I’m What? I knew it!

I worked with someone once who was from far away, the other side of the world, but had tracked her mother down to my city. She found out she was adopted at her (adopted) mother’s funeral. She told me the first thought into her head was – I knew I wasn’t related to these people.

Interesting how that feeling of things not being quite right is there, whether you have been told you are adopted or not.

There are some inherent understandings with the people who brought you into this world. Nobody is tabula rasa. The “good” and the “bad” in you is recognizable to your family. Like my daughter’s sweet tooth. I don’t have one at all but her Dad does. Always on the hunt for candy those two. I wish they wouldn’t but it makes me laugh.

Or like my son – his behaviour, I don’t like it but I get it. I get the part of his personality that is making him act the way he does. I could head down that path myself if I let myself. My daughter thinks so too.

Here are some stories from people who found out they were adopted very late in life – in some cases very late. Your first reaction is – what a shock that must have been. But read what they have to say.

Adopted – but we didn’t know
How does it feel to discover as an adult that you were adopted as a baby? We talk to four people who came to terms with finding out later in life.
Kate Hilpern
The Guardian, Saturday 2 January 2010

Hilary Moon found out she was adopted 12 years ago.

Hilary Moon, 60, was 48 when she discovered that she was adopted. She is divorced.

“I was at my uncle’s funeral when my cousin’s husband wandered up to me and said, ‘I’ve been wanting to meet you, because we’re both adopted.’ It was a huge shock – how could it not be? On the other hand, I had an instant explanation as to why I’d always felt like a square peg in a round hole when it came to my family.

“I once said to my mother, ‘I’ve always felt like I was found on a doorstep.’ She got terribly upset, and I later learned that was the point at which she confided in my cousin’s husband. She chose him because he’s a vicar. She assumed he’d keep it to himself.

“My mother had died by the time I found out the truth, but my father hadn’t, so I asked him about it. He was an unpleasant man and simply said, ‘Well, nobody else would have you.’ I threw a cup of tea at him, said that at least it meant I wasn’t related to him and we never spoke again.

“Was I angry? Of course I was. I had been advised not to have children because my mother and brother had both had severe diabetes and had gone blind and died early. To learn I wasn’t blood-related to them means I made an enormous decision based on fiction.

“I’ve mellowed now. My mother had such a bum deal in life – a husband that had affairs and a son who died young – that it’s hard to feel anger towards her. She and I got on well, and I’m thankful for that. And although I still have negative feelings towards my father, who is now dead, I think that’s probably more to do with how he treated my mother.

“About eight years ago, my biological sister sought me out. She put me in touch with my birth mother, to whom I look incredibly similar. I’ve met others in the extended family, too, and I even changed my full name to what it was before the adoption. With all my adoptive family dead, and a large birth family still alive, it just made sense to me. But, actually, they’re a funny lot and I can’t say I feel any great bond with them.

“The whole situation has left me feeling neither part of my adoptive nor my biological family, and the lack of a sense of belonging in either can make me feel lonely if I let it. When people ask me who is my next of kin, I say, ‘I haven’t got one’, because that’s how it feels.”

Mandy Sullivan, 52, is divorced with three grown-up children. She found out she was adopted when she was 36.

“I’ve never had a good relationship with my mum. She had a baby that died at a week old and from very young I realised I could never replace that baby. But one day, when I was 36, something else came to light that further explained things – I wasn’t even hers.

“I found out by chance. I became a mature student and the university administration office requested my birth certificate. I’d never seen it and my mum kept saying she couldn’t find it. In the end, she gave me a piece of paper that I duly showed the university office. The administrator looked at me and said, ‘This isn’t your birth certificate.’ She must have registered that I didn’t understand and explained, ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’s your adoption certificate.’

“I felt sick. My whole life had been a lie. It was horrendous and not helped by the fact that I was right in the middle of a bad divorce and my house was being repossessed. I didn’t do anything about it for three or four years. I thought about it constantly but I felt I had to prioritise finding a job, moving house and settling my three daughters.

