"...some of the reality behind so-called 'fairytale' adoption stories."

Karen Carrico - Victoria, British Columbia

I became pregnant as the result of an acquaintance rape during a confusing period in my mid-twenties. Under pressure from my parents to have an abortion and without considering the consequences, I agreed I would give my baby up for adoption.

I took good care of myself during my pregnancy. I quit smoking, didn't drink any alcohol or use any street drugs and focussed on diet and exercise. I wanted my baby to get the best start in life possible. It helped that I had supported myself as a treeplanter for many years and was already in excellent physical condition.

But I was also in a state of post-traumatic shock from an experience I'd had during the early stages of my pregnancy.

When I was about six months pregnant I attended two brief appointments with provincial ministry social worker named Valerie Johnston and told her I planned to give my baby up for adoption. She took some information about me, my family and my baby's father. At the next appointment the focus was entirely on the prospective adoptive parents. I was to pick one couple out of the two who were presented to me. I selected one over the other and was also told by Valerie that there were three days before the surrendering documents could be signed.

All things considered I had a normal, peaceful even happy pregnancy in a beautiful city, Victoria B.C.

I had a normal labour (twenty-one hours) and felt a great sense of peace after my son emerged into the world around 4 AM. He did not cry much and it seemed magical in the nursery. He was removed from me immediately. I turned my head and saw my younger sister standing before him but did not ask to hold him. Reassured that all was well, I was wheeled away and went to sleep.

I awoke around 11:30 AM and shuffled painfully to the bathroom. In the hall, I asked directions to the nursery and went in to see my son. He was asleep and I stood over him full of conflicting emotions. Suddenly I felt very confused and adoption no longer seemed like a good outcome.

His breathing was laboured and I asked a nearby nurse what was wrong with him.

"Oh it's nothing," she said, "It's just a little mucous still clearing from the birth." I didn't want to wake him by picking him up. With a great sense of uncertainty, I returned to my room to have lunch.

After lunch I returned to the nursery and my baby was gone! I asked another nurse where he was and she escorted me over to the incubators where he lay, screaming his little lungs out. Another nurse sidled up to the other side of me. He was in the incubator, they explained, because he had an infection that was giving him breathing difficulties, an infection that I'd given him while he was being born. I was to return to my room immediately to be tested and within a short time was being given medication for this apparent infection. I did not question them. I was full of concern about my baby and even felt ashamed that I'd somehow given him an infection but from that time on I could barely leave my bed. Even when I did go into the nursery to see him, I felt dead inside. One nurse took pity on me and said I could hold him which I did. I wanted to put him to my breast but they had already been bound by hospital staff to stop the flow of milk. I took the drugs I was given and did not question this or anything else they did or said. Accompanied by mutual friends, my son's father came by to visit but I was unable to communicate effectively with him.

Valerie the B.C. Government social worker came into my hospital room the next morning. The nurses had already given me more medication for my infection. I looked
at her and said to that I thought I had three days before the papers were signed. She said she was there to register his birth. She filled out the registration papers as I answered her questions and although she asked me his father's name and I gave it to her but twenty years later when I received a copy of it when the adoption records opened here in BC, his side of the registration was blank.

She pulled out another form and then told me that the couple I had selected were so excited over their new son that they could not sleep the night before and they had taken a ferry straight over to see him. At that moment, they were waiting outside the nursery. I objected. No, she insisted, I had promised my son to them and they would be so disappointed if they had to wait for another day. There was no point. It was already done, the papers were just a formality.

I felt drained of any will whatsoever and signed the paper. From that time on I and other members of my family were denied entrance to the hospital nursery. The next day I was sent home with a big bottle of pills that was directly prescribed for my "infection" by my family doctor.

There were a lot of other discrepancies in the adoption file I received through a Freedom of Information request in 1998. I had discovered that in order to give a woman a chance to recover from childbirth, ten days after the child was born were legally required before consent could be given to process an adoption in BC and yet I had been made to give consent after only one. Along with a clean bill of health, that is, there were no infections present, I discovered all three consent documents, two of which I had never seen before, were falsely dated to eleven days after my son was born. My signature was forged on the "Consent to Adopt" which its supposed witness, Valerie's supervisor, later said was a sworn document because she was also a Commissioner of Oaths authorized by the Province of British Columbia.

After years of blaming myself for the unhappy life I endured after I lost my son, I was really shocked and very angry to find out that I had been lied to and drugged by the social worker, hospital staff and my own doctor for the purpose of perpetrating a fraudulent adoption. The lengths that they went to to insure that the adoption went through tells me that all that would have been necessary for my son and I to have stayed together was that existing regulations and laws be followed.

Knowingly presenting forged documents to the BC Supreme Court is criminal fraud, not social work, so I made a complaint to the Fraud Department of the Victoria Police and they launched a six month long investigation. The investigation did not, however, end satisfactorily for me as a former RCMP officer who now did hand-writing analysis for the provincial government was of the opinion that the forged documents were genuine -- although the police detective in charge of the investigation was careful to say that was not his opinion and that he did not think I was lying. He could see that my supposed signature on the Mother's Consent looked more like Valerie's writing than my own.

