May the Richest Parents Win--The DeBoer Case

by Lorraine Dusky

This amounts to a legal
kidnapping.,.. they are
ready to break up a
family because a late arriving
birth father
has the correct genes. "
Newsday, 12/9/91.

"It's the same as
if you said to any parents: I want your two year-
old. Give her to me." The New York
Times, 12/27/92.

"'It's an outrage to take a child away after
two years of bonding with her parents,' said. ..a
lawyer. 'It's a travesty of justice.'" The
Detroit News, 4/21/93.

Last spring and summer the media bombarded the public with stories about the heart-breaking story of two worthy, attractive people in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Roberta and Jan DeBoer, who were being unjustly forced to return to her natural parents the little girl they had raised since she was less than a week old.

"Robby," as the press liked to familiarly call her, was unable to bear children due to an illness contracted— horrors—on their honeymoon. We were all primed to pity the poor childless couple who only wanted to raise "their" little girl in peace and not be bothered by a less than-telegenic father, who didn't even know the child was his until after she was born, and an unmarried woman who changed her mind about relinquishing her daughter after she fell under the influence of a cult-like group of fanatics.

What the media didn't tell about the story formed public opinion for the DeBoers and against the girl's parents, Cara and Dan Schmidt, who were effectively painted as low-lifes for wanting their daughter back. Dan Schmidt, it was endlessly pointed out, is, of all things, a trucker (i.e., lower class). The clear implication was that this alone was reason enough to not let him have a child he so clearly wanted.

Initially omitted (and always buried) in the news reports was that Cara Schmidt began asking for her child back within four weeks of giving birth. Also glossed over (or not mentioned at all) was that Cara Schmidt missed Iowa's three week deadline for changing her mind about the adoption by merely five days. If this had happened in another state, such as California where a woman has six months before the decision to relinquish her child is final, Jessica would have been immediately returned.

Also not mentioned: that Cara Schmidt had signed the relinquishment papers 40 hours after the child was born, at the time believing that the attorney for the DeBoers was her attorney. Once Dan Schmidt learned that he was the girl's father, he joined Cara in the fight to get their daughter back, all within a month of the girl's birth. The DeBoers were in defiance of the Iowa Supreme Court when they began their battle in the Michigan courts. When the Schmidts went to Michigan and asked for the sheriff to help them get their daughter back, they were refused and told if they acted alone they could be arrested. You practically have to be a private eye to ferret out this information.

The second of People magazine's heart-strumming cover stories on the case devoted 16.7 column inches to interviews with the DeBoers and 5.5 inches of quotes by psychological experts and others who supported them. In contrast, the Schmidt's side of the story got only 5 inches, and expert backup, 2.3 inches.

The New Yorker gave the DeBoers a major boost in an error-ridden piece by Lucinda Franks, who recently adopted an infant and who is married to the 74-year-old Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau. Although she herself is an adoptive mother—and thus a writer with a personal bias—this was not revealed. (Before we go any further, understand that I am a mother who once relinquished a child for adoption. More on that later.)

The Schmidts' attorney in Iowa, Jackie Miller, says that when she called Franks they had a five-minute conversation and Franks obviously did not want to talk to her; another attorney who was present at the time of Franks' interview with the Schmidts, Pam Lewis, says Franks ignored what actually happened in the Iowa courts and instead used Roberta DeBoer's misleading fabrications in quotes to tell the story she wanted.

This technique—stacking the quotes—was used aggressively throughout the months the story captured the nation's attention. But while the print stories were biased, they could hardly compare in emotional scope to seeing a hysterical, sobbing Roberta DeBoer interviewed on television by reporters who never asked follow-up questions, never doubted the DeBoers' version of events. The hard questions were seldom—if ever—asked: Why didn't you give her back in the first place? You had her for less than three weeks at the time. "Why did you fight the court order to have a blood test for five months? If your concern was for the child, why did you defy the first Iowa court order to return her? Even if you don't like the father, doesn't Cara Schmidt have some sort of moral claim to raise her daughter? Yes, you're in pain now, but didn't you set this up yourself? Six separate court decisions were against you, and the only one that was in your favor was quickly overturned.

