To stay in the closet, don't publicize being a 'maternal source'

Lorraine

There's always something. In this case, someone, who steps forward as we press for openness in adoption and unsealing original birth records that holds the identities of the adopted. Kathleen Hoy Foley is at it again, and yesterday's New York Daily News had a story about her sad plight of being "pursued" by her daughter, Elaine Penn of New Jersey, and how this is destroying Foley.

Foley claims she wants nothing to do with Elaine, was destroyed by being "found." However she is publicizing a book, or a second book, she is writing about her life and giving up a child for adoption who later is able to find out who she, Foley, is. If someone wants to stay out of the limelight, you would think that she would not write two books about it. The cover design of the first, Woman in Hiding, a True Tale of Back Door Abuse, Dark Secrets and Other Evil Deeds, is so putridity bad it is

The Wacky Website of a Woman in Hiding (from her daughter)

As this post is getting a lot of traffic right now because Kathleen Hoy Foley is publicizing her book and book in progress, I am amending this post (3/13/12) to add certain salient facts up front:

1. Kathleen Hoy Foley had a 1-1/2 year dating relationship with her boyfriend, Penn's father. He thought they were getting married and was stunned when Foley's mother slammed the door in his face.
2. The father's family tried to stop the adoption and wanted to take the baby (Elaine Penn) home with them. They were thwarted in their efforts by Catholic Social Services (CSS) and Foley's family who insisted the baby be adopted. Because they were not married, the father had no legal rights.
3. Penn's "non-identifying information report" from CSS contains nothing about any "rape" allegation and, in fact, is replete with touching details of how mother wanted to keep her baby and hesitated for several months signing the relinquishment papers. Thus, she had no warning or reason to think her mother would not want to be contacted.
4. Penn contacted Foley ONCE 15 years ago through the family attorney and NEVER again. She has kept Foley's privacy and silently endured Foley's abusive attacks ever since.
5. Penn has relationships with both members of Foley's and her birth father's family. He deceased before she found his family.
6. Foley is an "adoptee" only in the sense that while her natural mother raised her, her step-father legally adopted her for parental rights. That is hardly what the world knows today as an "adoptee."

 Now, the previous blog:

O What a tangled web we weave...Remember Kathleen Hoy Foley, the birth mother terrible--oh excuse me, she wants to be called "biological source" or even better, "biological cunt"--who is loudly and publicly opposing open records in New Jersey after being "FOUND" BUT NEVER CONTACTED by her daughter?

Apparently it is not enough to be quietly located by your own flesh-and-blood, through a son-in-law--it is important to go public and be in the papers, as the above link shows. Well, there's more--Ms. Foley has her own delectable website, Woman In Hiding, where she posts all sorts of venomous verbiage against adoptee rights, to wit:

Today these women [that would be us], many of them elderly [well, I am a grandmother of a teenager], face threats of being hunted down and found by stranger-adoptees [au contraire, I actually found my daughter] and the dread of their secret pasts being exposed to friends and family [I welcomed that], including their children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren [well, I hope my other granddaughter--the one my daughter surrendered to adoption in Wisconsin contacts me].  I was subjected to that naked exposure and it is an anguish unimaginable, practically unexplainable to those who have not suffered such inexcusable public humiliation.[Uh, really? You poor thing.]

Foley rants on in pages called "Mean and Nasty;" "Speaking the Ugly," and pathetically, under "Strategies," how to deal with the unwanted "stranger-adoptee" who might come knocking at your door after you hang up on them. As for what she wants to be called?

Birth mother—a slur that branded me a slut; a whore.  The label that blamed me for getting pregnant from rape.  The label that ignored the rapes; turned my torment into a hot and heavy teenage romance with me unable to keep my legs closed....Biological Source is a description I can force-feed myself, grudgingly accept.  It is, after all, the truth and nothing gets to change that.  However, I prefer Biological Cunt.  Biological Cunt speaks my personal truth.  It does not fake a smile and make nice.

She talks about her husband, Phil, who tirelessly campaigns against giving adopted people their birth right, as in, a name, and an original identity. It's all so sick sick sick but then, I guess we have to expect that people like Foley would pop up here and there. She could belong to the club of women seeking the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, with thanks to Pope for that great line. But most of them are institutionalized. I could go on but Osolomama, an adoptive mother extraordinaire and one of our regular readers, also wrote about Foley's folly at her blog and you can take it from there.

Well, amazingly enough, her daughter, Elaine Penn, rather than be abashed by her biological mother's scorn and outright rejection, is a staunch supporter of the legislation that would open records for almost all adoptees in New Jersey. After the Catholic Charities conception confusion of Phil Bloete, who thought he was reunited with his birth father, only to find out through a DNA test that they were not a match, Penn wrote this letter to Francis Dolan, head of NJ Catholic Charities, as he ponders whether or not his organization can support open records, as does, say, the archdiocese of Albany in New York.