“Eventually, I wrote my mum a letter. I thought, I can’t just ring her up and blurt it out because she’d get defensive. She got defensive anyway. In a short, sharp tone, she said my dad didn’t want me to know because he was afraid of me feeling rejected and different. I believe her – my dad and I were very close until he died when I was 25. But I don’t accept that it was all him. It must have been a joint decision. She said she planned to write it in a letter that I’d get after she died, but what a cop out.

“Our relationship has continued to go downhill since that letter. The main thing she seemed concerned about was that her relationship with my daughters didn’t suffer. A few years ago, when she had a massive stroke, I felt we might be getting a bit closer, but as soon as she was on the mend the old barriers went up. These days she doesn’t want much to do with me.

“About 10 years ago, I decided to apply for my adoption file. It’s funny – despite always feeling different to my adoptive family (I’m tall, they’re not. I’m a bookworm, they don’t read books at all), I remember still thinking the social worker might come in and say it was all a big mistake – that I wasn’t adopted at all. But, of course, she didn’t.

“I didn’t discover much more than what my mother had divulged, however – that my adoptive father had been in the pub having a drink with a friend, who said that his sister-in-law couldn’t cope with her baby. Apparently, my dad came home and asked my mum, ‘Why don’t we adopt her?’

“I’ve never looked for my birth mother. I don’t think I could cope with another mum rejecting me. But I’m in quite poor health and increasingly worried that it’s hereditary, so I think I might get in touch just to find out my medical history.

“Every area of my life has been affected by what I found out. I have great problems trusting people – both men and friends – and once I do trust someone, I seem to find it really hard to say goodbye, even if the relationship is really rubbish. On a positive note, I’m closer than ever to my daughters – they’re the only blood relations I know.”

Chris Lines, 63, is married with three grown-up children and one granddaughter. He found out that he was adopted three years ago.

“My wife and I were in a local garden centre when I spotted the daughter of my mum’s next-door neighbour. She was with a little girl, who she introduced as one of her three grandchildren. The other two, she explained, were adopted from Vietnam. She turned to the girl and said, ‘This man was adopted too, you know.’

My wife and I looked around to see who she was talking about. She felt awful – she thought I knew. It turned out she still remembered going in the taxi with her mum and my mum to pick up a five-month-old baby – me – from the Salvation Army all those years ago.

“The way I deal with most problems is to deny their existence. I didn’t want to think about it, but my wife prompted me to check the official birth records in Liverpool and, sure enough, my name wasn’t there.

“With both my parents dead, I approached two elderly aunts. They knew all about the adoption, and even told me my original name – Dennis Kelly. The moment I heard that name was when it really hit me. My legs gave way. I felt I’d lived for 61 years as one person, but really I was another.

“It turned out everyone in my adoptive family knew. I’m still amazed nobody told me because it’s a huge and close family. They’ve all since said they thought I’d been told. My mother had an ectopic pregnancy and was advised not to get pregnant again, so she doted on me as her only child. I think they felt that if I discovered I was adopted, I might look for my real parents and they’d have to share me or even lose me.

“I did decide to look for my biological parents. It struck me that the only blood relations I knew were my own children. Even though I used the charity After Adoption, it was a long search because when we found out that I was born in a home for “wayward mothers”, we assumed my mother had been young. Then we discovered she’d been 39.

“I was sad to learn that she had died, but I did find a cousin who agreed to meet me. When he produced a box with four or five photos of my mother, I was speechless. There she was, smiling and laughing. She really did exist. Another relative I later found, remembered her as larger than life and always smiling. I liked hearing that.

“It might sound funny, but a big relief to me was that I had been born in Liverpool and that I have Irish blood in me – both things I’d been brought up to believe and am fiercely proud of. What isn’t true, however, are all the little genetic links I’d always taken for granted – my youngest daughter having my aunt’s eyes; my eldest daughter having her grandmother’s legs.

