FAIR WARNING: the next few paragraphs include disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse.
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TRUE TALES OF ATROCIOUS ADOPTIONS
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by Candida Albicans.
You keep asking for statistics and statistics, and I don't have any. What I do have is my story, and if you read alt.adoption as thoroughly as you seem to, you have read stories too. The point to the discussion on alt.adoption about abusive a-parents is that supposedly these abusers were scrutinized by somebody before they had a child placed with them, but evidently some slipped through.
I was adopted in 1967 through the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, a state agency that at that time (and still does) conduct extensive background checks and homestudies on potential adoptive parents. My parents have told me repeatedly that before they got me, they were interviewed by social worker after social worker, and that all of their friends and coworkers were interviewed, and their pastor was interviewed as well. My mother is a good woman who has done the best she could to do right by me, and I love her and appreciate her and all of that stuff. However, my dad should never have been allowed to be near a child, and this should have been obvious to the social workers and to everyone else who was interviewed.
By the time I was adopted, my parents had been married for 5 years. My dad was 33 years old, had a degree from Mercer University in Economics, and had changed jobs 3 times since my parents were married. According to my mom, he lost those jobs for the same reason he has lost another twenty or so jobs in my lifetime, and the same reason he was unemployed for two or three years when I was a kid, and the same reason he was unemployed for nearly two years when I was in junior high. My dad has a violent temper, and a nasty habit of cursing at his bosses and calling them unflattering names until they fire him. If the social workers who placed me with them had been doing their jobs, they would have found out that he had been fired from 2 jobs in five years for losing his temper at work. If they had done some kind of followup study after my brother was adopted when I was three, they would have found that my father lost another job soon after they got my brother, and I believe we were on welfare until I started second grade and my mom went back to work.
Daddy's violence towards us never reached epic proportions. We weren't thrown down stairwells or left outside in the wintertime. I was not sexually abused by him, but he felt I brought it on myself when the 14 year old up the street raped me when I was 9. He physically and emotionally abused my mother continually. He still does. He physically abused my brother, to the point that our pediatrician filed a report with the state, but the claim was dismissed as unfounded. He physically and emotionally abused me. In the name of discipline, I have been hit with hairbrushes, belts, switches, my dad's wingtip shoe, open hand, fists, and, once, a 1x4 bed slat. My dentist says that my TMJ is probably caused from being hit in the face in the past.
I resent the fact that brace myself for a blow whenever an adult man raises his voice around me, even if I'm not the one he's yelling at. I resent the nasty little remarks he has made to me all of my life, both about my personality and physique and about the fact of my adoption. I lost any respect I ever had for him a long time ago, and I am trying very hard not to hate him.
But I especially resent that this didn't happen naturally - I can't just chalk it up to fate. There were grownups in and around my home whose JOB it was to make sure that my brother and I would be properly cared for. I was adopted in 1967, my brother was adopted in 1970. I don't remember if there was a homestudy or any of the intense scrutiny that my folks described at the time of my brother's adoption that there was for mine. But surely a man with such little control over his temper that he was fired from TWO jobs should have raised a few eyebrows at DFACS.
Do you see why I am so angry? Do you see why for me, statistics are pretty meaningless? Or will you answer this with "But you can't say that *all* adoptions are like this." Well, of course I can't. But this one is, and my folks went through the state, which as far as I can tell from the conversations among potential adoptive parents is the most stringent way to go. If a state adoption turned out like this, how many private adoptions, which I understand are more "hassle-free," turn out like this, or even worse?
I'm sure that you're not the evil asshole that my dad is. But it sticks in my craw when adoptive parents dismiss my experience, and that of a hell of a lot of adoptees, as aberrations that don't mean much in the big picture.
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by Adoptee
Thought I'd share my adoption experience with ya'll just to show it's not all peachy keen out there in Adoption Land. My parents were married in 1952 and tried to conceive for many years. Of course, in those days, if you were a childless couple there was something seriously wrong with you. Even though there was something seriously wrong with my parents and their marriage, my guess is they decided the best way to appear normal to their families and their neighbors was to adopt.
