The Children Money Can Buy

by Anne Moody

  Lily was moved, but not to her grandmother’s home. Instead, she was placed in a new foster home and then, not many months later, into a third foster home. Lily remembers virtually nothing from that year of her life, although she does have happy memories of earlier times spent with her first foster family.

  In retrospect, it appears that when Lily was seven years old, DSHS finally decided that it was time for her to be adopted. By this time, someone had apparently noticed the grave error made in separating the sisters, and their top priority suddenly became placing the two children in the same home. DSHS approached Abby’s foster mother, Roberta, about adopting Lily as well. When Roberta said she did not want to adopt Lily, she was told that if she didn’t, Abby would be taken away from her because the girls needed to be together. It took almost a year of persuasion, during which Lily was in the two other foster homes; Roberta finally, reluctantly agreed to adopt Lily. When Lily was almost eight years old, she went to live with a woman who did not want her, who made these feelings clear, and who went on to mistreat Lily in various ways for the next six years.

  Not surprisingly, Lily’s adoptive placement was a disaster from the start. In addition to Abby, there were two teenagers in the family, a boy and a girl, and there was a father, but the mother was dominant and everyone else deferred to her. Roberta told extended family members that Lily was severely disturbed, that she had problems with impulse control, was too talkative, was a thief, and was a fire starter. Lily was taken to a doctor who, based on the mother’s report, put her on high doses of three different medications that were supposed to calm her down, get her to sleep at night, and improve her mood. She was also taken to a counselor who, according to Roberta, recommended that Lily sleep on the floor of a closet for two years after she was caught cutting her sheets with scissors. An older cousin recalls that the extended family questioned both the medications and the closet-bed, but felt unable to intervene. Roberta’s sisters tried to talk with her about her approach to Lily, but any efforts to involve themselves in the situation were firmly rejected. When the family tried to reach out to Lily, it only angered Roberta, and it became clear to other relatives that when they did nice things for Lily or showed her any attention or sympathy, it made Roberta so angry that she would find a way to retaliate, always against Lily.

  The situation reached a crisis point less than a year later when, as Roberta told her cousin, “The family voted and we decided that we didn’t want Lily to be with us anymore.” They contacted CPS and, much to their surprise, discovered that adoptive families aren’t allowed to return children they no longer want (even in situations in which they never wanted the child in the first place and were effectively forced to adopt by DSHS).

  I understand why families should not be allowed to overturn adoptions upon request, but I do not understand why, at that point, someone from DSHS didn’t recognize the danger they had put Lily in and take decisive action to help her. There were repeated referrals to CPS, and caseworkers did meet with the staff at the school Lily attended after a teacher reported that Lily had extensive bruising around her neck, which she said had been caused by Roberta. There were a number of people at the school who were very much aware of the problems in the home because Roberta spoke freely to them about what a trial Lily was to her. It was after one of the meetings with CPS workers at school that Jan, the woman who called me about adopting Lily, stepped forward to offer respite care to the family. Everyone thought it was a good idea, and DSHS apparently thought it was so good that the situation required no further investigation from them.

  So, when Lily was in the third grade, she began spending weekends with Jan and Mark. Jan was an administrative assistant at Lily’s school and, although she didn’t really know Lily at the time, she wanted to help her. Jan had also worked as a behavioral interventionist at the school and was skilled at working with children with behavior problems. She and Mark were prepared for the behavior that Lily’s mother had described and were surprised to find that Lily was generally quite cooperative and well behaved when she was with them. There was one incident of “fire starting” when Lily burned a candle in her room without permission, but Jan and Mark saw that as an expression of wanting to burn a candle rather than of wanting to burn the house down. They had a long talk about why candles were dangerous, and there was no further “fire starting.” Jan and Mark had two adult sons and well-formulated ideas about child rearing, which worked well with Lily. Of course, as time went by, they became more and more attached to her and more and more concerned about what was happening to Lily when she went back home.

  Jan and Mark were also aware that they had no control over the situation in Lily’s home. Their ability to make life better for her by providing respite care was granted by Roberta, who could cut off their interaction with Lily at any point. It was clear to Jan and Mark that Lily was the one in need of respite, but they were careful not to suggest that to Roberta. In Roberta’s mind, Jan and Mark’s desire was to give her a break from the hardship of parenting Lily. Jan and Mark were walking a fine line in trying to advocate for Lily and avoid alienating Roberta, and they never lost sight of the fact that if they lost favor with Roberta, she might refuse to let them see Lily any longer.

  So began many years of heroic effort, especially on Jan’s part, to be compassionate, supportive, and diplomatic toward Roberta and to somehow stave off her own feelings of rage and horror at the way Lily was being treated, all in an effort to continue to be allowed to help Lily.