“I think I’d rather not know I’m adopted, but it has helped explain some things – for example, why I sometimes felt as a child that I wasn’t quite the same as the other children in the family. Also, one of my aunts told me that when my parents got me I didn’t make any noise, presumably because, for the first five months of my life, nobody had come when I cried. I wonder if that’s why I’ve always been quite introverted.”

Peter Clark, 61, was 39 when he found out he was adopted. He is married and has four sons and five grandchildren.

“The thing I remember most about the day I found out that my mother didn’t give birth to me, was this feeling of standing with my back to the edge of a cliff because everything behind me – everything I’d known to be true – felt as if it was a lie and I literally didn’t know who I was.

“It even made me question the right to have my father’s war medals. As the eldest of five children, I’d been in possession of them. I took them out of the drawer by my bed that night and felt it was wrong for me to have them, because he wasn’t my real dad.

“I don’t think my parents ever intended to tell me. My mother says it’s because I was a sensitive child and they didn’t want to upset me. When I asked her why she still didn’t tell me in adulthood, she said she gave my father, who had died when I was 21, a deathbed promise to keep the secret. I think the real reason was a fear that I would abandon her in favour of my birth family. Even when my mother did finally tell me I was adopted, the first thing she asked me was never to make contact with my birth mother.

“She finally told me just before I went on an overseas business trip. There were some complications over my visa and passport, which prompted questions around my birth certificate and the identity of my parents. It must have made my mum panic.

“I was gobsmacked because I’d never had any inkling. It’s not as if adoption is taboo in our family. One of my brothers adopted four children and my wife’s brother adopted three. I felt very angry with her about the web of deception for a long time and although I’ve worked through that now, I still hold a strong belief that people have a fundamental right to know about their origins.

“I realised I needed to know my roots. It wasn’t easy – the search for my birth mother took six years. I had an unconscious fear of rejection, so I’d make some progress in finding her, then take a step back. She was also hard to find. Even with the help of an adoption charity, it took a couple of hundred phone calls and many letters to find her.

“My first meeting with Agnes, when I eventually found her living in the United States, went wonderfully, and although she never acknowledged who I was to her friends and family – which I found hard – we continued a warm relationship until she died in 1996. About two years later, I plucked up the courage to search for other members of my birth family and I’m now in contact with my cousins, aunts and uncles too – although, sadly, I was never able to get any information about my father.

“It’s good to know where I came from, although I have no regrets about being adopted and my adoptive family feels no less my family than before. Three of my siblings say it doesn’t make them feel any differently towards me.

“Sadly, one of my brothers – who, I learned last year, was the only one who knew before me that I was adopted – doesn’t feel like this. But we have a difficult relationship for other reasons. One of my other brothers recently had my father’s watch repaired and said he felt I should have it. Given how I’d felt about the war medals, it was a significant gesture.”

Anger is just hurt disguised…

From the Family Preservation Blog

Excerpt from Adoption Reunion: Ecstasy or Agony? © Evelyn Robinson, 2009

Re-grief therapy and adoption

The process of re-grief therapy involves reworking, at a later time, a loss which had not been satisfactorily resolved. It has two goals; to understand why mourning was not completed in the past (operating on an intellectual level) and to help those affected to experience their grieving emotions in the present (operating on an emotional level). During the course of re-grief therapy people’s ‘frozen emotions are stimulated and reawakened’. As with regular grief therapy, the outcome of re-grief therapy is an increase in self-esteem and a decrease in guilt, as well as an increase in positive feelings about the lost person (Raphael, 1983, pp385-6).
I have chosen to apply re-grief therapy to reworking an adoption loss. In the case of adoption loss, I believe that, in order to understand the reasons why the mourning was not completed, it is important to understand first of all how and why the loss occurred. An informed exploration of the circumstances leading to the separation often results in the griever having more positive feelings about their adoption experience.

Exploring these issues can be instrumental in bringing the pain and grief to the surface and it can then be experienced. Pain is not necessarily a negative outcome and preventing people from experiencing pain is not always in their best interests. Pain is not always avoidable and it is sometimes necessary in order to produce something new. Childbirth, for example, is rarely accomplished without pain.