They approached a very posh and reputable agency in Evanston, Illinois and were put through the usual farting and tap-dancing for at least a year, probably more. Eventually, in 1958, I was born. I stayed at the agency for three months; a longer stay than what is common today. It was not a happy experience for me. Now some of you may have a problem with this part of my story, but through sessions with hypnotic regression, rebirthing and other meditative techniques, I have remembered some of the experiences I had during those three months. The one that made the biggest impression on me was a certain night nurse who didn't like all my weeping and wailing at being left alone--I remember being totally terrified at being without my mother. Frankly, I don't like to tune into that time in my life because I felt too horribly lonely and abandoned.
Anyway, this night nurse never hurt me, but she would shake me and scream at me to be quiet. Eventually, even before my a-parents received me, I had given up on the "benefits" of crying. I knew it would not bring consolation or love, so I just gave up. One of the favorite stories my a-parents tell is what a good baby I was: that I never cried, that I was very self-entertaining. However, another story they liked to tell was how I would push anybody away who tried to pick me up, and how I would scream bloody murder if I saw anyone dressed in white. Clues, clues, clues.........
So, here I am finally somewhere besides that damn crib in a sterile, loveless environment. Things went pretty good for awhile. But then, at the age of 2 1/2 by a- father decides he likes me better than my a-mother, sexually.
FAIR WARNING: the next few paragraphs include disturbing
descriptions of sexual abuse.
Please press the "back" button of your browser now if
you are not prepared to read this.
He began a slow seduction: touching me, turning me on, performing oral sex on me, masturbating on me and cumming all over me. This felt good, of course, and I liked the attention. It was a lovely, special game called "bumpity bump" (his name for my clit). In a horribly ironic way, I believe I benefitted from this kind of attention for a while, as I was my father's chosen one. It wasn't until many years later that he began to do things that hurt me.
As I got older, he wanted more. He was an industrial psychologist, and he decided to practice hypnosis and mind control on me. He would send me to this place--all I remember about it was that it was like being surrounded by white clouds--before he abused me. When he was done he would snap his fingers and it was as if it never happened! He tried to have intercourse with me to no avail--he was too big and I was too small. I remember one time running to my a-mother bleeding from my vagina (he had tried to open me with a broom handle or something) and she actually slapped my face and told me I was a bad girl, as if I had done this to myself!!!
Well, you probably see it coming. He finally raped me when I was seven years old. He ripped me so bad he got scared at all the blood. Since he was too terrified to take me to a hospital, he doused my privates with rubbing alcohol (insert silent scream here) and then sewed me up with one of my mother's sewing needles. I still have the scar, by the way. A few months later he tied my hands behind my back, forced my mouth open by digging his thumbs into my jaw between my teeth, and forced his penis down my throat.
A few months after that, he came after me again but I was so scared and hurting I lashed out without thinking. Thankfully, I landed a kick right where it counts and he passed out! When he came to, he told me he would never play our "games" with me again because I had been such a bad girl and hurt him. Well, folks, believe it or not, this is when my life began to go south. The brave, adventurous child turned into a terminally shy, regressive personality; I began to need eyeglasses; my grades began to suffer in school. It wasn't until I was thirty years old that these memories began to arise in me, even though I had plenty of clues throughout my life that something had happened to me that had affected my ability to relate to other people.
Please also remember that, even though my psyche buried the sexual abuse from my conscious mind, I never forgot all the mental, emotional and physical abuse that he dished out on us all that time. My a-father has mellowed a bunch in his old age, but when I was growing up, if he was in the house, he was screaming abuse at someone. I grew up in a home in which the only moral compass was my a-father's moods: if he was in a bad mood, it was wrong; if he was in a good mood, no problem. There was never any way to predict how he would react to any given thing. The dress you wore for six months was suddenly a whore's outfit if he was in a bad mood that day; you were berated for an hour if, on that day, he decided you were eating your peas too quickly. Therefore, I had no ethical system until I began to develop one for myself as a young teen.