DeBoer supporters and attorneys (who often turned out to be adoptive parents themselves) managed to plant in the media the concept that since they had kept Jessica for so long—in defiance of court orders, remember—they were now entitled to keep her because the transition would be difficult for her. This concept was called "children's rights." Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who has become a custody expert (partly through the difficult time she had adopting two children as a single woman), managed to instill the idea into the public consciousness that because Jessica was being returned to her natural parents, she was being treated as "property." No one said anything about yes, indeed, property, as in "possession is nine-tenths of the law."

Except for a few instances, only in the letters to the editor from adoptees, did you learn that being raised by genetic strangers, i.e., being adopted outside the family, is not quite the same—regardless of income—as being raised in a home where your real parents were also what the media had now reduced to "blood parents." An expert with those views, Marshall Schechter, M.D., co-author of Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self as well as other writings on adoption, was interviewed at length by Isobel Wilkerson, the New York Times reporter who covered the Jessica case. Yet he was never quoted in the Times.

What is going on here? We are in the midst of an adoption frenzy in America that has turned into a class war. One one side, we have middle- class baby boomers who delayed having children and are now unable to conceive; on the other, we have generally lower-class girls and women, the disposable suppliers of the commodity so desired: healthy, white infants, who are increasingly hard to come by. And with independent adoption being relatively unrestricted in 34 states, an army of adoption attorneys has grown up, an army designed to serve their clients, the ones who pay the bills: the adoptive parents.

The result is that adoption today is not a service for infants who need homes— there are plenty of those, but they are not the healthy, white infants that are prized—but has instead become a service industry for couples who want to adopt. The competition is fierce: estimates as to how many couples there are for each healthy, white infant range from 23-to-one to 40-to-one. And just like always, money talks. Money can put you at the head of the line.

And while we think it is awful—and unlawful—if a woman "sells" her baby to the highest bidder, we only nod in wonderment when we hear about attorneys' fees and related costs that can go as high as $75,000 for actually acquiring a baby. Is this not buying a baby?

Feminists, academia, the press and the attorneys themselves come largely from the same group of people wanting to adopt, or their parents, and almost always promote adoption as an absolute social good. They argue for laws that would get the babies out of the hands of the poor wretches who have them as quickly as possible, and fight them in court when necessary. We have more to offer your babies, the implication always is, as if a nice home and a middle- or upperclass life was on a comparable scale with growing up with people you look like, whose traits you have inherited, whose predispositions and talents have been passed on to you.

In truth, we are not far from the chilling premise of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, where fertile women bear children for infertile upper-class wives. In Gilead, the futuristic society Atwood created, the emphasis is on the difficulty in getting a baby, not on what relinquishing one means to the women who have the babies or to the children themselves.

It is the same in the U.S. today. Scant attention is given to what it means to be uprooted from the long line of a specific heritage that is the birthright of each one of us, and informs us how and where we fit into the cycle of life. Nor to a 20-year movement of adult adoptees and natural mothers that would allow adopted individuals the right to know their true histories, spanning back generations, or who their natural parents are while growing up. The attitude among most adoptive parents seems to be, don't think about that until you have to.

While open adoptions are becoming more common, they are still the exception, not the norm. Instead adoption attorneys press for what they see as their client's best interests: a uniform state law that would permit a woman to sign away her child—irrevocably—only five days after birth, with no recourse or time to see if she could find a way to raise her child.

Five days. Less time than she is allowed by law to be absent from work. Five days. A woman's hormones are still bouncing up and down in that time, and all the time of the pregnancy cannot tell a woman what it means to actually give birth to a living, breathing child who comes out of your body and who will one day look like you and the father. Five days. Hardly enough time to figure out a plan of action for a woman and her baby.

