by Anne Moody
I had more conversations with Dale over the next few days, and at one point he mentioned that he and Jackie had traveled from Louisiana by shrimp boat. That seemed like a suspiciously complex story, but I decided that it wasn’t impossible; there was certainly plenty I didn’t know about shrimp boats, navigation, and the Panama Canal. I was feeling increasingly uneasy about Dale, though, and wanted to insist on seeing Jackie before any more court-approved nights in the motel were provided, but Hilary still didn’t want to confront him.
A few more days passed. Dale then called me to say that he had taken Jackie to the hospital for what turned out to be a false alarm. I called the hospital social worker to see if there was any record of Jackie having been there. There wasn’t, but even that couldn’t persuade Hilary to let go of her hopes. So we waited some more and paid for some more nights at the motel. After another few days, Dale called to say that he and Jackie were at the hospital again. This time, the social worker was there at the same time and was able to confirm that there was no one who could possibly be Jackie in labor and delivery at that time, nor had there been in the previous hours.
By now it was undeniably clear that Dale was lying, either about Jackie having been at the hospital, about her pregnancy, or about her very existence. But even in the face of all this evidence, Hilary still held out hope. Only when Dale abruptly disappeared did she begin to let go of the idea that somehow things would work out, and there would be a baby for her to adopt.
The experience was devastating for Jeff and Hilary. They decided to put the adoption on hold for a while and eventually told me that they were going to divorce. I don’t know what their reasons were for divorcing, but the scam certainly took its toll on them. The only satisfaction came eight months later, when Hilary called to tell me that she had just seen Dale on America’s Most Wanted. He had apparently been pulling similar scams up and down the West Coast and had finally been arrested. Satisfying as it was to find that Dale had been stopped, it proved small comfort for Jeff and Hilary.
Needless to say, this was a real learning experience for me, and my anxiety about scammers was on high alert. So when a man who called himself Darrel called three months after Dale had disappeared, with the same accent, I almost hung up on him. I was on the verge of telling him that I knew he was a scammer . . . but something held me back. Patti and I kept talking with him over the next week and eventually connected him with one of our families; the effort ended a month later in a happy adoption. It was an excellent lesson on the benefits of following through on every “lead” even in the most suspicious of circumstances.
You would think that adoption scammers would be easy to detect, but a combination of factors (and emotions) makes it extremely difficult to avoid the pain and heartbreak that couples inevitably suffer when they are manipulated in this especially cruel way. Scammers can be stunningly skilled at parrying attempts to ferret them out. I have asked for proof of pregnancy, only to have scammers provide fake medical records. I routinely ask for a “release of information” in order to talk with the “birth mother’s” doctor, but lots of legitimate birth mothers either haven’t yet gotten medical care or feel uncomfortable providing the family with access to their medical records so early in the relationship, so a refusal to provide the information isn’t necessarily evidence of dishonesty. I routinely ask that callers speak directly with the family’s attorney, but many honest birth mothers feel reluctant to take this step until they have gotten to know the family better.
I have found that the most reliable method of detecting a scam is simply to put in the time necessary to get to know the woman. I listen a lot, gather information, and eventually we reach a point where we can go no further until she takes some sort of concrete action. A scammer at that point will invariably say that she miscarried, or she will simply stop calling and stop responding to calls or email messages. But even callers who are not scammers may, for some other reason, decide to break off contact, and we can never know for sure if they were actually pregnant or if they were really considering adoption for the baby.
The majority of adoption scammers come in two varieties: the financial scammer and the emotional scammer. In Washington State, it is relatively easy to recognize and weed out the financial scammers because state law requires court approval for any payments by adoptive parents to birth mothers for anything unrelated to medical or legal expenses. So before any money can change hands, the birth mother has to communicate with the family’s attorney—something scammers generally try to avoid. Many other states have much more lenient laws, so Washington families are at a disadvantage when it comes to competing for birth mothers, but at a distinct advantage when it comes to avoiding financial scams. For the most part, families living in Washington respect these legal restrictions because disregarding them puts the entire adoption at risk. Giving money to a birth mother without court approval can be interpreted as coercion—which can be grounds for overturning an adoption.
Financial scammers often call with an urgent request for financial assistance, so it is always best to take things slowly and allow time to get better acquainted with the caller and the situation. Callers who are in such a crisis that they cannot tolerate any delay or understand why the family can’t immediately send them money are unlikely prospects for completing an adoption. In any event, the decision to place a child for adoption should not be made in the midst of a financial crisis, nor should it be based solely on the inability to provide financially for a child. Pregnant women in the United States have options other than surrendering their babies in hard times, and they should be steered toward them if it appears that their sole motivation for relinquishing is financial stress.
