Couples Find Placement is often up to Biological Parents

Lawsuits prompt agencies to change lax practices

Adoptive parents who claim they have been victims of wrongful adoptions sue for damages, asserting their agency or attorney deceived them or withheld information about a child's or a birth parent's handicaps. Marianne Blair, a University of Oklahoma law professor who tracks adoption issues, says hundreds of such cases have gone to trial or been settled in the last decade. She says the problem used to center on domestic adoptions because secrecy pervaded the practice, so agencies and lawyers tended to provide as little information as possible.
Massachusetts was the venue for one major case. In August 1995, the Supreme Judicial Court unanimously upheld a jury award of $3.8 million to a Norton couple because the state in 1974 had not disclosed that their adoptive child was mentally retarded and the birth mother was a chronic schizophrenic.

Multimillion-dollar judgments, along with philosophical changes toward more openness, have led most adoption practitioners to accumulate as much information as possible for prospective parents. At the same time, adds Blair, wrongful adoption relating to foreign children ``definitely is becoming a burgeoning field.''

Fetal-alcohol syndrome appears to be the most prevalent issue for Eastern European children, but there are others.

In March 1991, using a Pennsylvania adoption agency, Gary and Joan Mancinelli of Wilmington, Del., brought home 2 1/2-year-old twins from Romania. They say they had been assured, repeatedly, that the girl was healthy and that the boy was a carrier of Hepatitis B, but could easily be treated.

Once home, however, their son was diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis B in a very active stage; doctors say his condition is degenerative and terminal. The Mancinellis are suing for $200,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages, plus attorney's fees.

Jerald and Rhea Lastick of Wayne, Pa., told their Maryland adoption agency they wanted a child without special needs, but would accept one with problems that could readily be corrected. They were matched with a boy listed as having serious ailments, but were assured it was ``standard procedure'' in Estonia to lie about children's conditions to fool the government into releasing them for adoption.

When they went to see their son in September 1995, the Lasticks learned he was not breathing at birth and had to be revived, had a brain hemorrhage, and consequently was paralyzed from the waist down. The Lasticks say they were promised they could halt the process once in Estonia, but were told after they arrived that the adoption had been finalized.

The couple hired an Estonian attorney, who went to court and had the adoption nullified on grounds of fraud. The couple is asking $200,000 in compensatory damages and an undisclosed sum in punitive damages, plus attorney's fees.

Experts say such stories are the exceptions, and most nations have responded to years of difficulties by implementing improvements. They say past deficiencies in Chinese procedures and facilities have been largely eliminated, for instance, and Bulgaria is in the process of revamping all its adoption regulations.

A more prevalent, exasperating issue for adoption professionals is the feeling among many white couples -- who make up the bulk of adoptive parents employing expensive lawyers and adoption agencies -- that they should get perfectly healthy, white babies. ``The expectation is that this child should come with a guarantee,'' says Elizabeth Quackenbush, who heads the Adoptions With Love agency in Newton. Though it seldom happens, adoptive parents are generally allowed to reject a child as too handicapped or otherwise problematic. Some do so if they get a baby of one gender but wanted the other. Agencies say covering the costs of care for birth mothers who change their minds, and to a lesser extent of adoptive couples who do, is one reason for their high charges.

Some attorneys and many agencies do offer sliding scales -- again subsidized by fees from parents who adopt healthy white infants -- based both on the applicants' income and on the type of child they wish to adopt. For instance, because there is less demand for black and mixed-race children by white couples, the cost of adopting them invariably is lower.

There are even a handful of agencies with internal guidelines on charging clients: the cost of adopting white baby girls is highest, followed by white baby boys, then Asian girls and so forth. This sort of pricing infuriates most adoption professionals, who question whether it flirts with racism and who say it too directly places a price tag on children's lives.

Money is a very touchy subject in all forms of adoption. Agencies especially bristle at the notion that they engage in baby-selling, insisting their charges are mainly for operating expenses, birth mothers' health care, and related services. ``I really wish we could, but I don't think any adoption agency can afford to waive its fees, because they only cover our costs,'' says Dawn Degenhardt, director of t he Maine Adoption Placement Service, which handles children from all over the world.

Detractors maintain the process is susceptible to abuse for two principal reasons: Practitioners are allowed to make a profit, so they may be tempted to cut corners or take legally dubious actions; and the emphasis is on finding children for parents who want them, rather than homes for kids who need them.

By all accounts, there is a surge of entrepreneurial interest in adoption, with new agencies, lawyers, and ``facilitators'' hanging out their shingles daily. And specialists who have been in the field for decades worry that many of these newcomers are more interested in cashing in than in helping people.

``There are real, often high costs involved in adoption,'' says Madelyn Freundlich, who heads the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. ``But the more I see money intertwined in it, the more concerned I become that the child is becoming a commodity and the industry is becoming less of what adoption should be.''

Freundlich and others worry that less-experienced people won't offer the counseling mothers and adoptive parents need. Moreover, experts fear businesses driven mainly by profit may fleece adoptive parents, bribe women to give up their children, or create an underground market.

Critics argue that social-service agencies and governments at every level should subsidize and support adoptions. They say that would not only minimize misconduct by paring financial incentives, but would open adoption to more people who don't make the $40,000 to $60,000 salaries that experts believe are needed to afford current fees.

``We have to persuade the public that the worth of a child is not dependent on age, race, gender, or the circumstances under which she was born, but of the intrinsic worth of that child,'' says Kenneth Watson, an adoption specialist and author who lives in West Virginia. ``Society should meet its obligation.'' Tomorrrow

An adoptee's request for medical information sparks a historic shift.

For more information, please contact:

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

© Adam Pertman