I relinquished my daughter 27 years ago, and for years I believed that it was probably the best for her and me. She had a mother and a father, as well as the kind of middle-class life I would have had a difficult if not impossible time giving her. By breaking laws, we were reunited 12 years ago. True, she has good adoptive parents, but she has seen her share of the awful kinds of problems adoptees are prone to. Low self-esteem is only the beginning. Once, I quietly accepted my conflicted feelings whenever I watched films of animals that showed a mother refusing to leave her dead or wounded offspring. I would tell myself that human life was different, more complicated. But I have come to know that, in some fundamental way, it may always be wrong for a woman to relinquish a child for adoption by strangers. Yes, of course, it is sad to be infertile when it is children you want, but that does not entitle anyone to someone else's
child.*

Lorraine Dusky is writing a book on gender bias and the legal system, Still Unequal: The Shameful Truth about Women and Justice in America for Crown Publishing. She is the author of Birthmark, a memoir about surrendering her daughter for adoption.

From On the Issues, The Progressive Women's Magazine, Winter, 1994. I will post the letters that were published in the next issue in a later blog.

Fathers Day 2010: Unmarried Fathers Who Fight for their Rights to be a Dad

This Father’s Day let’s raise a glass and toast John Wyatt, Ramsey Shaud, Jon Klaren, and all the other childless fathers who took on the system and lost. And let’s make another toast to those fortunate fathers, Otakar Kirchner and Dan Schmidt, who beat the odds. And finally let’s toast Erik Smith, the Ohio paralegal working with fathers all over the country in danger of losing their children to the rapacious adoption system.

Unmarried fathers Wyatt and Shaud are the latest in a string of men victimized by Utah’s relaxed residency laws, allowing the State to become a safe haven for would be adopters. Utah laws, reflecting LDS Church doctrine of eternal togetherness for sanctified families (father, mother, and children) and oblivion for unsanctioned ones (father and child or mother and child), are a God-send for unscrupulous segments of the adoption industry.

Wyatt’s baby was born in Virginia and surrendered by the baby’s mother to a couple who took the child to Utah. Shaud’s baby was born in Utah where her mother relocated from Florida, apparently induced to do so by a Utah adoption agency. Both men took every step required by their homes states and Utah to protect their right to nurture their child; nonetheless, Utah trial courts upheld the adoption of their children. Both cases are on appeal. We told Wyatt’s story here.

Shaud’s story as reported on The Daily Bastardette:

“Shaud filed a paternity claim in Utah and a notice in the Utah putative father registry five days before the birth. Shaud’s notice was mailed on January 12, 2010 and marked received by Utah Vital Statistics on January 14. The mother consented to adoption on January 19, and an adoption petition was filed.

[Vital Statistics did not process Shaud’s paperwork until January 20, making Shaud’s filing one day late.] Moreover, the date of receipt on the envelope had been altered from January 14 to January 20. The adoption was then ordered without Shaud present.

[Through an attorney, Shaud] filed a motion to intervene in the adoption …. A judge ruled that Shaud had preserved his right to due process. For unknown reasons the judge was replaced by Judge Robin Reese, who reconsidered the matter. Reese refused to admit … evidence about Vital Statistics activities and denied Shaud’s intervention.”

The State of Utah is not alone in its zeal to separate fathers from their children. Other states also have laws cleverly designed by the adoption industry to screw unmarried fathers. Klaren lost his son in left-leaning California because his attorney failed to tell him about an important deadline.

As we wrote in our post about Wyatt’s case, prior to 1972, unmarried fathers were legally dead when it came to the adoption of their children. (Of course very much alive if the state wanted them to pay support.) In Stanley v. Illinois, the US Supreme Court held that unmarried fathers had the right to nurture their children. States immediately adopted laws designed to give the appearance of  recognizing fathers’ rights while denying them in fact. To the horrors of the adoption industry, however, fathers actually asserted their rights and in a few cases, they prevailed. Thanks to well-financed public relations campaigns by the would be adoptive parents and allied adopters in the media, two of these cases, Baby Jessica (Dan Schmidt) and Baby Richard (Otakar Kirchner) made headlines. "No More Baby Jessica’s" and “Save Baby Richard” ranted the press as though the children were being sent to where the wild things are rather than to the loving arms of their fathers. (Jane will have a review of Baby Richard: A Four-Year-Old Comes Homein the coming weeks.)