Emotional scammers—those scamming for other than financial reasons—are different, nearly always being motivated by the desire for power and attention. Some also have significant mental-health problems. I spent a lot of time talking to emotional scammers in the early years of Adoption Connections; in an effort never to overlook possible connections for my adoptive families. I would take calls twenty-four hours a day, and every few months I would find myself sitting on the edge of the tub in our downstairs bathroom, which was the most soundproof location in our silent house, and listening to someone’s tale of woe in the middle of the night. It took nearly a year for me to finally realize that accepting collect calls from men in prisons wasn’t a good use of my time. Collect calls from women in prisons, on the other hand, sometimes did end up leading to successful adoptions.
The typical emotional scammer starts out sounding like any other caller. But the pattern of their calls and the way they disclose information—or avoid disclosing it—can be quite distinct. Many scammers call at inappropriate hours; they tend to call frequently, often multiple times a day, and talk for long periods of time; their stories are invariably dramatic and heart-wrenching. Many want immediate contact with the adoptive mom, usually by phone, and typically they tell her in their first conversation that they have already chosen her and are absolutely committed to their decision to relinquish. The caller’s excitement and reassurances make the adoptive family feel happy and hopeful. I then have the unpleasant task of reminding them that there are some red flags about the caller.
I know the warning signs of a scam all too well, and I air my concerns to the adoptive family, although none of us feels certain enough about a suspicious situation to walk away immediately. So we cautiously play it out. We set up “steps” for the woman to take, such as asking her to send back forms, call the family’s attorney, give us her doctor’s name, sign a release of information, and so on. Of course, even legitimate callers sometimes fail to follow through with these steps, so they are not foolproof. I have, however, gotten much better at detecting scammers, and Patti and I have our “red flag” list for prospective adoptive parents to consider. It includes the following warning signs.
The birth mother says she is expecting twins.
She says she ha
s done some modeling.
She claims that she or the birth father “come from money.”
She tells you that the birth father has recently died—typically as the result of a dramatic illness, accident, or crime.
She says she was a victim of ritualistic sexual abuse.
She wants to tell the adoptive mother that she has chosen her even before talking with her or asking for more information about the family.
She expresses little interest in finding out more about the family, beyond the information in their ad or online profile.
She repeatedly insists that she is sure about her adoption decision.
She calls multiple times a day and talks for long periods of time.
She gets confused about details and has no explanation for discrepancies in the information she provides.
She is either highly emotional or has a flat affect.
If the communication is by email, she has a somewhat inappropriate email name, such as “hotvixen.”
She brings up the subject of scamming, reassures the family that she is “real” and/or wants reassurance from them that they are not being dishonest with her in some manner.
(Before going on, I should add that I have worked with wonderful, completely truthful women who raised one or more of each of these red flags.)
Emotional scams usually play themselves out in a few days or weeks. While the Internet has made scamming much more widespread, it has also made it easier to identify scammers, many of whom aren’t savvy about protecting their identities. Fortunately, adoptive parents and professionals have gotten smart about sharing information with each other, and they are highly motivated to stop scammers. But even though most scams are short-lived and unsuccessful, they still take a heavy emotional toll, and some are lengthy, costly, and devastating to the adoptive parents. At best, scammers just waste everyone’s time. At worst, they break people’s hearts and spirits.
Being scammed feels horrible. It is especially painful to have something as precious as your search for a child be tainted by cruelty and dysfunction. Couples who have struggled with infertility hardly need reminding that life is not fair, and being targeted by scammers after all they’ve been through feels like an extra low blow. Couples struggling with infertility have lost control over their expectations about parenthood, and scams intensify this loss exponentially. They evoke feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness, and rage.
The first time I dealt with an emotional scammer, I was determined to track her down and exact revenge. She had given me her address so that I could mail her some family profiles, and I called the police in the small town where she lived. They went out to talk with her; but when they later described the encounter to me, I mostly felt pity for her. The policewoman I spoke with told me that the woman seemed genuinely sorry and scared but was probably incapable of understanding the damage she did with these scam calls. I was still furious about all the grief she had caused my clients, but I realized that this woman didn’t do it out of a desire to hurt them or waste our time. Rather, she just wanted to connect with someone and feel important. She wanted to talk with people who would ask her questions about her life and her feelings. She wanted to hear an adoptive mom tell her how much she admired her for trying to do the best for her baby by planning an adoption. She had found a source of eager listeners, and it was gratifying to talk with them. There likely were no other people in her life who gave her so much positive attention—chances are that no one was paying much attention to her at all, in fact. This doesn’t excuse her of course, but I do think that understanding the extent of sadness and dysfunction in the lives of some of these women helps take a little of the hurt out of being emotionally scammed.