When people can understand the basis of their pain, they are in a better position to manage it. Patients would not feel confidence in a doctor, for example, who wrote a prescription for pain relief medication rather than first of all seeking the cause of the pain. Pain is a message that there is an area that needs attention. Experiencing the pain created by adoption separation can, in fact, be a way of creating a renewed sense of self.

Anger is a common response to a loss and frequently occurs with regard to adoption loss. Many people are angry that an adoption took place, but this does not necessarily mean that they are angry with any particular person. Re-grief therapy may cause suppressed anger to come to the surface. Anger can be destructive if it results in vindictiveness and cruel accusations. Anger can, however, be a productive and helpful emotion when it is understood and managed. It may be appropriate to talk to those involved in the adoption about one’s anger so that there is openness and honesty in those relationships. Telling someone about your anger is very different from expressing your anger towards that person.

Because adoption separation is a profound experience and because the emotions attached to it have often been buried for many years, re-grief therapy can itself be an emotionally traumatic process. It is wise therefore, to prepare oneself for such an undertaking and to remember that no matter how difficult it may seem, this process can lead to a personal recovery from the trauma of adoption separation. It takes courage to begin this process but the rewards can be great.

Happy Thanksgiving USA

If you look closely at this photograph you will see a thin gray line about half way up. That line is the far shore – the United States of America – upstate New York or more accurately northern New York state.

I hope everyone who lives south of me is having a great day and spending it with family – in all family’s variations – in a way that feels good.

I hope the dinner is wonderful.  I have been hungry for a week watching everyone cook for Thanksgiving on TV.

It feels to me, though we are in the midst of economic woes, that there is new optimism.   Maybe some things needed to be changed.

I hope all of you feel that way too.

A toast to a definition of family that includes everybody.  May that be a change we see someday soon too.

Peace

UM

P.S. You haven’t heard from me for a while because I wrote a play and I just submitted it to a playwriting competition.   Revisions, revisions, revisions.

This is what we’re up against my friends …

People like Heidi Hess Saxton.

Others have posted on this but here’s my two cents worth. I did make a comment on the article which was published and it appears to have gotten a response since I’m mentioned by [blogger] name – unsigned masterpiece.

It’s also now my sign in name at the CatholicExchange. That’s OK.

Here’s what I started to write about the article but then events kind of overtook me.

I have said the statement below was a reason being put forward to keep adoption records closed but, to tell the truth, I always wondered if it was propaganda for our side.  But, now I have read it in black and white, and on line.

Adoption records should not be opened because it will discourage future pregnant teens from giving up their children for adoption.

You can read it below for yourself. That and a lot of other twaddle about birth parents and adopted people.

Written with not much “Christian” love on a Catholic website.

You’ll find myths, stereotypes and half truths put forward in the name of correcting the biased information disseminated by Bastard Nation and other adoption rights advocates.

I left this comment:

This article is a throw back to another age. It contains so many stereotypes about adopted adults and birth parents.

I say, more in sorrow than in anger, that you do your readers a disservice by publishing things like this.

If I were to write a post on my blog that said that Catholics were misguided and brain-washed, I don’t think you would be too happy. Ms Hess Saxton has done the equivalent with respect to birth families, adoptees and I suspect some adopted parents.

It is always a mistake to assume one can extrapolate from the particular and personal to the general and the norm. [Ms Hess Saxton is an adoptive mother.]

If I did that, based on what I heard about my son’s adoptive experience after we were reunited, I would be making similar derogatory remarks to the ones Ms. Hess Saxton has made, only they would be about adoptive parents.

You state she is going to write another article, I think she is biased and should perhaps find another subject which she can approach with a little more objectivity.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

The editor then posted this:

It’s interesting that she does not view what Hess Saxton has written as personal attacks. I felt a little attacked as a birth mother. If I were an adopted person, I’d feel a little slagged.

I wonder what Jesus would say about all this? I wonder how He views Heidi’s “goodwill”?

I suspect He’s on to her.

Here’s the whole thing.

