s Affidavit would have exposed the Gray Market Baby Brokering that exists in Pennsylvania (and in many other US-States), which is coordinated through the Hospital, County Registrar, State Department of Health, and the Doctors/Law Firms whom represent these Hospital Corporations and Governmental Agencies.
What I have told you in a nutshell is what I have had to live with every day of my life since February 1993 and, also since April 2004 additionally carrying the burden of guilt, feeling indirectly responsible for the death my birthmother. I also feel certain that if I had the opportunity to start this Civil Action all-over again, armed with the knowledge that I now possess, that I could at least force a settlement, or at best could obtain copies of all my “sealed” unadoption birth records from the hospital that I was born in.
BTW: Pa S.2905 does state that illegitimate children are entitled to their birth/adoption records... but if you were covertly adopted through a Hospital's Gray-Market Baby Brokerage, then this Statute will not apply to you. The Orphans'Court does not have an adoption record on you - the hospital does, and this is where you will need to proceed.
Since you gave me a little background on yourself, I felt obliged to do the same in return. I will be glad to share my Court Records/and documents of evidence with you, if you will be willing to correspond on email. My email address can be found in my profile. Since you are from the Philadelphia area, then you were unadopted under the same unlawful State procedural protocols.
Thank you for this exposure of yet another area of lack of ethics in adoption.How it rolls on and I'm so sorry for your plight.
I really have no problems with adoptions if they are provided lawfully under the protections of the Courts. At least I found out about by birth origins. I feel sorry for the people who have spent enormous sums of money to locate their birth parents and continually hit dead ends.
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