I was forced to surrender my daughter in 1990.
“According to law, adoption can not be obtained by using fraud, coercion, or while the parents signing are under duress. Anything other, is not adoption, it is kidnapping. It doesn’t matter how many people are involved, lawyers, social workers, judges, it does not take away the fact, this is not adoption, this is kidnapping… Obtaining a signature from a mother in a hospital, while medicated, is duress. Forcing signatures while a mother is pregnant, or just gave birth without having time to recover, is a duress time for her.” – Heather K. in “Adoption VS Kidnapping: The Abusers Language” from It’s Always in the Undercurrents, May 11, 2009.
I was coerced, lied to, manipulated, stalked, harassed, screamed and yelled at constantly and forced to sign documents while pregnant without a lawyer to represent my rights (or my daughter’s rights). I was not allowed to read the documents -or even look at them- and they were not explained to me. Was my signature forged?? I am in the process of determining if that was the case. But the damage is done. I was not given any copies of said documents. (I discovered 18 years later when I received the non-identifying information that EVERYTHING concerning me was a lie. The social wrecker told my beautiful daughter “your *birth* mother was PLEASED with HER decision.” (Does being suicidal and grief-stricken sound pleased? Does having your intestines constricted from the hell of PTSD and unresolvable grief and loss count as ‘pleased’?
I was 16 and purposely separated from my mother in order for the baby brokers to obtain my signature. Yes, it was under extreme duress. I kept stating that I refuse to sign their “consent”. I repeatedly told them and made very clear I wanted to raise my daughter. I was told repeatedly ‘(I) was selfish for wanting to keep my daughter! Selfish?! For loving my daughter? Willing to love and raise her in a happy and secure home?
Financial information was deliberately withheld from me that would have enabled me to keep my daughter. I had no support from her father. The social workers knew that. I was threatened with being sent to a “maternity home” – they meant maternity prison as I was supposed to be punished for having committed the sin of sex outside marriage. It’s sickening -single people are allowed to adopt now, aren’t they? Whatever happened to ‘your child must be raised by a married couple’? Lying hypocrites.
I was told I wasn’t good enough to raise my daughter. The social worker also told my daughter that “Your *birth* mother wanted you to be raised by someone who loved you more than she did.” No one loves my daughter as much as I do. How can they? I’M HER MOTHER. The social worker has ruined any chance I might have had to be reunited with my girl. How do you go on after that? I cannot ignore her existence. She’s my child!
I was threatened with having my baby ‘placed’ in foster care indefinitely if I did not sign their documents (and you wouldn’t want that for your baby, would you dear-you know what foster care is like don’t you?) They were going to take my baby whether I signed, or not. It didn’t matter that I was totally capable of raising my daughter — they wanted their cut in my daughter’s adoption transaction (I was one of three expectant mothers at school. I asked the social wrecker why they weren’t harassing them and trying to force them to surrender their babies? “Sweetheart, you are white… “) I learned after my daughter was gone that they had been given financial assistance and were happily raising their children. That nearly killed me. Their children did not suffer.
And after living a lifetime of horrendous pain and grief; after trying to get through every day feeling as though I were bleeding pain, I discovered my daughter was lied to. I am trying to tell her the truth. I don’t want her hurt. (I forwarded a letter to her adopters and am being ignored.) I love and miss my daughter so much. How did this happen to us?
Oh yes, I was told to ‘just go away’ and ‘shut the hell up’. ‘Forget you were ever pregnant’. A couple of social workers tried to convince me (i.e. force me to agree) that I wasn’t an expectant mother?! I told them they could see that I was pregnant. Why were they trying to deny the obvious? That I could feel my daughter’s life inside me. That I was her mother. They didn’t like that. Did my fertility threaten them? Did my motherhood offend them?
We absolutely can call adoption what it is – abduction, kidnapping and sick. It destroys mothers to create a lie.