  It’s amazing how much power a disturbed person can wield in an otherwise healthy family. Looking back at Lily’s story raises the obvious questions: How could so many people have overlooked her suffering? How could Roberta, whom many family members recognized as having serious mental health problems, have maintained such absolute control not only over Lily but also over other people’s interactions and relationships with her? Why didn’t other family members realize how bad the situation must be when they felt afraid to defend Lily or to question any of Roberta’s disciplinary measures?

  Roberta talked openly and frequently about the severity of Lily’s problems and about how unhappy and burdened she was as Lily’s mother. This sort of talk would take place at family gatherings, with Roberta making no attempt to modify her complaints in Lily’s presence. Meanwhile, she doted on Abby, and the disparity in the treatment of the two girls was evident to everyone. The father and older siblings were passive in response, and Lily’s role as family scapegoat was firmly established.

  There was one person in the family, however, who took note of what was going on—an older cousin who, in her early twenties, actually began making a written record of things she thought weren’t right. But she too noticed that if she did something nice for Lily, Roberta would find a way to even the score by punishing Lily. The cousin concluded that Roberta was jealous of anyone else’s attention to Lily and was enormously threatened by the idea that other people’s sympathies might be with Lily rather than herself. So the family took a hands-off approach in an effort not to further enflame Roberta’s anger. Lily was heavily medicated during the week and staying with Jan and Mark on most weekends, so things seemed calmer for a few years.

  But of course, things were really only getting steadily worse and reached a crisis with Roberta’s first suicide attempt. She agreed to see a counselor for a short time but quickly concluded that counseling wasn’t helpful to her. I don’t know anything about the specifics of her diagnosis, but there was a second suicide attempt less than two years later. By this time, everyone was walking on eggshells around Roberta, afraid to cross her in any way. The only good thing to come out of this was Roberta allowing Lily to stay with Jan and Mark for months at a time, and it quickly became evident that Lily thrived when she was in their care. During one extended stay, her grades went from D’s and F’s to A’s and B’s, and the change in her behavior and demeanor was pronounced. But, inevitably, Roberta would call for Lily’s return, and Jan a
nd Mark had to send her back home.

  One day, when Lily was in the seventh grade, she called her older cousin to say that Roberta had kicked her in anger and she needed her cousin’s help to get away from the house. The cousin contacted CPS, but when they investigated, Lily, who was thoroughly frightened, had changed her story. She told the investigating social worker that “nothing happened” and later told her cousin that Roberta said that if she did “something stupid, you’ll never see Abby again.” Roberta’s summary of the situation was that Lily “kicked me to the curb and threw me out with the trash.” But, happily, she allowed Lily to go to Jan and Mark’s and seemed to be entertaining the possibility of letting them adopt her. Roberta changed her mind about the adoption a short time later, though, possibly after realizing that she would be sacrificing the monthly stipend she received from Adoption Support Services.

  But it wasn’t too long before Roberta allowed Lily to return to Jan and Mark’s home and, after another seven months had passed, she said she would agree to relinquish her parental rights and let them adopt Lily. Jan and Mark were ecstatic but still not confident that Roberta wouldn’t change her mind. They had seen how much (mysterious) power she wielded over other people—including social workers, and even including Lily.

  Lily has just turned fourteen; there is ample evidence that she was emotionally and physically abused in her adoptive home, and there are many witnesses to this abuse, all of whom feel it has been damaging and probably unsafe for Lily to be with Roberta. But until very recently, Roberta was able to retain control and frighten everyone sufficiently to prevent them from taking any action that might upset her, presumably because such action could cause either another suicide attempt or retaliatory behavior against Lily. When I met with Lily and Jan and Mark, Roberta was living with her husband, her two adult children, and eleven-year-old Abby in a house with rooms so overstuffed that people could move about only by a series of pathways through the clutter.

  Within a few days of my first conversation with Jan, she had returned almost all of the forms and other information required for this type of adoption. People usually take at least a few weeks to gather all of this information, but Jan and Mark clearly wanted to strike while Roberta was feeling agreeable. I knew only the most rudimentary facts about the situation when I went out to meet with them and with Lily a few days later. Almost immediately after we started talking, my customary interview format was discarded by the need to express varying degrees of confusion, astonishment, anger, and horror at what they were telling me.

  This book started out with a story about a social worker for the Department of Social and Health Services who was unfairly blamed for a child’s suffering, and it is now ending with a story about negligence on the part of other DSHS social workers that led to years and years of suffering for another child. The latter story took place in full view of numerous people who cared about this child, including extended family, school staff, her doctor, and her counselor, and yet none of these people felt they had the ability to change the situation for eight interminably long years.