Adoption industry lobbyists and legislators, contending they were motivated by “the best interest of the child”, worked overtime to shutter fathers’ all-ready small window of opportunity. Whether this commitment to the “best interest of the child” was based on narrow religious views or the need to keep children – and money -- flowing into industry coffers, the result was the same: more traps for unwary fathers to navigate.

An irony in all this? These state laws fly in the face of a national priority articulated by the White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships: “Supporting fathers who stand by their families, which involve working to get young men off the streets and into well‐paying jobs, and encouraging responsible fatherhood”.

Now that is a policy we can get behind. Let's hope the White House sinks some teeth into that initiative.
------------------------
Here's a book on birth fathers and their experiences.

Teleah Achane will stay with daddy

 Terry Achane and his nearly 2-year-old daughter, Teleah

Now that Jared and Kristi Frei of Utah have withdrawn their appeal to fight the father of the daughter they have been raising, and she will stay with her father, Terry Achane, the question some have raised is how will the two-year fare? After all, she is now living with "a stranger"--her real father.

She's going to be just fine with her real daddy and undoubtedly, his extended family.

Some of you will remember "Baby Jessica" who from 1991-93 was caught in a similar legal battle between a couple in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Robert and Jan DeBoer, and her natural parents, Cara and Dan Schmidt, who ultimately prevailed and got their daughter back. Jessica, as the media

Transition Time in Contested Adoptions: Just Another Excuse for Delay

Tuesday, FMF was excited to report that Benjamin Wyrembek, the natural father of “Grayson Vaughn” --the name given to a three year old boy by his would-be adopters, Jason and Christy Vaughn--would soon gain custody of him. Unfortunately there’s been another setback in the chain of events which has kept the boy and his father apart for almost three years.

After a closed hearing in an Indiana trial court where it had been expected that Grayson would be turned over to his father, both sides released a joint statement agreeing to "resolve this matter in a way that meets the child’s best interest," and avoid further comment to the media.

Talking out about adoption is not always easy. In fact, almost never.

Talking freely about about our children lost to adoption is something that does not come easy, no matter how open one is about it. Reading Stone Diaries recently, I came across a passage where the protagonist, Daisy, is glad to escape from her home town because everybody there knows her marriage of two weeks was not consummated. Her upper-class husband was a secret drunk who fell out of a third-story window on their honeymoon in France. Once back home, Daisy's doctor discovers that she is still a virgin, and tells no one but his wife, who tells no one but her best friend who tells no one but...and eventually this startling news reaches her ex-mother-in-law. Who blames the lack of marital consummation on Daisy, who must be "frigid." Daisy  then became a woman whose story enveloped her around like a coat she cannot throw off.

The shock of recognition hit me hard when I read that passage because that is how I often feel about my status as a birth/first mother. That I am a woman with a story. That precedes me into any situation. Sometimes I merely want to be a woman without such an interesting story.

So I often keep my mouth shut. Do I announce to casual strangers, like someone I might meet at work (if I worked out of the home) that I am a first/birth mother, walking freely among the non-birth mothers of the world? No. Do I tell a dinner partner whom I have never met before that I had a child who I gave up for adoption, and that I searched and found her, and now she is dead, when asked if I have children? Do I sometimes just say no? Depends. (Actually, it's easier now that my daughter is dead, because saying that my daughter died usually kills further questioning and only elicits sympathy.) Do I join a new group of people and introduce myself, if asked, Do you have children? as a woman who gave up a child for adoption, or a birth/first mother? No. That's a question I have dreaded ever since 1966, the year my daughter was born and I surrendered her.

