' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Adoption by Gentle Care being sued by Wyrembek

Lorraine
Why am I obsessed with this case of Benjamin's Wyrembek's son and the fawning, malicious, law-breaking "good Christian people," Christy and Jason Vaughn, who knew they had a child they should not keep within days of him coming into their home? Then they kept him for three years, gave him a family name (as in their family) as they fought the natural father in every court they could think of? Why does this case make me so friggen' angry?

Saturday, October 30, 2010

LAST CHANCE! VOTE FOR Demon in Adoption Tonight!

Lorraine
Voting over. New post tonight. I hope. Life calls. And Happy BEware Adoption Month.

The boy called Grayson Vaughn may be home already, with his father, Benjamin Wyrembek (see post earlier today, below) but there are still a few hours left to vote for the Demon in Adoption Award at the Pound Pub Legacy website.The deadline is midnight (Saturday)!


Here are the candidates, with a short description from their website:
The nominees are:

'Grayson' Is on his way home

Benjamin Wyrembek's son

"Grayson is on his way home to be with his Dad. This will be a hard day but will get easier with each passing day. Grayson and Ben you have alot of people that support you. Here's to a wonderful life together!"

Posted on the Facebook page, Give Grayson Back, two hours ago, and the transfer was confirmed at the opposing "Keep Grayson Home" page, where they are asking their 7,123 supporters [are they all adopters, I wonder] on FB to pray for the boy "as he moves today to live with his bio [real] father in Ohio."

I am so pleased to post this good news. Whatever Benjamin Wyrembek chooses to call his son, I applaud him for working so long and tirelessly to reclaim him from Christy and Jason Vaughn of Sellersburg, Indiana, who dragged out this custody battle for three friggen' years, and any trauma that the boy suffers is totally their fault. In this case, I have little respect for the boy's birth/natural mother, Drucilla Bocvarov. It will be interesting to see what happens with the child as he grows, and whether she does have a relationship with him, which I hope she is able to.

Personally, I think the father has every right to divest the name from the child as, especially if it is true that it a family the name of the Vaughns, as one of our intrepid followers has noted. 

Amen.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Have Christy and Jason Vaughn No Morals?

Lorraine
Christy and Jason Vaughn have gotten truly hysterical as the days dwindle down to the actual, physical transfer of Grayson, who will be three years old on the 29th of October. Transfer is set for the next day. According to some sources, Jason Vaughn went on WHAS radio calling the boy's father, Benjamin Wyrembek, a criminal. Christy has reported somewhere that the kid is biting his fingernails. (You think he might be picking up on some of their anxiety? You think?) On their Keeping Grayson Home Face Book page, they are asking for donations and have set up a PayPal account--either to pay their lawyers or to continue to file petitions to keep this boy from the father who wants to take him home to Ohio.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

When "Adoption" Can't Be the Problem...But It Is

Jane
Sometime ago, I played duplicate bridge every week with an older woman, Nellie. Over the course of several years, my bridge partner told me about her daughter, Denise, who with her sixty-year-old husband, had adopted two American boys at birth and a Chinese girl. I heard that the boys were terrors; they lied, stole, and broke things. The girl was a doll.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Adoptive Parents Ask: What Could They Do?


Christopher Sutton’s mother gave him up so that he could have a better life; instead he will spend his life in a Florida penitentiary for the August 22, 2004 murder of his adoptive mother and attempted murder of his adoptive father.

Here’s the facts as presented on Dateline  and South Florida News. John and Susan Sutton brought Christopher home two days after his birth on April 13, 1979. Seven years later, the Suttons adopted a daughter, Melissa.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Searching helps first mothers heal


Joyce Bahr
Guest blogger today is first mother Joyce Bahr, who heads Unsealed Initiative, the organization working to give adoptees their original birth certificates through the passage of legislation that would undo the secrets and lies fostered by New York's 1935 law, which sealed the original birth records of anyone adopted. 

by Joyce Bahr
When they surrendered their babies, first mothers were never given a right to privacy. They were never informed that adoption is a loss,

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Opening Sealed Records for Adoptees: It is just, it is right, and it is time

My letter to the Speaker of the New York Assembly:
 
                      Box 968
                      Sag Harbor, NY 11963

Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly
Legislative Office Building 932
Albany, NY 12248

Dear Speaker Silver:

You are probably aware that there is a movement afoot to give adopted people the same rights as the rest of us: the right to know who they were at birth. Today there are two bills, one in the Assembly (A8410) and one in the Senate (S5269) which would restore equality to this class of people who were stripped of the right to know their original identities when they were born.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Give the Gift of Life: Help give back your child's true identity

Lorraine
You know how when birth/first mothers lobby so that our children can learn the truth of their origins, and yes, locate us, legislators say, but you were promised anonymity? 

Makes me crazy, this does.

