"Sorry Veronica, Santa Isn't Real"

 

 

 

In honor of Veronica...

 

 Don’t steal the land of defenseless orphans
by moving their ancient boundary marks,
for their Redeemer is strong;
He himself will accuse you. 
Proverbs 23:10-11
 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As difficult a year it has been for the Brown family
and all those who care about Veronica...
how much harder it must have been for her? 

We cannot even fathom.
   

 

A year ago she wasn't worth an interest hearing
or civil rights lawsuit filed on her behalf. 

(see Adoptive Couple versus Baby Girl). 

Baby Girl is a picture of what adoptees endure their entire lives...
 silencing through the sealing and erasure of our very identities.

Our God-given personhood is stolen. 

  She was silenced in the back of that car on September 23, 2013
and must continue her dance of loyalty in order to survive. 
Eventually she may forget what really happened and her little mind will be forced to live inside narratives completely incongruent with her inner reality.

 
She now has an amended birth certificate,
and an adoption decree which forever defines her.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 
 

As I was pondering this sweet child, I was reminded of another little girl made famous, named Virginia O'Hanlon who wrote a newspaper in 1897 asking about Santa. 

 
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus ...
Papa says 'If you see it in The Sun it's so ...
please tell me the truth."           

 

A man named Francis P. Church, was working as an editor for his brother's
(William Church, a commissioner and founder of the National Rifle Assoc) newspaper,
the New York Sun. 

He was asked to respond, and, of course, his definitive editorial became famous.
   

"Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Clause."

"Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. 
It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIA'S." 

 

Although Virginia had specifically asked for "the truth"...she,
along with the rest of the nation, was led to believe a lie. 
Just an "innocent" fantasy. 
A warm and fuzzy, feel-good myth.  

A man in a suit who could give us anything we want.   

 

The sweet little narrative missed one thing...the truth.

Back in 1897, Virginia, and the rest of the nation, 
ate it up like cookies and milk. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~     

 

  In 2014, I worry about the not so innocent myths. 
Those so powerful, they erase little Veronica's...
no longer nourished by God-given identities and bonds;
 surrounded by strangers throwing gotcha parties;
fed sugary sweet tales that can't satisfy.   

 

Crisis-pregnancy and adoption agencies continue to recruit
 and even coerce vulnerable mothers
with promises of "openness" (which are legally unenforceable)
 and the heroic belief she is giving an ultimate "gift".  

That's the sugar-coated version.

We fail to address the underlying motives of highly profitable
and politically well-connected "professionals" 
helping themselves to babies...
even if the child's family gets in their way.
 We legalize recruitment strategies to increase
the number of "available" children,
rather than serve those who already need homes.
 
In current adoption law, infants and children are used as commodities
to supply the discontented...those willing to pay into unethical systems
for a child to call "their own."
Some believe they are saving the world.

Truth be told, we'll never really know how many children truly need homes,
until adoption no longer functions as an economic "family building" industry
with no regard for human rights.

Our legislators across this nation legalize a business model to "serve" children, 
complete with "experts" whose real customers are shiny new "psychological" parents.

Re-defining, for their own purposes, terms such as "family",
"attachment" and "best interest";
but stripping the God-given right of a child to their own lineage and kinship.

      

If for some reason a child must be cared for
outside their family of birth, 
shouldn't it be a last resort? 

Why ask any fellow human-being to give up their identity
 on an "amended" birth certificate? 
The practice of "sealing" and "amending" birth certificates,
along with monetary incentives that create an environment 
riddled with conflict of interest and profit, 
turns the very definition of "adoption"
into glorified child-trafficking and "ownership" of a human-being.
Whose interest does this serve?

There is a relatively new term being discussed in our world of 2014..."identity privilege".
How appropriate for the millions of adopted individuals who are deemed
identity(less) through "sealed" and "amended" birth certificates. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

             

On that cool September evening in 2013, we, as a nation, 
watched in horror as a four year old girl was stripped unnecessarily 
from her home and family. 