I have to have some privacy about this. I have to not let my adoption sadness and grief and activism take over every aspect of my life. I can not handle being on a soap box every moment. Thank god for good friends, because with them, adoption is only a part of who I am.

If you are a woman with a story such as this, first and foremost most people go, Ohh that's too bad, and Ahh, how are you today? Where's your daughter, how did her parents handle this, did you regret giving her up, why did you do it, who is the father, why didn't you get married?  That takes up the rest of the lunch/hour/group session/afternoon. I do not want to be a woman "with a story," a story that precedes me everywhere, obliterates all other information about me. It's what Jane talked about in her last post.

Sometimes I just want to be a woman joining a reading club, a writer and magazine editor, someone with Francophile tendencies, someone who finds amazing stuff at the local thrift shops, a fan of Elizabeth George mysteries and Preston Sturgis movies, a lover of triple-creme cheese, Indian food, horseback riding, dogs and ballet. It is exhausting to be first and foremost an activist birth mother.

Some may think that because I wrote Birthmark way back in the dark ages of the open-records movement--and been interviewed about adoption reform literally fifty or sixty times in the media--it is a piece of cake to speak out all the time about adoption issues. Wrong. If I have to debate a gang of angry adoptive parents (who usually turn out also to be lawyers with their tongues sharpened), it's emotionally draining and exhausting. If people wonder why I sometimes are not overly sympathetic to adoptive parents without knowing more about them, it's because so many have been gunning for me over the years. One guy I knew slightly told me at a party that he knew people "who wanted to kill me." They lived in his building, he said, they were friends, and yep, they were adoptive parents.

On the day in 1993 that Baby Jessica/real name: Anna Schmidt was returned to her natural parents, Dan Schmidt and Cara Clausen, from the the DeBoers, the couple who fought in the courts for two-and-a-half years, I was the only one speaking up for the Schmidts on the then MacNeal-Lehrer Report on PBS against a group of about six people, including adoptive mother and Harvard professor, Elizabeth Bartholet. You bet that was exhausting. Similar hostile interviews were common after Birthmark came out in 1979.

On the other hand, having people know who I am (reunited birth mother, adoption-reform activist, writer) does make some encounters easier, since I do not have to explain this part of my life. People who might say nasty things about birth mothers are likely to hold their tongue if I'm within earshot. Prospective adoptive parents do not invite me to Gladney fund raisers. Yes, the agency urges prospective adopters to have them, and adopting parents I know held a cocktail party for that purpose. I was not on the guest list. They got a boy soon after.

However, if someone has never talked to a first mother before (that she is aware of), and the situation allows, she is typically riveted in exploring every possible aspect of the story. She has a million questions, and so it goes for the next hour. I remember spending most of an afternoon at a friend's house one summer day and her sister-in-law was full of such questions as we paddled about in a pool. There was nothing to do but answer her questions; to do anything else would have been rude.

But if I can do so, and say, I'm at a social event and someone wants to launch into a discussion of the pros and cons of open records, adoption, my searching, whatever...I do what adoption-reform pioneer Florence Fisher taught me: She says, I am at a social event, I want to have a good time, this is such an emotional issue, I just can't talk about it now, OK? Smile broadly, hope for understanding. If that doesn't work, I add, You know, giving up my daughter was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and revisiting it now is like talking about the time I was raped. (I was.)

I put Florence's advice once to good use on a couple of occasions. Once I "helped" a friend's college-age daughter who was to argue that "adoption records ought to remain sealed" in a debating class (true story). At her father's request I sent her a packet of material (though what I sent argued for the opposite of what she was looking for) about sealed records. I don't know what her father was thinking, as he had already met my daughter, and knew that I searched for her. I did not hear from the young woman, or learn what happened in debating class. Several months later, however, here she was at a Christmas party. She introduced herself and a half hour later called me over and introduced me to another woman as, "This is Lorraine who wrote a book about adoption."