Peace – don’t let it ruin your day. Our time is coming.

UM

Anti-Adoption Advocates – How Should We Respond?

Now that the election is over, one of the most chilling prospects of the future administration is the president-elect’s determination to sign the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA). The implications of this — both financial and moral — are staggering, for it means our tax dollars may be used to snuff out the lives of millions of children. To be truly pro-life, then, is to seek ways to ensure that the need for abortion is eliminated, as far as we are able to do this.

Adoption gives those in crisis pregnancies an abortion alternative that saves the life of the child and relieves them of the unwanted responsibility of parenthood. Adoption also provides an opportunity for couples to have a child they might otherwise never have, and for the child to have a “forever family” that will love him or her for life.

With foster-adoption, children who have already been born — often to parents with such serious issues that the children may have been better off had the “adoption option” been chosen from the beginning — are given a second chance. Sadly, many of these children — especially those who are part of sibling group, have special needs, or are “older” (four or more) — must wait months and even years for a loving, permanent home. There are simply not enough suitable families willing to open their hearts this way.

The situation would be dire enough … Now grass roots, anti-adoption advocacy groups such as “Bastard Nation” and “Adoption: Legalized Ties” are seeking to discourage adoption, choosing rather to advocate for disgruntled adult adoptees and “natural parents,” including those whose children were taken from them because of abuse and neglect.

Anti-Adoption Advocates: Biased “Truth”

The dynamic of adoption is often described as a “triad,” with 3 sides representing the birth (or first) parents, adoptive parents, and adopted child. By and large, anti-adoption groups have vilified both adoptive parents and the agencies that mediate the placements.

Recently, however, the attack has expanded to birth parents as well: Under the “Unsealed Initiative,” adult adoptees and others are lobbying government agencies in New York and other states (successfully, in Toronto) to release sealed birth records in order to gain access to the identities of birth parents who may not desire contact, and who were promised anonymity upon relinquishment. In the minds of the adult adoptees, the “best interest of the child” trumps all — when in fact the “child” is no longer a child, but an adult whose “right to know” is no more important than the other party’s right to privacy.

This growing trend is even more alarming, given the unabashed pro-abortion stance of the Obama administration. Women in crisis pregnancies who are considering adoption may have second thoughts when faced with the very real possibility that their “past” may come knocking on their door twenty or thirty years hence, disrupting their lives with demands and recriminations. Unless the records are truly sealed with a “suite lock” — one that can be opened only by mutual consent — the real danger is that these “unwanted” children will simply be aborted.

Catholic Anti-Adoption Advocates

Recently I was appalled to discover that these “anti-adoption advocates” are making inroads even in Catholic publications. Last September the National Catholic Register ran this article (accessed through my EMN blog) by self-professed “anti-adoption advocate” Melinda Selmys, who writes about encountering teenage adoptees who were acting out — though the adoptive parents were “kind and loving people.”

Rather than consider the real possibility that the teens had been damaged by circumstances that led up to the adoption, or that adoption may indeed have been their best chance at a bright future, or that these kids were just like others teens who have difficulties making the transition into adulthood, Selmys concludes that the adoption itself was the true source of the problem. She writes:

The child … is not a tabula rasa on which anyone – parents, teachers, social workers, engineers of brave new worlds – can inscribe their glowing hopes for the future. … The child is created in the image and likeness of God, but it is also in the image and likeness of its parents. The people who hope to see evil eradicated from the world through increasing government intervention in the lives of children are going to be sorely disappointed. Children do not inherit their faults and failings merely by watching and imitating mom and dad. They inherit them on a much deeper level.

Healing the Wounded Heart

Now, much of what Ms. Selmys says sounds reasonable. Foster and adoptive parents are well aware that our children have challenges and issues originating with their “first families” — behavioral, mental, emotional, and medical among them. Sometimes it’s genetic. Other times challenges come from the child’s pre-adoptive environment, not a blank slate … a heart wounded by bad choices and negative impulses of broken people.