We will never understand how this so-called "adoption"  
could be "finalized" on July 31, 2013  
in a state and by people Veronica had not lived near for two years.
Without a "best interest" hearing.

Veronica's father, Dusten Brown had fought for the right
 to raise his daughter since her infancy and she had been living in Oklahoma,
surrounded by the love and security of her real family for almost two years.   

Sadly, the demand for babies and children
 is legally protected in this country. 

The entire situation was fraudulent from day one.
Veronica is paying a life-altering price
for the unregulated and unethical business 
(we call "adoption").  

And so...like every adoptee, Veronica Brown is now legally non-existent.
Adoption "flips the script" of our very lives, telling us we are born of strangers with whom we share no genetic ties.

Adoption tells us we are not related to the family from which we came, and with whom we share the generations.  How truthful is that?       

 
We can only speculate of Veronica's emotional existence...
merely a shadow of her true self. 
Since her government-sanctioned abduction one year ago,
we cannot even imagine what she has been asked
 to believe.
 
Whatever she is being told,
it must grate against everything within her. 
Not only has her civil right to identity and family been stolen,
but also her inner congruence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 

If her fellow Lost Daughters could write a letter to Ronnie,
it might sound something like this.

 

 "Yes Veronica, You Are Real"

 

 

Santa is just a tale, Sweetheart, but you are very real. 
In our world, some people in suits hide behind masks of greed. 

They have stolen our dignity and sealed us to a lie. 

Although the world may seem like merely a stage;
and you may forget who you really are,

Please remember this.
 
No matter what role we are asked to play,
you and I are not the imposters.    

Deep inside, though we hardly recognize our own cries...
we still exist.  And we know.

You are deserving, Veronica, to be yourself. 
Your worth is not based on the needs you meet for others;
the daughter you can be for someone else. 

We may feel like aliens and strangers...
but we carry with every ounce of our being
 the pain and triumphs of our forefathers. 
They run this race with us through our veins.
That, my sweet Veronica, can never be taken.
 
There is a Father you will never lose.
Though He may feel far away, know that He holds you. 
   
Just look up. 
There you are, Little Star.

 
You are surrounded by a throng
who will help you find your way home.    

Lost & undone, but shining on. 

 

We love you.

Attachment, Trauma, And Conflict Of Interest

 

 

 

 

 It seems like every day my sweet son decides he wants

to "be" something different when he grows up. 

The other day he came home from school
proclaiming he wants to ride bulls...
what every mother wants to hear! 

 

As I sat through an all-day seminar entitled,
"Trauma: How it Affects Growth and Development in Children,"
hosted by the OK Adoption Coalition,
I felt as if I was getting a taste of my son's desired profession.





Being adopted is quite a ride in itself. 
Then we hear "professional" commentators give the "play by play,"
with no riding experience of their own. 
Adoptees are left to dismount and clean up
after the animal ourselves.




Does adoption, the way it is viewed today,
truly serve the child, 
or those in the business of "building" families?

"Attachment Theory" labels a child 
if they fail to "attach" to their care-giver 
(who get's to define this concept?),
because, as the speaker stated...

 

"It's not in their DNA...
babies will 'indiscriminately' attach up to six months old. 
That is why it is SO important to terminate parental rights
as quickly as possible and provide 'permanence' for these "kiddos". 

 

We are not ducks who will "imprint"
on the first person we see after hatching from the egg. 

We are humans who experience profound life-long loss
when separated from our mothers and families.   

 

If DNA and genetic mirroring were not essential parts of our human experience in relational development...
why is the internet full of searching adoptees and first families?

 

And what of this:
 

 

 

This is a visual of a theory which the adoption industry
works hard to dismiss. 
Nancy Verrier, a psychologist and adoptive mother, says...