Gulp. Who is this woman? I'm thinking, Somebody about to adopt? Err..."This is a woman who wrote a book about adoption, too," the young woman making this awkward introduction said. "Bye." And then our go-between was gone.

Is this woman my enemy, I'm wondering now. Is she an adoptive mother against open records? About to adopt? What? It turned out that she had been a social worker (not an adoptive mother) who indeed had written a book about adopting for adoptive parents. We stared at each other uncomfortably. After hearing about her book, I said my piece about not talking about this at a party. We parted and have been cool to one another on the infrequent occasions our paths cross. We smile, nod, and turn away.

Being public about your status as a birth mother and lobbying for open records in Albany or Trenton or Boston or Philadelphia or Austin is a whole different ball game. You are with people of like mind, you meet legislators and their aides and tell your story succinctly and hope to open minds and hearts, and it is exhilarating, a great good feeling that gives back more than you give--even when you encounter the folks who will never vote for open records for adoptees and most certainly, not for first/birth mothers.

But sometimes someone I've just met strikes me the right way, and I end up revealing my story. I've told strangers in airports who turn out to be understanding and sympathetic adoptive mothers; I told someone sitting next to me at a dinner party and it turned out that she too, had given up a child many years before, and we spent the next hour talking barely above a whisper; I once told a man I met on a vacation half-way around the world and it turned out he was a birth father and now, with plenty of money, wished he could find a way to help his child, if he needed it. I could send him to college, he said. Just before Birthmark was available, I told a stranger in a bar in Sag Harbor, and he turned out to be adopted, and was excited with the idea of what I was doing. I never met him again. However, a few weeks later he sent a dozen red roses to me on the set of the first media appearance I did for the book. I never knew how he even knew where I would be--the interview was in Detroit, where I grew up, it was not a national talk show.

I think about him now and then. I hoped he found whom he was really looking for, and she was gladdened in her heart. We birth/first mothers have to make the call every day: whether to tell or not. Speaking out and speaking up is what we need to do, but sometimes a woman gets weary and needs a little room.

Biological Father Wins in Court, Again; Will the Vaughns Comply?

/

The natural father of "Grayson Vaughn," not the boy's his legal name since he was never adopted, will be able to raise his child,  and the couple who have been holding him for the last three years must turn him over to the father, Benjamin Wyrembek, within twenty-hours, as ordered by the Ohio Supreme Court this afternoon. The court referred to the "right of a natural parent to the care and custody of his children (as) one of the most precious and fundamental in law."

Hooray!  Christy and Jason Vaughn, who have been making the rounds of the media hoping to drum up sympathy for their keeping the boy,

Father wins right to fight for his daughter in Michigan legislature

Fighting Father Daniel Quinn

On this Father’s Day, First Mother Forum again salutes a father who fought for the right to nurture his child. Michigan father Daniel Quinn Maeleigh sired a daughter, Maeleigh, with Candance Beckwith who was married to--but separated from--Adam Beckwith. He supported his daughter for two years until Candance and Adam reconciled and moved with Maeleigh to Kentucy.

Quinn sued asking a court to grant him paternal rights. Court ordered blood test showed Quinn was the Maeleigh's father. But that wasn't the end of it.

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.

When "best interests of the child" violate reason and decency

Jane

Last week Harry’s Law presented the familiar drama of a child adopted illegally and his natural parents suing for his return. We know from the beginning that the judge, lacking the Wisdom of Solomon, will rule for the adopters (the most perfect of couples), citing the best interests of the child.

The Harry’s Law segment had a contemporary twist: the aggrieved couple is Chinese. Their child was stolen by corrupt Chinese officials and given to an African-American couple. The Chinese parents come to the United States and sue for return of their child. The judge, an African-American who had been adopted as a child by a white couple, rules for the adopters, repeating the old platitude about how it’s not about the rights of the parents but about the rights of the child. To overcome any lingering doubts the TV audience might have about the correctness of the decision, the Chinese girl is shown happily singing and swaying to Gospel music along with African-American children.