It is also true that no adoptive environment is “perfect” — just as no parent is perfect. Ideally, children thrive best when they are raised by their natural parents, joined for life in the sacrament of matrimony. Sadly, as a society we have fallen woefully short of this ideal, and the only question that remains is how to mitigate the damage inflicted on innocent young lives.

There are situations in which adoption is truly the best (though not perfect) choice: Children born to young teens (especially those who have neither the inner resources nor long-term support system necessary to parent); children of parents with unresolved substance abuse or domestic violence issues; and children of abusive and neglectful parents. In each of these cases, little wounded hearts heal best when they are no longer in close proximity to the source of the pain. Sadly, this can mean removing children from birth parents voluntarily or (when parents demonstrate neither the willingness nor the inclination to fix their own messes and put the children’s needs first) involuntarily.

Adoption gives children wounded by the choices of their first parents a second chance to heal. Granted, it does not completely shield the child from the consequences of her first parents’ choices. There is no way to shield the child entirely — that is the nature of sin. On the other hand, pressuring unwed teenage mothers (and other at-risk mothers) to keep their babies even when they are demonstrably not capable of parenting produces more difficulties than it resolves — down the line, when adoption is no longer a viable option.

Adoption, the “Pro-Life” Option

The sad reality is that the older the child, the smaller the pool of potential adoptive parents. In the U.S. today, more than 500,000 children are in need of temporary or permanent homes … the vast majority are part of larger sibling groups, special needs, or “older” (age four or more).

Because the pain of adoption is real, the adoption choice represents true self-sacrifice on all sides of the adoption triad: Birth parents put the best interests of the child ahead of their own needs, adoptive parents agree to invest themselves entirely in a young life they did not bring into the world. The child may also suffer in ways they cannot fully understand until they are much older — and may have difficulties accepting even then. And yet, when the choice is literally life and death, this kind of self-sacrifice is the pathway to hope … if we allow it.

Will these mothers come to regret their choice? Undoubtedly there will be times when they will wonder if they could have chosen differently. They may yearn to re-establish contact with that child — and should be able to leave the door open for this, should the child (ideally, with the blessings of the adoptive parent) seek her out. But as with many significant choices in life, once the choice is made we cannot see clearly “the road not taken”; because of the unknown variables that stem from that choice, it is illusory at best. We can only learn from our choices, and move on.

On the other hand, through adoption (even open adoption, in which the birth parents maintain a level of contact after the placement), a child is helped to make the most of their own natural giftings and eradicate the worst of their natural weaknesses. The birth parent is then able to tend to his or her needs without inflicting even greater damage on the innocent. And the adoptive parents are presented with an opportunity to invest their lives in a way that produces rich spiritual fruit in the life of parent and child alike.

In Search of the “Phantom Parent”

Books such as The Adoption Mystique, by anti-adoption advocate Joanne Wolf Small, MSW, remind us that some children never completely recover from the losses of adoption — no matter how much love and attention they are given. The sense of abandonment can run deep, and visions of “real” mom and dad can tantalize even the most outwardly accommodating child — especially those in the throes of adolescence and into young adulthood, when the natural desire to separate from Mom and Dad is most powerful, and the quest for identity strongest.

While the release of some information — such as medical histories — has objective value, and could be released without depriving the first parents of their right to privacy, it is imperative that the concerns of all three sides of the adoption triad be given equal weight. Birth parents have the right to remain anonymous (unless they choose to relinquish that right); adoptive parents have the right to raise their child without undue interference; the adopted child has the right to a safe and nurturing environment. The adult adopted child has the rights of any adult — but not access to the confidential records of other private citizens.

In the section entitled “Anti-Adoption Media Bias,” Ms. Small offers a revealing quote from “The San Francisco Examiner” (1999, February 22):

Anguish is everywhere in the adoption equation …. The birth mother … adoptive parents …. Adopted children haunted by phantom birth parents who, they may feel “abandoned” them – beings … they cannot know. Phantom limbs on the family tree (par 10).