I am a Catholic Charities Adoptee through  Trenton. Please help us convince Assemblyman Roberts to bring A752 to the Assembly Floor for a vote before 2009 is over.

It seems considering the recent news, it would be beneficial for Catholic Charities to help get this law passed. That way, your organization could focus on the positive contributions it can make to society, instead of draining your resources fighting old, worn battles. Bill A752 would give birth mothers a year to be able to black out their name, along with leaving medical history. It's a good compromise -- and this is the time for compromise.

I know something about your old fights because Kathleen Hoy Foley is my birth mother. She's been blasting away at me, my deceased birth father and Catholic Charities for quite awhile now. (I'm sure you've seen her in the Philadelphia newspapers and on CBS-NY news.) The sooner that this law gets passed, the quicker her soapbox gets taken away. These fights will no longer have anything to do with Catholic Charities.

Please consider helping us pass this Bill and finally having it behind all of us.

As a post script to this story, Penn was recently featured in a front page story in The [NJ] Star-Ledger:

Elaine Penn, a 45-year-old adoptee from the Trenton-based Catholic Charities, can’t get a passport with her current adoption certificate. Finalized in March 1966, well after her birth in Sept. 1964, it came later than the one-year gap the federal government allows in order to use adoption certificates as a form of identification.

And when she found a lump near her armpit after a mammogram several years ago, she wasn’t immediately able to provide her doctors with an accurate medical history. 

“I asked if it would help if the doctor knew my family medical history and she said ‘Absolutely,’” Penn said. “The insurance companies, they’re not going to pay for extra tests and treatments without a history.”

Unfortunately, attempts to contact Penn’s biological mother, Kathleen Foley, in 1998 were rebuffed, although Foley’s lawyer did provide Penn, who now lives in Howell, with a medical history. 

As regular readers know, I have little sympathy for those closeted birth/first/real mothers who will not acknowledge and meet the children they surrendered to adoption. If any of them are reading this, please consider what your rejection does to your child, who has already grown up with the sense of rejection that adoption can not help but infer, no matter how great one's adoptive parents are. I was struck by this once again in reading through a reunion story this morning, when a thrilled and relieved reunited adoptee Raymond Deschesne, of Boulder city, Colorado, says he blurted this out during his first phone call to his mother, Kathie Walker: he asked her what he had done wrong, why she let him be adopted. 

He added, I don't know why I said that, I was two or three months old when I was adopted. 

But there is hurt that comes before language, and that is the hurt that can not be erased. It can be accepted, but not erased.

My daughter, Jane

Oh, my baby, my daughter, you did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. I am so very sorry that you were adopted. Like I told your daughter, my granddaughter, I made a mistake.--lorraine

FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS STORY SEE:

To stay in the closet, don't publicize being a 'maternal source'

___________________
A bill in New Jersey that would give adopted individuals the right to their own birth certificates passed the Senate with an overwhelming majority (31-7) but is stalled in the Human Services Committee of the Assembly. Speaker of the Assembly is Joseph J. Roberts, Democrat of Camden, who so far has refused to bring the bill up for a floor vote. (Live in his district? We need you to call him--now: 586-384-5862. Outgoing governor John Corzine has stated his support of the bill and will sign it if we can get it passed! The bill does have an out for people like Ms. Foley, as birth parents have a year in which to object, and their names will not be released, though updated medical information is asked for. The New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education is holding a press conference at the capitol in Trenton on Monday, November 23rd. If you can attend, or otherwise lend your support, please contact birth mother Judy Foster (jfoster@optonline.net) or adoptee Pam Hasegawa (pamhasagawa@gmail.com). Anyone with a New Jersey adoption connection of any sort should raise your voice and act up now. This won't happen unless legislators hear from you. And you.

Most Birth/First Mothers Want Contact but still the secrecy lingers on

How many mothers reject contact? It's a question that dogs us all involved in adoption reform, because when we lobby for open records for adopted people, we always hear ad nauseum about the first/birth mother in the closet who will drive her car in the river if she is "found out." And we know from our friends in the blogosphere, such as Triona and Ungrateful Little Bastard, that refusal for contact does happen!

It is hard for we first mothers to even imagine turning away--well, I was a searcher mother, so that was never an issue; Linda and Jane were sought by their daughters. So since none of us can even fathom the thought of rejecting our children, we wondered how many first mothers really want to stay in the closet. Who are these women? We were prodded in our quest, we admit, by a call from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute because they are updating their white paper For the Records: Restoring a Legal Right for Adult Adoptees.

A while back we heard from Jacy Boldebuck in Wisconsin where she does searches for the state for adoptees past eighteen, that she gets approximately a 50 percent refusal rate! Is there something in the water in Wisconsin that leads to these kinds of acts of random evil? Is there something they say to the mothers to prevent them from wanting contact? What is going on? From Indiana, I have a report of 70 percent acceptance rate; 30 percent refusal.