I strongly suspect that my case was closed on instruction from higher levels of government on the grounds that it was "not in the public's interest."

Discovering the truth of what happened added greatly to the emotional burden I already carried. It also had the effect of seriously damaging my relationships with my sisters, one of whom still sees the same family doctor in Victoria. She cannot accept that her doctor whom she has trusted with her health and that of her son for thirty years would have lied to me for the purpose of sedating me in order to aid and abet an illegal adoption. Victoria General Hospital has also denied to me in writing that women who were "giving up" babies for adoption were treated any differently from any other mothers. The bound breasts, the lies, the drugs, turning myself and members of the family away from the nursery, none of that could have happened. The two Ministry social workers said they could not even remember me but of course they "would have" followed all existing laws and regulations. In the police records, Barbara Dane stated that the fact I had participated in the selection of the parents three months before my son was born demonstrated that I knew what adoption was all about and that I consented to giving my child up.

Laws do not apply only if someone is looking but I have no doubt that the sealed records conceal a multitude of crimes. Rather than owning up to these crimes the Ministry will probably do whatever it can to keep a lid on things. I would like to see a government inquiry into this situation but most of all I would like to see the social workers who destroyed my life, convicted in a court of law and sent to jail. Although it was the closed records that enabled them to assume far more power than they actually had, Valerie and her supervisor chose to do what they did of their own volition. It has already been determined in an international tribunal that it is not a defence to say that you were just doing your job that you were just following orders.

I felt the only thing left to me was to find the social worker involved (still employed by the Ministry at the time of the investigation) and confront her. Fortunately, before I could take such a step, I came across a web page from Australia where adoption records had been opened five years previously to those here in British Columbia. So many women had since discovered that their babies were taken from them through the unethical use of hypnotic sedatives administered by hospital staff prior to the coercion of illegal consents that a parliamentary inquiry was held. Calls for similar inquiries have now been heard in England, Ireland, the US and here in Canada.

I sent Valerie and her supervisor a copy of this information to their home addresses. Valerie responded by going to the police and demanding a peace bond be placed upon me, making it illegal for me to approach her. But as I hadn't actually done anything, the police refused.

One of the most insidious elements (and there are many!) of modern adoption practices is how grievous mothers are made to carry the blame. We "gave up" our children and it follows that we are worthy only of contempt. What kind of woman would give up her child? This was the real shame we carried through the years not having a baby while unmarried. But there is no sympathy for unfortunates like us and a great well of pain grew deeper inside of me with every passing year.

The loss of my son at age twenty four cut the heart out of the rest of my life.

Like about half of women who lose their first child to closed adoption, I could never have any more and was forced to live my life laden with negative emotions that routinely swamped any further attempts or opportunities I had for any kind of happiness. I picked my way through the minefield of drug addiction, abusive relationships and suicidal depression. So far, I have survived.

All things considered, I cannot think that a morass of drugs, lies and forged documents that utterly destroyed the life of a naive young woman is really a very wholesome way to start a family. In spite of the sense of entitlement the closed adoption system might have given them, any moral right my son's adopters had to him ended at the point that the fraud began.

That claiming another’s child as on'’s own is immoral is a recognition rooted deep within our culture. My son and his adopters are members of the Anglican Church which holds the Ten Commandment to be sacred laws of God. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet the children of others. Thou shalt not steal the children of others. Thou shalt not bear false witness to a court of law in order to covet and steal the children of others.

The bond between a mother and child forms in the womb. It is sacred, lifelong and not severed by separation or alienation. And it is we, the mothers who lost their children to this barbaric system and have suffered constant sorrow ever since, that can testify to the strength of this bond, not the mothers who look down their noses at us for “giving” our children up.

The vested interest of government agencies and the adoption industry in maintaining the lies of adoption is so endemic within our society that it is very difficult to get the kind of information that my story contains into the media. Adoption is still a huge sacred cow in our culture. I have written dozens of letters of editor that have not been published because they challenged generally accepted beliefs about adoption, that it is a good thing. The destruction of my life is an inconsequential and even deserved side effect.

As my son has so far refused contact with myself or any other members of his family, this remains a very sad and stressful situation for me. I have done a lot of research on this subject and am a published writer but I found it very difficult to write this. I have had to turn away from it in tears many times but am making the effort to post it in the hope that other women might read my story and realize the same thing was done to them. They may make a request for their files, discover the same kinds of forgeries and eventually a social worker will face criminal charges.

The mills of the Gods grind slow but sure indeed and the truth will come out. I am inspired by the story of Glenna Henderson, a native Canadian who lost her first son to adoption lawyers in Oklahoma. Even though there was a lot of publicity about this case, she did not get her son back. Five years after she launched the complaint, however, the law firm involved, Boren and Boren, are under investigation for violations that included trafficking in children, conspiracy to commit a felony, first-degree forgery, extortion, obtaining money by false pretence, embezzlement by an attorney and falsifying corporate records.

And that's just some of the reality behind so-called "fairytale" adoption stories.

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