We were not promised anything! And if your social worker did tell you that once having relinquished the goods (that is, your baby) you could live a life under a rock and pretend that you did not have a child, she was lying! Cotton growers in the South

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Why the story of The Boy Now Called Grayson makes me crazy mad

Lorraine
Here we go again. I am hoping that the item I posted yesterday was correct-- that Christy and Jason Vaughn have signed a "return the boy" agreement, but since First Mother Forum is a place where anonymous comments are allowed, someone left a comment saying that is a rumor and that the Facebook page "Give Grayson Back," confirms that. Well, not so. And yesterday I tried to confirm the below statement from news media, but could not. So I will leave it at that. What I posted yesterday:

Saturday, October 9, 2010

What Ever Happened to Baby Emma? and good news on the Wyrembek boy

Lorraine
Late Breaking News: This comes from Toledo:  "The Vaughns have signed new papers agreeing to give Grayson Wyrembek back to his father, Benjamin Wyrembek, by the end of the month, never to see him again, and to drop all further resistance to the law and justice and to stop trying to take this child from his Ohio family. Wyrembek apparently had, or is still having, a lengthy visit with his son over the weekend, and will continue to have such visitations until he the end of the month. To which we add: Great!

                                                  *    *     *
While we wait and watch to see what happens to Benjamin Wyrembek's son, there is another case of father's rights being denied, this one in Utah, my least favorite state: A young father in Virginia, John Wyatt, 22, was given the round-around by the Sentara Potomac Hospital in Virginia, but eventually learned two days later that the mother, college student Emily Colleen Fahland, managed somehow to relinquish in Utah.

Uh, oh....Utah and them Mormons like to get those babies away from single mothers...

Friday, October 8, 2010

Dad Wins Custody of Son, Again, in Ohio Court

Grayson's father will be able to take him home soon. We hope. From the Toledo Blade:
The Ohio Supreme Court Thursday said it will not reconsider an earlier decision that allowed Benjamin Wyrembek to have custody of his biological son, Grayson.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Trauma of Being Adopted


Lorraine
While adoptive parents like Scott Simon present the happy-dappy point of view about adoption and the effects it is not likely to have on his children, there are experts who disagree quite radically. And as a first/birth mother I have been reading, thinking and writing about the myriad issues my daughter, relinquished in 1966, faced, and the host of problems stemming from them.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Simple Simon

Scott Simon, host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition and author of Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud, October 4. Prior to his appearance, three guests --- an adoptee/birthmother and two adoptive mothers -- and several callers spoke. While their views on adoption varied, they acknowledged the trauma that can accompany adoption and the need for children to know their first families.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Scott Simon: Adoption Pimp


It’s not enough that Scott Simon is glorifying adoption through his new book, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption. Simon, the host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, is now pimping for an adoption agency.

He’s coming to Portland, yes, super liberal Portland, to do a benefit for Journeys of the Heart Adoption Services. His appearance is co-sponsored by Bouneff & Challey, Portland’s oldest adoption law firm, operating under the name Adoptions Northwest. John Challey is one of the co-founders of Oregon’s largest adoption agency, Open Adoption & Family Services. (Bouneff is no longer practicing law).

Journeys of the Heart Adoption Services is Oregon’s second largest adoption agency, marketing both domestic and foreign adoptions. While total non-related infant adoptions in Oregon declined from from 402 in 2008 to 364 in 2009, Journeys increased its adoptions from 18 to 27. Journeys employs the usual seductive advertisements designed to convince young women that their infant would be better off with one of the glamorous couples whose pictures adorn the website than with its own mother.

What’s really appalling about all this is that Simon knows next to nothing about adoption. Simon became a father for the first time at age 50, adopting Elise from China in 2004 and returning to scarf up Lina in 2007.

According to Simon:
“Adoption is a miracle. I don't mean just that it's amazing, terrific, and a wonderful thing to do. I mean that it is, as the dictionary says, "a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of divine agency."

"My wife and I, not having had children in the traditional, Abraham-and-Sarah-begat manner, have learned to make jokes about the way we've had our family. ("Pregnant! Why would you do that? Those clothes! And you can't drink for months!") … But we cannot imagine anything more remarkable and marvelous than having a stranger put into your arms who becomes, in minutes, your flesh, your blood: your life.” Scott Simon's Family
Simon wipes out little Elise’s and Lina’s birth families and cultural heritage without a bat of an eye lid. Scott, when you come down to earth, I urge you to read the E. B. Donaldson Adoption Institute report: Beyond Cultural Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption.

Simon is using his NPR connections to publicize his book and his celestial view of adoption. He’s been a guest on Minnesota Public Radio and Terry Gross’ Fresh Air. He's appearing on Think Out Loud, an Oregon public radio show (91.5 FM in Portland) on Monday morning, October 4 at 9:00 PDT. The show will be rebroadcast at 9:00 PM and available as a podcast. Call-in questions at 1-888-665-5865 or post them at on the website. Tell your adoption story at Think Out Loud: Adoption and Adaption.