I found this hard to believe because it is so wholly off from everything else I have heard from sea to shining sea--as well as what kinds of statistics we can find. While these are anecdotal reports, here's what I've been hearing:

Confidential intermediary Linda Burns (read more at link) from Texas (pictured holding a sign on the right), said that she had done about a thousand searches and "finds" over the years, and in the end, she had no refusals to contact. A few reluctant at first, but in the end, no refusals in the end.

To find out more, I sent out a request on Adoption News Service to confidential intermediaries or anyone who does searches and asked about their refusal rate. The reaction was heart-warming:
from Searchquestamerica: a 92 percent acceptance.
Birth mother Marilyn Waugh in Kansas (where the records have never been sealed) says she does between 400-500 searches a year, and has done them for the past 18 years, and she finds about five women a year (approximately one percent) who do not want contact and refuse information.
Joe Collins, searcher extraordinaire based in New Jersey, says he has done about 2,500 searches and estimates the refusal rate at two percent.
And from Tina Peddie in California comes this response:

I have been an adoption search consultant, like I said, for over 25 yrs.... after being reunited with my son for 26 yrs .... and most of my people..my clients (who many I consider 'friends' as well.... ), ask me to make the initial phone call, esp the adoptees who are petrified to make that initial phone call to their birthmothers - even tho i talk with them at length and encourage them to make the call if they possibly CAN ...but most are too afraid to ... so I do it ... and I do believe that having an understanding, empathetic birthmother on the phone with them DOES HELP THEM, once they get thru the first few minutes ... even tho MOST are very happy to hear that their adult child is wanting contact.

My experience (even if I wasn't a b/mom) still seems to be that the majority DO WANT contact! There are those FEW that might be hesitant at first who it DOES seem to help to have me, another b/mom on the phone to talk with about it, that by the end of the call, are okay and relaxed about it, and perfectly okay to having contact ....

And, as I said, in 25 yrs, I have only had 2 or 3 who never would have contact with their child at ALL - and they all had one or two things in common: they were all ELDERLY (older than the average birthmom being found) ... and tended to be the very religious ones. But mainly ELDERLY, like now in their late 70s or 80s!

It's heartbreaking because I KNOW it doesn't have to be that way ... and the birthmothers do not have to carry around that fear, guilt and shame, that I know is what keeps them apart. They just cannot deal with it. And two of these adoptees are males in their 40s/50s, and they are sad about it, but not angry, hurt yes, and feel sad for their birthmother, that she has to hold this secret still. (But after her death, they both want to seek out their siblings by this mother, and I will help them. I feel they have that right.) And I know that that most likely those siblings will feel badly for their mother, that she had to carry this burden all alone, and that she couldn't share it with her husband or children all those years. Sad.

I know a C.I. who is a birthmother, who does a good job - but I don't know that all do. I don't think they put as much INTO CONTACT as we do - or if they have the same empathy, or keep them on the phone as I do ... just to keep them on the phone, talking, or 'listening' - if a birthmom starts off hesitating, I at least try to keep her on the phone by telling her about the adoptee as much as I can, just to keep her on the phone, and telling her what I know about the adoptee, making the adoptee 'real' to her... and it always turns things around. I just don't think C.I.'s go quite that far. That's prob. why they don't have the same, high 'success rate.'

Thanks for what you are doing!

Take care,

God bless!

Tina

What is so sorrowful are the adoptees who are rejected, when it appears that with the right kind of contact, the closeted birth mother would find the courage to come out into the light, fess up to her spouse, her family, her friends if she chooses to and give the adopted person the sense of completeness that he or she lacks.

CORRECTION: There is more than one woman in New Jersey upset over being contacted by her daughter conceived during a rape. Both have become poster women for birth mother anonymity from their children: Kathleen Hoy Foley, of Chatsworth, who is photographed here, and a woman from Atlantic City, both birthmother wretchedaires, are the two in question. The Atlantic City woman, whose name is not being published in the newspapers (but read comments below--apparently her name is Renee Blackwell) is suing the State of New Jersey's Department of Youth and Family Services for a million dollars for the pain and sorrow caused by being contacted by her daughter. Though she received a letter stating that her daughter was looking for her, she did not respond, and months later, the daughter showed up after allegedly receiving her name from the state. Hmm...just wondering: The daughter could have found the woman's identity through other means...there are successful searchers.

As adoptee-rights advocate Pam Hasegawa has noted in newspaper reports, the woman could have gotten a a restraining order; instead she is suing for a million bucks. My heart aches for her daughter. For both daughters. Children of rape are wholly innocent and not responsible for their parents' actions.

It takes all kinds. What I think about these woman is not suitable for a family newspaper. Er, blog.-lorraine