I suppose I could go on and on here--I've only discussed the tip of the iceberg in terms of my glorious adoptive experience--but I'm sure I've made my point. Even though child abuse occurs in all kinds of families, not just adopted families, one would hope that the potential adopted child might be spared such experiences due to the "gatekeeping" functions of the adoption agency, social workers and other ilk involved in the adoption process. Unfortunately, as I've said many times before, sociopaths can be the most charming of people if they choose to be. My guess is that my a-father fooled them all.
So, what are my final thoughts on this issue?
Birthmothers. Don't become one if you can help it. Adoption is not the pain-free, happy ending for unwanted children our society would like it to make it out to be. No one will be able to promise your child is going to be loved or even treated with simple human dignity. Your child will most certainly be affected by your decision, and probably not positively, even if s/he has a loving adoptive family. The wounds may not arise in youth, but they will most certainly make their presence known by the time your child reaches maturity.
Potential adoptive parents. Please spend lots of time examining your desire to adopt. Please understand there may be wounds in your adopted children that your love cannot address or heal. Please understand that your adopted children may not turn out the way you expect or desire. All parents, of course, have conscious and unconscious expectations of their children. My sense is, however, that adoptive parents are put through so much doodoo to become parents, their expectations become even greater than "normal" parents that their adoptive children turn out to be "worth it"
Adoptee
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Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services and other Horror Stories (or Money Talks in L.A.)
My birthmother lost custody of myself and my two half-birthsisters (different father) in 1971. I was five, one sister was 2 and my littlest sister was 5 months. The first foster home that I was sent to was on a farm with a large family. While there, the other girls would assail me at night, demanding to suck on my chest to see if I produced "chocolate milk" (since I am biracial: caucasian and african-american). The boys were no less kind, and would put disgusting things in my food and tell creepy stories and show me dead chicken heads.
The next foster home I shared with both sisters. It was an older Puerto Rican man and wife. I asked if I could call them Grandma and Grandpa since we had never had any of our own. Grandma and Grandpa were apparently adept at collecting their check each month from LA County and not being held responsible for the care of their foster children. After all, weren't they doing a great social service ? Grandma bathed us once a week. All of our clothes were hand-me downs. The first time I got something new was the day I was leaving to be adopted. I wore raggedy underwear to school. I remember my underwear being so raggedy that I had to hold it up all day long. Every time we got a Christmas present it was taken away from us and given to their grandkids. We would go to their kids' homes and see our Christmas presents there. The only presents we got to keep were the ones brought to us by Mr. Stupid, our social worker.
Grandma & Grandpa had unique forms of punishment. I remember kneeling in rice, having hot sauce put on my lips and Grandpa throwing beer cans at me. Grandpa would put brown paint on my sister's arms to punish them, telling them they would look like me. One Christmas, I wasn't allowed to go see Santa Claus, but my sisters were. I got to stay home so Grandpa could molest me and force me to perform oral sex on him.
We spent four years there until the incredibly thorough LA County recognized suitable parents to adopt us. Since I was part black, I went to an affluent black family. Since my sisters were white, they went to an affluent white family. You see, LA County is culturally sensitive if anything. My foster parents told my adoptive parents I was a consummate liar. So, naturally my adoptive mom had to beat me to stop me from lying all the time. Only once did she let me lie when the cops came to book her for child abuse and she told me to start crying and ask them not to take her away or else she'd send me back to the foster home.
My adoptive parents were in their early 60s when I was adopted. Neither of them had brought any biological children into the world. They were both chronic alcoholics. My adoptive mother would get drunk and bring out her gun and threaten to kill everyone. My adoptive father would get drunk and get in his Cadillac and leave me with her. Then he would come back much later after pissing on himself and pass out on the living room floor.
Things my adoptive parents wanted me to know (by telling me over and over again):
Meanwhile, my birthsisters weren't faring much better, even though their adoptive father was a doctor and they lived in a penthouse and had a boat, a Jaguar and a Mercedes. Whenever they were punished, they went to school with only one shoe or no underwear.
But LA County knew best and of course, did extensive home studies and screening. Plus we were special needs children, considering we weren't healthy, white infants. I guess I should be grateful for the service they provide to society. We should ask to increase our taxes so that more money can go to this wonderful establishment. After all, money is what matters most in LA-LA land.
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