MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- Linda Scrivens is the terror in every adoptive parent's heart.

Eighteen months after she gave birth to a boy, after she signed a raft of documents relinquishing her rights to him, after he had spent most of his short life with his new mother and father, Scrivens went to court and won him back.

``I will never believe that adoption is full of happy endings,'' she says now, 17 years after regaining custody of her son, Forest. ``It's full of sad endings. . . . I was one of the casualties, and his adoptive parents were two more.''

Scrivens' story is, at once, chilling and heartening. It illustrates the grinding pressure once applied on single women to give up their babies, but also shows how much has changed. It demonstrates why adoptive parents fear losing their children, but also underscores that such events are rare and invariably the result of legal errors.

Scrivens was 26, a college graduate headed for the Peace Corps, when she became pregnant. The father didn't want the baby, and she didn't want to become the subject of small-town gossip in her southern Vermont community, so she moved into a home for pregnant women in the northern part of the state.

``It was a secret. I was in distress, I was in turmoil. I didn't know if I wanted to be a mother or consider adoption,'' she says. ``I was in no emotional state to know what I wanted, so I went to a place where I believed professionals would help me through a tough period and help me make a reasoned decision.''

Instead, Scrivens received what she calls a ``brainwashing'' and was placed on ``an adoption track.'' Her account of life in the home, which she asked not to identify but which still operates as an adoption agency, was corroborated by others.

Her case worker maintained a drumbeat of insistence that Scrivens was doing the right thing in forming ``an adoption plan.'' Even though she kept saying she might want to raise her baby, the case worker encouraged Scrivens to choose adoption.

After a few months at the home, Scrivens says, ``my baby didn't feel like mine anymore.'' In retrospect, she bristles at the thought that she gave in to the pressure, but believes her sense of isolation and desperation left her vulnerable.

So, though her deep ambivalence persisted, she chose an adoptive couple. On May 25, 1979, after canceling three meetings at which she was to complete the process, she remained so anguished about what to do that she flipped a coin.

It came up adoption.

Four days later, she signed all the documents she was given at a courthouse. All during the bus ride home, she thought she had done the wrong thing; within hours, she was back in court asking that her paperwork be ripped up.

The clerk told Scrivens that her case worker had to retrieve the documents, and had to do so by day's end. But the case worker failed to return Scrivens' repeated calls.

It was two months later, while watching ``Donahue'' on television that Shrivens decided all was not lost. A guest on the talk show was a member of Concerned United Birthparents, a national organization begun in Massachusetts by birth mothers who felt they had been coerced into giving up their children.

CUB, as it is called, played a key role in supporting the biological parents in one of the most famous instances of adoptive parents losing a legal battle for their child. In the Baby Jessica case, as with Scrivens, the outcome was based on technicalities -- mistakes the adoption agencies and lawyers say they have learned from and are now scrupulous about avoiding.

Specialists also caution that women like Scrivens, who seek their children's return, have always been the exception.

``I'm not saying that it can't ever happen, but it's just not how things work,'' says Jeffrey Kaye, an official of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and cofounder of the Boston Adoption Bureau. ``We're always on the lookout for red flags that they might want to change their minds, and always err on the side of advocating that they keep their children.''

Anna, a 24-year-old department store manager in Houston, says that before she surrendered her daughter for adoption last year, she received ``wonderful, caring counseling . . . to the point that I almost got tired of hearing that it was my baby, and I shouldn't do this if I have any doubts.''

Some birth mothers may still feel social or familial pressure to relinquish their children, but adoption agencies and lawyers also know they are taking a big risk in today's competitive climate if they facilitate a placement that goes wrong: Word gets around, and clients go elsewhere.

Scrivens was able to get her baby back because, after a yearlong legal battle that she initially lost, an appeals court found that a judge, rather than a city clerk, should have overseen the signing of her documents.

The adoptive parents were devastated, but went on to adopt another child. Scrivens, now a mental health counselor, says she regrets the pain she caused -- but not the course she took.

``I know that what I did scares the hell out of adoptive parents, but I got my son back only because of a legal fluke, a mistake that was lucky for me and unlucky for them,'' she says.

``I also know that I lived through what I call the meat grinder of adoption. . . . I want to believe things have changed and I understand they really might have. I sure hope so.''

For more information, please contact:

Adam Pertman, Executive Director
Adoption Nation Education Initiative
apertman@peoplepc.com
www.adoptionnation.com
617-332-8944 (work)

Credits: Adam Pertman