Readers of National Adoption Reports are familiar with Carol Sandusky, a young woman who has filed a civil rights complaint against a social worker in Pennsylvania for violating her right to privacy. Although Sandusky had told the social worker that she did not want contact with her biological sister, the social worker released her name and address to the biological sister and badgered Sandusky into hearing information about abuse by her biological parents prior to adoption. Sandusky has been on numerous television and radio shows and been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles including an Associated Press story which included a front page story in the Los Angeles Times.

Sandusky's story is extremely upsetting to proponents of unfettered access to information in adoption records because she is challenging their message that everyone wants to contact. One of the more interesting responses to Sandusky comes from Florence Fisher. In the A.P. story, it is reported "Florence Anna Fisher, who helped found the adoptee search movement 25 years ago by launching Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association, advocates breaking laws that keep information from adoptees. She said she doesn't understand Mrs. Sandusky's complaint. 'Nobody can pressure you into staying on the phone and seeing someone you don't want to see if you're an adult,' Miss Fisher said. She agrees that adoptees should be left alone if they want no contact, but she believes that all adoptees really want to know about their past and owe it to their children and grandchildren to find out."

This statement is in contrast with another article in the Peninsula Times Tribune on April 5, 1982, where Florence Fisher discusses her own contact with her birth mother. "Fisher has had a stormy relationship with her birth mother, whom she found in 1970. At their first meeting, her mother denied she was the woman for whom Fisher had been searching. At a subsequent meeting, she embraced her daughter and told her the family history. But she still wanted to keep Fisher's existence a secret from the rest of her family. 'She wanted to sweep me under the rug like a dirty little secret and I'm not,' Fisher said. I don't believe in back street relationships either with men or with mothers." In 1974, Fisher introduced herself to her brother, Jerry, who had not known of her."

The Times Tribune article continues, "Eventually Fisher and her mother started to spend time together, going regularly to the theater and to concerts. However, the problems persisted and the two stopped seeing each other at the end of 1977. Fisher believes her mother's belligerency comes from 'the fact that she built her life on lies.'"

NCFA is hopeful that Fisher's statements in the recent A.P. story reflect her current beliefs on the rights of adopted persons to be left alone if they want no contact. It is not clear whether she still believes, as she stated in the Times Tribune article, that birthparents do not have the same right to be left alone. According to Fisher in that article, "It's OK to marry a man and not tell him you've had an abortion or an affair, but it's not OK not to tell him you've had a child. Because that's real. The fact is that when you perform a sexual act that brings a kid into the world, you have an obligation to that kid for all times. You don't have to be that child's mommy, but you owe it the truth."