If LDS Family Services ends adoption, it won't be soon enough

Lorraine

UPDATE BELOW
As we described yet another LDS Family Services adoption scam yesterday, one designed to cut out the natural father, it is merely one more in a long link of such fraudulent adoptions that the state laws were designed, if not to condone, to promote. In Utah the laws make it difficult--if not impossible--for a father to raise his child if the mother chooses adoption. It is apparent that social workers, LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Family Services, an organization with dozens of adoption agencies world wide, but most particularly in Utah, the seat of the Mormon religion, are not interested in ethical adoptions, but speedy ones instead.


Consequently, Utah has become a haven for women from all over the country who wish to fool the fathers of the children they bear, and prevent these men from raising their biological children. Given the facts in case after case, it is most likely that some unscrupulous social workers school pregnant women how to manipulate the process with outright lies, so that the fathers lose out before they know what has happened. And as one of the LDS lawyers stated, fraud is not a basis to overturn an adoption. Basically he is saying that fraud is permissible. This ought to be a national story, not something just written about in Utah papers and blogs like this one.

RELIGIOUS RITE MORE IMPORTANT THAN MOTHER AND CHILD BOND 
In other words, the LDS Family Services game plan appears to be: we will help unscrupulous women steal the child from the father, and grease the wheels for a speedy adoption, and it's: too bad for you, Dad. We can only assume that this unethical behavior derives directly from the teaching that the children of single parents cannot receive the blessing of the sealing covenant, a major ritual of the Mormon faith, and thus such children cannot connect with their parents as the children of married parents can. While we do hear that some social workers associated with LDS Family Services no longer push adoption as the only correct option, still that influence of the LDS faith cannot be dismissed. If there is some trickery involved--as well as money to be made--well, isn't that better than the child not being able to connect with their parents in the afterlife? And be proper Mormons with all the advantages of the religion? This is a rhetorical question. 

Today the LDS response to single parenting is on a par with their reaction to gay marriage: it opposes such a union theologically, and by supporting legislation against it, actively tries to outlaw it. Utah's legal arguments against gay marriage reflect the tenants of the religion of the ruling class in that state--the Church of Jesus Christ of  Latter-Day Saints. Legal arguments before the U. S. Supreme Court about Utah's recently over-turned ban focus heavily on whether gay and lesbians can be suitable parents. According to an AP report, lawyers for the state of Utah filed a 100-page brief that made numerous references to their belief that children should be raised by straight couples. It is well known that the Mormon faith is adamantly opposed to gay marriage, gay sex, gay anything. While the particulars are different, the argument against gay marriage is connected to the argument for encouraging single women to give up their babies: even if they are heterosexual, how can they be suitable parents? There is only ONE of them.

People get upset when I criticize LDS Family Services--and thus the Mormon Church behind this behemoth adoption organization. They say that I am unfairly biased against their religion. The "Locator" Troy Dunn, a Mormon who paradoxically has made a successful business out of reuniting people separated by adoption, is among my critics. In truth, I don't give a hoot about the religion, and am neutral about Mormons in general; but I am thoroughly and completely opposed to a system that fosters taking children from their mothers if they are unmarried, and also encourages lying to fathers who wish to raise those children. All this is done, it appears, so the children can be adopted by people--only couples need apply--whom the LDS authorities deem worthy, and can pay their bills. Now it appears in the Strickland case, as well as others we have written about, that the adoptive parents involved knew all along that the birth father was being conned and that the adoption had problems. Yet it went forward and was finalized. The boy involved in the Stickland case is now three. Call it legal if you will, but his adoption was totally and wholly unethical. Have those involved no decency? Have they lost sight of simple morality? If you accept the concept of karma, they will one day pay for their sins. And I will go on condemning them, and the LDS ethos, until real change is effected in their policies and practices. 

LDS AGAINST UNSEALING BIRTH CERTIFICATES
LDS Family Services is one of the two major organizations behind the Washington, DC lobby group, the National Council for Adoption, that in the past has taken the lead in opposing unsealing the original birth certificates of adoptees in state after state. (If all states were to unseal the birth records of the adopted, the profitable business of Dunn, and other search organizations such as OmniTrace, would dry up. In fact, some search organizations have been known to lobby against unsealing birth certificates, all in the name of the first mothers who must be "protected." Rubbish. They are protecting their business model and bottom line.) 