"There exists a great need for legislative action and concern for the rights of adoptees.
Few dare give voice to that which they know in their hearts: that the connection between biological family and child is primal, mystical, mysterious, and everlasting.
Far more than merely biological and historical, this primal connection is also cellular, psychological, emotional, and spiritual."

I can't tell you how difficult it is to live in a society
which dismisses the very humanity of adoptees.

If we want to be truly trauma-informed,
we must acknowledge the adoptee's reality.

 Changing a child's name,
sealing their genetic identity and history from them,
and then asking them, as well,
to fulfill a "role" in their "new" family...with which 
they share no genetic connection;
with caretakers who need to be 
legally and emotionally known
as "Mother and Father", 
only serves to disenfranchise an adoptee's
 trauma and loss, 
and piles on added layers of complex loyalty issues.

The only valid "connections"
according to some behavioral health "experts" 
are made in court-created "legal" families through adoption. 
Mentions of natural families are made in 
condescending tones,
referring to "the bios" which are, of course, 
the source, and only source, of the child's "trauma."

What about the trauma of changing a child's identity
and expecting them to play a role 
for which they were not created to fulfill? 

A defining moment during this seminar, 
occurred when the entire room erupted in applause 
after the speaker made the assertion...

"'culture" is only defined through 'relationship'".   

 

"Best interest" of a child cannot be undermined in the "name of culture".    

 

It was obvious, everyone was thinking of the Baby Veronica case and the role ICWA played in that long-drawn out tragic battle over a child's very identity, family and personhood.

Veronica Cappobianco is living her life separated
from the family and blood that created her,
the connections that could have, and did, nurture her very core. 
All because of this theory, unethical adoption practices, 
and the power it has garnered by an adoption community 
that still sees children as "blank slates" and, unfortunately, possessions.

When will America wake up and ensure an end to the commodifying of children and conflict of interest in our adoption and child welfare systems?   

The inherent right of a child to be raised by
his/her own family is often thwarted by a system
which gives agencies and foster/hopeful adoptive parents
the legal ability to draw out a contested adoption in court
and then argue "best interest" of a child to stay
with the "only family they have ever known".

We need to ensure ethical adoption laws which
protect natural families. 
Every child deserves his/her own attorney.       

Adoptees are viewed as perpetual children in the middle
of a never-ending game of keep away. 
We are marginalized by being labeled "bitter" 
if we speak of the injustice of having our names changed, identities sealed, or families separated through coercion or conflict of interest. 
Sealed records in adoption not only strips adoptee's of their identity, but it also fails to ensure ethical adoption and child welfare practices. 
A lot can be hidden behind a sealed record.

I once spoke to an adoption attorney who asserted that a new "amended" birth certificate and name must be assigned to an adoptee in order to prevent them from being seen as "second class". 
The more I thought about it, the more I realized, that it is the act of changing and sealing our identities that actually makes us "second class".

It gives the message that adoptee's are not
accepted unless "amended".

This could be the real reason why
a child struggles with "attachment". 

Yes, "attachment" to a caregiver is necessary for survival,
but for an adoptee it feels like holding on for dear life,
while dangling over the edge of a cliff.

The last thing we need is a lucrative adoption industry
feeding society myths and flawed theories
which disenfranchise and exploit
the very ones they claim to be serving. 
Yet these same "experts" are the ones who seem
to have the ear of our court systems, DHS, legislators
and behavioral health services. 
The ones making policy decisions.
 
We now have "professionals" contracted by those who earn their living
 by adoption, defining terms such as "best interest", "psychological parent", "permanency", and "attachment"
based on the perceptions of adoptive parents,
rather than protecting the inherent right of a child
to their identity, family history and connections.

With flawed theories of "attachment" expressed in the quote below,
no wonder adoptee's live a life-time of disenfranchised grief.   

  

Since "child placing" agencies are contracting
with behavioral health "experts"
who perpetuate these myths
(and many others)
to legislators, policy makers,
and foster and adoptive parents,
whose interests are we serving? 
 