  Lily is an extremely appealing girl who seems a few years younger than she actually is, in part because she is small and slim, and in part because she is shy and quiet upon first meeting you. She has a pretty face and thick brown hair shaped by a stylish layered cut. She sat quietly through several hours while Jan and Mark told the story from their perspective. Lily politely answered questions I directed to her, but she was not forthcoming until much later when she was showing me around the house. When we reached her bedroom, I asked Lily if she had any questions for me, and she said, “Yes, would you like to see my photo album?” She then brought out the album that had been so lovingly made for her by the first foster mother, and we went over each picture with care. There was three-year-old Lily in her fancy new dresses with her little shaved head. She lingered over one picture of herself holding a stuffed unicorn and said she regretted not knowing what had happened to “Danny,” who had been given to her by those foster parents and had disappeared after the move to Roberta’s. When we came to a picture of Abby, Lily enthusiastically said, “Isn’t she pretty?” without a trace of jealousy or the complicated feelings that must arise between siblings when one of them is blatantly favored by a parent while the other is a scapegoat.

  When we had finished looking at all the pictures, Lily asked me if I’d like to see another album that she thought might have been put together by her birth father. She apologized for the fact that it had only seven pictures. They were pictures of a good-looking blond man, probably in his late twenties, who looked like Lily, and there were also pictures of an uncle and grandfather. Looking at them prompted Lily to ask me if I thought it was okay for her to wonder what had happened to her birth family. She was especially interested in finding out what had become of a baby brother who was born after the other children were removed from the home. I told her it was absolutely normal to want to know about the people in her birth family and her history with them. It pains me to know that Lily has been denied even the most basic information about these people, even whether they are still alive, in this era of supposedly enlightened child welfare work. Even early in my career, social workers were taught about the importance of creating “life books” so that children would have information about their family history. Lily came into care only eleven years ago. How is it that things were allowed to go so terribly wrong for her?

  My role in Lily’s adoption was actually quite limited. Other than to ascertain that Jan and Mark met all the state requirements for adoptive parents and that Lily was happy and wanted to be adopted by them, I had no authority in this matter. I felt fairly confident that, after all their struggles to get to this point, Jan and Mark and Lily would be allowed to become a family. Jan and Mark had reached a level of determination that wouldn’t be easily denied. They had an excellent attorney to guide them through the process, and it seemed inconceivable that the courts would force Lily to return to Roberta’s home against her will. It might not happen quickly or easily or inexpensively, if Roberta decided to object, but I believed that Lily would ultimately become Jan and Mark’s daughter. That won’t be the end of the story, though, because she will still face the enormous challenge of coming to terms with her past. Amazingly, it appears that Lily has somehow, despite everything, found just the right parents to help her take it on.

  Conclusion

  Looking back, it is fascinating to see how rapid the pace of change has been over the course of my career.

  Some of this change, such as widespread acceptance of gay parenthood, is simply a reflection of change in the mainstream culture. Until almost the twenty-first century, most gay or lesbian prospective adoptive parents had to omit/conceal/misrepresent information about their sexual orientation. Although these parents sometimes were able to adopt children, there was no societal acknowledgment that they were, or should be, allowed to become parents.

  This is the way things were in 1993, when I met Joe and Alex. Fourteen years later, in 2007, Cameron and Mitchell—the gay couple on the sitcom Modern Family—and Lily, their daughter from Vietnam, became one of the most beloved of all television families, and they have been holding that position ever since. Of course, there is still outrage from some conservative factions, which are absolutely correct in their fears about the effect this show has had on normalizing gay parenthood. The Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage, groundbreaking as it was, was really just an acknowledgment of the fact that attitudes changed dramatically over a short period of time.

  Personally, I also give a lot of credit to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for introducing (way back in 2003) a generation of MTV viewers, who are now voters, to the idea that gay guys aren’t scary. According to the show, quite a few of them just want to fix up your house and wardrobe and teach you how to cook a good meal; all of this is aimed at helping you impress your girlfriend so she’ll want to come over more often. I don’t k
now if the show was designed specifically with the idea of bringing about cultural change, but I think it helped mainstream Americans take some of the first significant steps in that direction.

  Other changes in adoption have been brought on by advances in reproductive technology, the most notable being embryo transfer and gestational surrogacy, which have created a dense thicket of new legal issues needing attention. There are various forms of transfer and surrogacy: the embryo can be created with sperm and egg from the intended parents, or from the intended father and an egg donor, or from the intended mother and a sperm donor, or from both donated egg and sperm, then implanted in either the intended mother (the “adoptive” mother) or a surrogate mother who will grow and deliver the baby.

  In “traditional” surrogacy, in which the surrogate mother also provides the egg, the surrogate is the biological mother of the child. Some years back, I did a home study for a woman who, after she and her husband provided the egg and sperm for their surrogate adoption, was being required to adopt her own biological child because the law defined a mother as the person who gave birth to the baby no matter what the baby’s biological origins. The woman who was giving birth (the surrogate mother) was a dear friend (incredibly dear) of the child’s genetic parents. That woman had the full support and involvement of her husband, and they both were motivated purely by the desire to help their friends have the child they longed for.