At age eleven, my younger sister experienced phantom pains when her leg was amputated. The nerves at the amputation site, which connected the missing leg to the brain, did not immediately die. And yet, Chris did not let the amputation define her or limit her in any way, and in time these pains diminished. She became first a cheerleader, then a wife and mother. If she had chosen to concentrate on the pain — instead of healing — she would be a very different person today.

I realized just how complete the healing had been when, a few years ago, an over-zealous “street healer” offered to pray for her leg to grow back and she refused. “When I get to heaven, I’m going to get my leg back — and you better believe I’m looking forward to that. But right now, for whatever reason, this is God’s plan for me, and I’m going to accept it. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself — I’m going to live.”

Wise words that can be applied to many situations — including adoption. The “phantom pain” of adoption must be acknowledged — and yet, reunification may not always be possible or even desirable. The adopted child must recognize the reality of the adoption triad; each part of the triangle of birth parent/adoptive parent/adopted child has both rights and responsibilities, some of which cannot be assumed by the child until he or she becomes an adult.

It is in adulthood that many children — adopted and biological alike — discover something essential to their future happiness: Some things in life are chosen for us by the adults in our lives, based on the information at hand, which have both positive and negative repercussions. If we continue to blame our parents for those choices, we remain in a state of “arrested adolescence” and keep ourselves from realizing our God-given potential. This is true of adult children of adoption — and of many other children, too.

We cannot change history; we can only acknowledge and learn from it, grieve our losses, forgive those who have hurt us … and move forward. The loss adopted children experience is real — just as my sister’s loss was real. She had to work through those feelings; the loss was necessary if she was to survive. This is the story of adoption: a story of painful choices made in the present, in order to secure a better — and a living — future.

Heidi Hess Saxton is the author of “Raising Up Mommy” and founder of the Extraordinary Moms Network, an online resource for mothers of adopted, fostered, and special needs children. She and her husband foster-adopted their two children in 2002.

We’ll all agree about this one…

No matter what side of the adoption triangle you are on, adoptive parents, birth parents, adoptee, I think we will all have the same reaction to this one.

Through the Adoption News, abridged from a story originally filed in The New York Times by BENJAMIN WEISER

Two officials of New York City’s child-welfare agency and the fiscal director of a Brooklyn foster care agency have been charged with creating phantom adoptions in a scheme to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for the care of children with disabilities or special needs, federal authorities said on Wednesday.

One of the two officials of the city agency was also charged with issuing government checks for work that was not performed in return for kickbacks. The senior Children’s Services official accused, Lethem Duncan, was the deputy director of the payments-services department, federal prosecutors said.

In the phony-adoption scheme, the officials said, Mr. Duncan worked with the second employee, Nigel Osarenkhoe, who they said used the agency’s computers to create false names and issue checks as if they were subsidies for real adoptions.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Osarenkhoe told Mr. Duncan that he had figured out a way to manipulate the agency’s computer system to cause adoption subsidy payments to be mailed to whomever he wanted.

“These defendants were driven by greed,” Michael Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan said, “and they placed their own self-interest above the well-being of the children served by A.C.S.”

The announcement of the charges came a day after the sentencing of Judith Leekin, who was convicted of fraud after she adopted 11 children under four aliases and collected $1.68 million in payments meant for the children’s care, which she used to support a lavish lifestyle. Ms. Leekin was sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison.

Prosecutors said that the phony-adoption scheme relied on cooperation from Stay Thompson, the fiscal director of the Brooklyn foster care agency, Concord Family Services, which they said had received more than $28 million in contracts for foster care and other services in recent years.

In that scheme, prosecutors said, Ms. Thompson received about $79,000 in illegal payments and agreed to share the proceeds evenly with Mr. Duncan and Mr. Osarenkhoe. Ms. Thompson was arrested on Tuesday.

The claims of problems involving money at Concord are not new. Late in 2006, its executive director resigned after an audit by the city comptroller’s office found that she had spent tens of thousands of dollars at luxury stores using the agency’s credit card. The director said at the time that the purchases were made to benefit foster children.