Children deserve better. 

We need to start honoring the child,
not who the child can become to complete a new family.

The fact foster and adoptive parents
don't have a biological understanding of their child,
foster and adoptive children are more at risk of being
abused or drugged just to conform
to unrealistic expectations. 

 When a child doesn't have any mirroring of their own self
 through their family, they struggle with anxiety and hyper vigilance. 
It often presents as ADD or even sensory issues. 
Yet it is termed as "attachment issues" or "RAD"
and the child is given a label for a truly natural response,
rather than the problem being placed on the system
that put the child in the unnatural situation in the first place. 

 

My heart went out to one mother who stood up asking for help
for her eighteen year old adopted son. 
She said he had gone through all "the therapy"
and was still struggling. 
What could she do? 

Out of an entire room full of self-asserted "expertise",
she got no help whatsoever. 
Instead of given resources that could have really helped her family and son,
she was given a "band aid". 

The speaker described an exercise they do with "traumatized" children which consists of giving the child a band aid and asking them to put it on their body. 

This supposedly helps the child feel more comfortable to "unload their baggage" because through acknowledging they have an "owie" somewhere on their body, they will acknowledge "heart" issues more easily. 

 

How can an adopted person honestly find their heart in the midst of loyalty issues?

Adoptees must live an identity and narrative defined by others.
That script is skewed based on societal myths
perpetuated by an adoption system that serves the "demand"
for adoptable infants and children.

The sealing of our records steals
not only our identities,
but also any accountability over the "professionals"
who profit from us.  

 Federal adoption incentives influence child welfare philosophy
and adoption policy, when states are rewarded monetarily
for each adoption completed, but not for services towards natural families, family preservation, and reunification efforts.  

"Swift Adoption" programs and "Bridge" foster parents 
whose ultimate goal is adopting, adds to the conflict of interest
in a child welfare system whose goal should be preservation
 of kinship and natural families.

We need to ensure that "permanency" isn't influenced
by financial incentives and tax credits
which adds money to state budgets 
each time they encourage "adoption" placements
over reunification efforts with a child's natural family.


An adopted child's mastery of developmental and relational tasks 
are stunted because of myths perpetuated by an adoption industry 
that splits us apart.  

  
 
I could only accept myself when I was able to know, 
and embrace my dual identity...
by both birth and adoption.
  
When I found the courage to grieve
the losses that had been disenfranchised,
I was finally able to feel and fully experience 
both the good and bad in life.

Only then, as a whole person,
could I embrace myself and my families. 

The only other adoptee I knew in the building that day
 was a darling infant boy dressed in business casual
being cooed over and passed around the table like fresh meat. 

I pray for him, and for the eighteen year old son of the concerned mother. 
And for all of us.   

The Living Doll: Dedicated to Veronica

© Photographer: Vladvitek | Agency: Dreamstime.com

 

Original article posted on 9/24/13

Reposting today in honor of Veronica Brown's Birthday. 

We love you, sweet Veronica

 

"When I dig up your dry bones from exile, I'll breathe My life into you and you'll live. Then I'll lead you straight back to your land and you'll realize that I am your God." Ezekial 37:12-14

I have struggled with muscle & joint pain, and think that it may be related to the emotional journey I have taken as an adoptee. 

I was laying in bed this morning, still in shock, that an entire nation watched last night as an innocent four year old girl was taken unnecessarily from her family. 

 

Any society that legally sanctions an unregulated profit-driven adoption industry over a child's best interest is sick and inhumane. 

Then the thought came to me.  These pains feel like the pains of transformation.

I've grown up a plastic doll, frozen in my adopted role.  

Expected emotions and expressions ~ a painted on smile. 
Oh, the places we go.