27
Trevor and Amanda
In addition to my work with Adoption Connections, I have a private practice and work with families who are planning to adopt independently rather than through an agency. This means that they will search for a prospective birth mother on their own, generally through newspaper advertisements, adoption websites, and personal networking. Once a couple forges a connection with a prospective birth mother, they hire an attorney to handle the adoption’s legal matters. My role in these adoptions is often limited to preparing the home study and submitting a post-placement report to the court after the baby is in the home and before the adoption is finalized. But a number of adoptive families ask for more advice or help in the course of their independent adoption.
Several years ago, a couple whose home study I had done called me, excited. They had just connected, through a friend of a friend, with a young woman who had a two-month-old baby boy and was looking for the right adoptive parents for him. This young woman had thought about adoption during the pregnancy but never got as far as making specific plans. Now that she had actually experienced parenthood, she realized that she didn’t feel capable of being the mother she wanted her son to have.
The couple decided to travel to the small town to meet with the young woman and learn more about the situation. When they arrived at her home, they found both birth parents, the grandmother, and various other extended-family members, all of whom were in favor of adoption for the baby. Everyone got along famously at the visit, and within a week, the birth parents had chosen this couple to adopt their son. They arranged for a semi-open adoption and agreed to exchange pictures and letters and to stay in contact over the years. The legal process went smoothly, and the child was placed in his adoptive home in approximately two weeks. Other than the fact that I felt the birth parents should have had some counseling, this adoption was a good example of how direct and uncomplicated the process can be. The birth and adoptive parents were happy, and the baby got to his permanent home without unnecessary delay, thereby lessening the trauma of the move for him.
But efficient endings in situations like that are uncommon. Little more than a month later, the same couple received a call from their son’s birth grandmother. She wanted to tell them that meeting them had eased her anxieties about adoption—so much so that she also wanted to tell them about another relative of hers who was considering adoption for her baby, and wondered if they knew of any other potential adoptive parents. The family referred her to me.
The second baby was seven months old and had been in foster care for all but the first two weeks of her life. After a series of calls, I found myself talking with this child’s paternal grandmother, who told me that her son Trevor and his girlfriend Amanda had lost custody of the baby to the state, and she thought it unlikely that they would get her back. She had heard about the first adoption and started thinking about how Trevor and Amanda would like to be able to pick their baby’s adoptive family and get letters and pictures over the years instead of just having her disappear into the foster care system without knowing anything about where she was or how she was doing.
I explained to the grandmother that I did know about prospective families and would be happy to send her some information about them. However, because the baby was in state custody, even if Trevor and Amanda decided that they wanted to pursue an adoption, the process would be very different from the first adoption, and everyone would have to be extremely patient.
Trevor, Amanda, and the grandmother studied the family profiles I sent them and asked to meet with one of the couples. The following weekend, John and Kelly and their five-year-old daughter Olivia—who had been adopted as an infant—traveled across the state to meet the birth family, and the visit went extremely well. That evening, both families called me to say that they were interested in moving ahead with an adoption.
While the two families relayed much of the same information to me about their visit, their reactions were markedly different. The birth father and grandmother expressed excitement and amazement at their good fortune in finding such a great family. By contrast, the adoptive mother—usually the person whose emotions are off the charts at this
point—was subdued. While Kelly definitely felt that the visit had been a success and was excited about the possibility of adopting this baby, she had been terribly sobered by meeting the birth family. The birth mother, Amanda, had been particularly taken with Olivia and had spent quite a while playing with her; and when the visit was over, she declared that she could tell that John and Kelly were good parents because Olivia was “so clean.” This was especially poignant in light of the fact that Trevor and Amanda’s baby had been put into foster care at two weeks old in part because she had serious lesions caused by having gone many days without a diaper change.
As I knew from past experience, it can be difficult at best, and more often impossible, to extricate a child from the state foster care system and free him or her for adoption in a timely manner. But in this case, we had birth parents who wanted to relinquish their child to a particular family that was willing and eager to adopt her. We also had an adoption counselor from a licensed adoption agency, a nationally respected adoption attorney, and a number of child welfare professionals from the county where the birth family lived—all working to advance an adoption. Everyone agreed that the birth parents (who turned out to be part of a large extended family with a number of children in foster care) were highly unlikely to make the improvements necessary for them to regain custody of their baby. So their caseworker had been planning to “move to termination” of their parental rights at some point in the future. Her resolve had grown stronger, she told me, after Trevor had been observed masturbating in full view of everyone during a recent supervised office visit with his baby.
Besieged by memories of children who languished for years in foster care, I was anxious to move the adoption forward as quickly as possible. Here was a seven-month-old baby who had already lived in three different foster homes; she needed permanence and stability. She had already suffered from early neglect, repeated disruptions in placement, and the disadvantage of having been born to parents who could not provide for her. I felt there was no time to waste and I knew that if DSHS handled the adoption, it wouldn’t proceed quickly.