Recently a man who would like to adopt wrote to us noting that we and those who comment at FMF typically wrote about adoptive parents in less than glowing terms, to put it mildly. We have been accused of being anti-adoption and heartless when there are so many children waiting for families, in horrible orphanages from Russia to Nepal. 

But how are we to encourage adoption when the kind of fraud we are writing about here exists? How are we to encourage adoption when every adoption--particularly intercountry adoption--breeds yet more? An adoptee who used to work in the adoption industry realized that his success actually resulted in creating more adoptees. Once he understood that, he got out ASAP. Adoption so often is a very dirty business, and the Strickland case is one more nasty example. 

How are we to encourage adoption when we hear so many stories of adopted individuals who cannot get over their feelings of abandonment, despite their adoptive parents best efforts and love? Yes, the world is a messy place and there will always be adoptions--and some are a necessary blessing--but we cannot condone the wholesale practice of separating mother and child, a practice that has been encouraged by the buckets of money now involved. There are too few babies for all the people who wish to raise someone else's child, and thus there is a booming market for babies. And today, if we know anything about adoption, it is that while it may seem wonderful and uncomplicated when a child is brought into a home prepared to love and raise that child, adoption is anything but uncomplicated for the child as he grows from infancy to adulthood. The numerous books and articles and research papers have have been written as testament to the emotional sorrow involved.

As for adoption in Utah, we can list several cases where fathers were lied to in order to gain the children for adoption: Terry Achane, Ramsey Shaud, Robert Manzanares to name a few. Shady adoptions happen elsewhere too, as the Veronica Brown case in South Carolina and Oklahoma proved. The Salt Lake Tribune and a reporter named Brooke Adams have done yeoman reporting on a number of cases, and much of our material is taken from his reporting. A lawsuit for $130 million as Jake Strickland and his attorney, Wes Hutchins, are bringing against LDS Family Services, their attorneys, an LDS social worker, the adoptive parents and the first mother involved might put a damper on LDS practices--one can only hope. Last fall we published a story that LDS Family Services was shutting down its adoption practice in this country. The world will be a better place if they follow through on this--and soon.--lorraine 

Added on 1/7/14: The latest on LDS is that they are going to stay in the adoption business. Word is that too many would-be adoptive parents pitched a fit about where they would be able to get babies without spending a mint if they closed their program, which is subsidized by the tithing of the general membership. According to a good source, LDS Family Services charges on a sliding scale based on income and no one pays more than $10K for a baby. So you can imagine all the parents in the pipeline who thought they would only have to fork over $4000 for a baby now facing "real" adoption fees of $25K+. They were not happy.
The source also says that many offices are no longer accepting new prospective adoptive parents, so essentially, those who are in the the pipeline already will remain until they get a baby, but no new families will enter the adoption pipeline.

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RELATED FMF POSTS: 
At last: LDS Family Services and fellow travelers sued in adoption scam (yesterday's post about the lawsuit)
Adoption in Utah: No place for birth fathers
Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies
Utah's anti-father policies an offshoot of Mormon agenda
Utah to Birth Fathers: Go Back to the Grave!
Utah Supreme Court delays return of Baby Teleah to her father
'Baby Veronica' adoption will go forward
AND THERE ARE MORE. 

BOOKS

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self This groundbreaking book uses the poignant, powerful voices of  adoptees and adoptive parents to explore the  experience of adoption and its lifelong effects. A major  work, filled with astute analysis and moving  truths. Highly recommended not only for adoptees and adoptive parents, but also first parents, especially around time of reunion. It will help you understand the particular stresses and influences of being adopted. 

Adoption: Uncharted Waters
Examines adoption issues of abandonment, loss, rejection, attachment, bonding, birth-parent fantasies & split-identity; as reflected in what some have called the Adopted Child Syndrome (ACS) and evidenced in extreme cases of adoptees, Clinical and forensic issues in adoption are explored in high-profile cases. Not an easy read, but enlightening. By a therapist who specializes in adoption issues. 

Thank you for ordering through FMF. Click on the book jacket or title to be taken to Amazon.