My realness was surrendered as a baby...crying, pleading. 
The cries carried with them the life I had shared with she who gave me life  ~ flying into the universe in search. 
I slowly morphed into the doll I became. The one who laughed and talked and danced her little heart out.

Until, one day, from the shadows, they returned.
  Like they knew.
As the doll aged it had begun to crack and fray;
bruised and torn by life in a real world, existing as only a doll.
Dutifully fulfilling the dreams of the girl who owned her...

Yes, the tears this worn plastic doll had once shed; the screams that proved her real in time past, but had been denied...they found their way back;
And she was taken for surprise.
Almost as if she was living another life, not hers.
She remembered and she searched.

Eventually, she found her truth, 

still merely a plastic doll.

Unbearable grief welled up and broke through the frozeness, the facade.
It felt as if her brittle arms and legs, feet and hands, head and heart might literally snap with the newfound awareness of blood coursing through her veins.

This old, hard plastic I am made of (resilient, strong, inflexible, controlled)
must adjust to being real ~ for the first time.

I am real?

The painted on smile disappears. 
I have only survived in this one state ~ my adopted self. 
Certificate of authenticity and all.  
How does a "living" doll break out of this shell I have been in my whole life?

It is so painful to stretch the joints and flesh that have stayed in one position, frozen in the mold that was used to define me,
afraid to even imagine who I really am. 
I walk stiffly...half-doll, half-person in the land of the living. 
Discovering my own humanity. 

The truth is, we aren't dolls, but we might as well be.
That is how adoption works.

I pray God's protection and grace over you, Veronica. 
That He will help you someday learn to be "real" in the midst of pain. 

Lord, please heal us.   

Here, Veronica, Here Girl

© Photographer: Roughcollie | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"It is hard to fathom this Court allowing the enforcement of an adoption decree entered in direct contravention of the Oklahoma and U.S. Constitutions." 

  ~ Justice Noma Gurich ~

Our entire nation watched a traumatized four year old girl be taken from her family.  We not only watched it, our government escorted her.  It was far from "peaceful" for her.  It is state-sanctioned abuse.  Without the excuse of "adoption", any other child would have been saved from such a kidnapping.        

Adoption law turned her into a non-person.  She has no more rights than a dog being led away from its breeder.

"Adoptive Couple VERSUS Baby Girl" should teach us that our adoption system in America is not only flawed, it is abusive.  The adoption industry has brainwashed our entire nation to the point we let a child be kidnapped on national television.   

Veronica is the face of adoption in our country now.  And the atrocity it did to her is not just one-time collateral damage.

Coercion, fraud, conflict of interest, biased "counseling", and LOTS OF MONEY (disguised as "fees" and "expenses") continue to turn adoption into a "business" model that ignores human rights and best interests of children and their families.  The adoption brokers that bought and sold Veronica are still in business.  Even in "good" adoptions, money still exchanges hands and identities are stolen.  Adoptees live their entire lives as someone else, with no access to their genealogy. They are non-persons.  

It reminds me of one of the ridiculous comments I heard made during the Adoption Review Task Force meetings I attended at our state capitol.  Mind you, the majority of this "task force", charged with making recommendations in adoption law, was comprised of those who earn their living off adoption.  My colleague and I arrived a little early and introduced ourselves to two other ladies. When we mentioned that we were an adoptee and a first mother, we got the same familiar blank looks we are used to...most people are speechless to meet a real live adult adoptee or first mother. What took the cake, though, was the response of one of these ladies.

"Well, I don't have any PERSONAL experience with adoption...but I have a special puppy!"  Like that was comparable?  We looked at each other with disbelief when later during the meeting she was introduced as the presenter from the Department of Mental Health, invited to speak about "Trauma".  Of course, she was clueless and it showed.

The sad part about this story ~ adult adoptees are used to this.  It didn't surprise me at all...but it did sadden me, considering this is the mindset of those who are considered "professionals" in the field.  Those who legislators were looking to for "recommendations" to address the 2006 OK Grand Jury Report regarding unethical behaviors of adoption brokers.  More lip-service. 

This is the typical societal attitude about adoption ~ children are blank slates, much like puppies. They can be tossed around and given new "papers" and new homes, new identities, and new lives without much thought...except for the expectation to be grateful that someone would "take them in." Sadly, dogs have more accurate pedigrees than most adoptees have accurate birth certificates.

Do a search for "adoption" on any newspaper's website and try to weed through the dog pound "adoption" articles listed right along articles regarding adoption of children...they are always lumped together ~ and, unfortunately, our society doesn't treat the adoption of children much more ethically . Adoption is the highest money-making unregulated industry in America.

When questioned about the Federal Adoption Incentive, and how this could be an influencing factor in the overall philosophy & policies governing how we "care" for Oklahoma's children, the presenter "did not know the numbers."

DHS (Oklahoma "Swift Adoptions") receives a $4,000 (or higher) "bonus" from the federal government (our tax dollars) for most finalized adoptions of kids in state care. That added up to $1.5 million last year alone. Tell me this doesn't influence the WAY in which state government operates ~ from parental termination of rights decisions, to preparation (or lack thereof) of potential adoptive parents, to which children we focus on "saving" (and how).  That could be why our child welfare systems are in trouble.  We are neglecting the children who need our help in order to focus on how to increase our federal matching dollars.

In 2008, Oklahoma had the 3rd highest adoption rate in the nation.  Our ICPC Officer (who is contracted and paid by DHS to approve all inter-state adoptions) is also the owner of an adoption agency.  The same attorneys involved with Veronica's adoption are still in business and babies such as Deserai and Jarred are still in legal limbo over the same unregulated and contested issues. 

I'm only talking about all this because this is the state we live in.  The state that failed Veronica.  A state very invested ~ from top to bottom. 

Money and adoption can never be ethically intertwined. Yet here we are.  And there Veronica is in a strange home, with people who reportedly may have been unfit to adopt a child in "public" care, but who our court systems allowed to kidnap a child away from her own father...through money and unethical adoption brokers. 

Any father who would fight in court for his daughter from the time she was four months old (when he was finally informed of the adoption "plan") is far from the "abandoner" he is being made to look in mainstream media.  Even though Veronica was whisked out of state at birth, the adoption was never finalized and Dusten was awarded custody two years ago, because it had been unethical and contested from day one. 

S.C. Judge Malphrus (the only court that actually held a trial) concluded that Dusten had been a "thwarted" father.  See the ruling here:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/169266799/2011-Malphrus-Ruling

"Even if ICWA does not apply I find that birth father's consent to the adoption was necessary and he has not consented to this adoption.  I find that he was a 'thwarted father' as that term is defined in Abernathy vs. Baby Boy.

When parental rights and the best interest of the child are in conflict, the best interest of the child must prevail.  In this case, I find no conflict in the two.  The best interests of the child are protected by not terminating father's parental rights...a child is not property."

Veronica had been living happily with her natural family in Oklahoma for two years.  Why should she have to pay for an unethical court and adoption system whose appeals process treated her more like a piece of property, rather than a human-being with rights to her own family? 

Adoption agencies are notorious for using unethical practices against pesky fathers.  It makes adoption too "risky" for their customers. Why would they work so hard to turn Dusten into a "criminal", except to deflect this atrocity off the real reason America allowed this child to be transferred like a piece of property...the largest unregulated industry in America.  Someone has to pay in order to ensure society continues to buy in to a positive philosophy of adoption.  Veronica is paying the cost.

We sit back and watch a child be subject to state-sanctioned abuse.  Her best interests were completely ignored for the purpose of making sure the "establishment" of adoption is preserved.  For whose best interest?

Here, Veronica, here Girl...come get your cookie.

For the best overview of this case click here:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/03/1243613/-Adoption-Series-part-2-Veronica-Brown