Marley’s most recent piece on the latest Nebraska mess is simply a must read. Once again, she’s said it all, and said it far better than I could:

MORE DETAILS EMERGE ON BOX BUTTE CASE; LAWMAKERS STILL DON’T GET IT

(Yup, this may be the shortest post in BLC history.)

Just a quick update to my July 22nd post, Nebraska- first baby dump after the fiasco and age down.

Marley has all the details in her useful post, MOTHER PANICKED, REGRETS “SAFE HAVEN:” 1ST POST-NEBRASKA FIASCO BABY GOING HOME.

Within 48 hours, both parents had come forward requesting the return of their child.

This portion in particular, pertains to the infant’s current custody arrangements:

On July 23, under a plan arranged by HHS, Butte Box County Judge Charles Plantz (left) granted legal custody to the agency while the parents undergo genetic testing and psychological assessment. Plantz made it clear in his order that HHS should proceed with its plan to place the baby with his biological mother while its investigation continues. The maternal grandmother is taking a leave of absence from her job to help care for the infant and his mother. The Star-Herald says the grandmother will move into the mother’s home, but the Herald-World says the mother will move into the grandmother’s home. The father will be allowed easy access to the infant.

According to court documents, Larry Miller, the baby’s court appointed guardian ad litem said, “NDHS believes this arrangement will provide safety for the baby.” Hospital officials filed an affidavit in which they said they believe it would be best for the mother and baby to be together so the mom could nurse and bond with him. (Note: court documents are not available to the public; information on them comes from news reports.)

Marley’s post covers many aspects of the dump scheme and points out some of the ways Nebraska is attempting to grapple with the genuine needs of these families in the aftermath of the older kid dumps.

She also brings forth a crucial point from her years of research:

In the nearly 10 years I’ve researched legalized dumping I have not found one single case where a parent or a family member who petitioned for return was denied.

and goes on to explain some of the potential reasons why:

I believe there are two reasons for this:

• Child welfare workers by in large do not like “safe haven” laws and except when thwarted by legal anonymity laws that binds their hands, hold a higher child welfare standard than do politicians and amateur do-gooders via counseling, education, and informed consent whether the final decision of the parent(s) be reunification, kinship care, temporary foster care, or adoption.

• The state fears if victims of “safe havening” are not returned, except for good cause, a parent or relative will seek legal redress. Since “safe haven” laws are already dancing on thin ice, the chance of overturning a law on constitutional grounds given the right circumstances in any state, is good. Not only would costly time-consuming litigation be necessary, but if the plaintiff were successful the entire law could be overturned, and adoption placements of safe havened children be vacated. If the case goes up the law ladder far enough, the entire Ponzi scheme could collapse throughout the country. Keeping families in tact post-dump, then, is simply utilitarian even if it is the right thing to do.

For more on the constitutional problems with “safe haven” read Erik L. Smith here and here.

In today’s post, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before; following in Bastardette‘s footsteps, I’m going to repost a “special guest blogger’s” work.

My partner, Mike Doughney was also in Philadelphia with me last week and naturally, has his own perspective on the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

He and I have been to adoption conferences and protests together down through the years, and he was also on the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizing committee for last year in New Orleans before we both resigned May 30th, 2008. (He had offered to help with website design and general logistics- rides, moving materials, helping get materials printed, editing, and a host of other odds and ends) for last year’s ARD. He is also a Bastard Nation lifetime member, although both of us made it clear from the outset, our work on last year’s ARD was as “independents” not in any capacity as being ‘with’ Bastard Nation.

He has done the the letter writing and sign holding, presentations at conferences and theorizing, etc. right alongside Bastards and in support of Bastards for more than a decade.

He approaches restoration of Original Birth Certificates adoption work from the perspective of a non-adopted person, yet someone deeply familiar with issues information access (and lack thereof) particularly as it relates to individuals and government. Additionally, he brings a wealth of knowledge about the motivations and tactics of those opposed to OBC access restoration.

When asked at conferences etc. what position in the “adoption pentagon” he occupies, his response tends to be “Sleeps with Bastard” (which was also the original name of his blog.) See his about page for a more general introduction.

In any case, I appreciated the fact that he took the time to sit down and write his perspective on all this, and wanted the broader community to have an opportunity to see what another former ARD committee member had to say about what he saw in Philly.

Originally posted to Mike’s personal blog July 28th:

When adopted people torpedo their own cause

In my last post I directed readers to my partner “Baby Love Child’s” blog, where there’s a rather lengthy, illustrated discussion of a so-called “adoptee rights demonstration” in Philadelphia last week. It’s hard to figure out where to start, since there is much I could comment on from the Sleeps with Bastard perspective. To clarify, I am Sabina’s/Baby Love Child’s partner and I provide some technical assistance with her blog. I’ll first start off with a suitably inflammatory title and these important notes:

1. If you go out on a public street and participate in a political “march” – better yet, an event in a public place that was promoted online and to the media and that even received press coverage prior to the event – others may take your picture and write about your event. They can even write about your event in ways you don’t like. They don’t need your permission or a release from you first, and the legal precedent for this is vast.
2. Traveling to such an event in a public place and watching it – and in fact, never at any point interacting with the event participants – doesn’t constitute “stalking.” Neither does taking pictures of the event and the people who were there and publishing them, particularly when the individuals in the photos are barely recognizable if at all, and in fact, aren’t even individually known to us. So don’t write to us and demand that we remove our pictures of your demonstration from our blogs. We now even have a form letter with which we’ll reject each of these nonsensical requests.
3. If you’re going to accuse people (us) of libel or slander (different legal terms meaning different things, though obviously those making those accusations can’t be bothered to know the differences), you’ll have to demonstrate that something that we wrote or said was actually false. Truth is generally an absolute defense against such claims. Just because statements made a year ago were deleted from various blogs and online forums doesn’t mean copies weren’t saved for later reference to establish what was written at the time. Those who are accusing us of libel and slander have yet to even express an understanding of what we have written, much less show any inaccuracies in our writing. We do, however, disagree strongly with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) organizers and we maintain that the ARD in its present form may have the ultimate effect of actively undermining the cause of obtaining open records for adoptees regardless of its organizers’ and participants’ intentions.
4. Having been completely vilified and attacked at the time for simply withdrawing our (Sabina/BLC and my) support for the ARD one year ago, and writing about that, we will not be considering any future participation in their event in any form. A number of commentators seem to think that some sort of positive engagement with ARD organizers by us is possible. It isn’t. For one example of why that was so, take a look at the comment thread on this July 2008 post from Bastardette’s blog. Commenter “joy” there and elsewhere, Joy Madsen, a current member of the ARD organizing coalition, wrote, “… there is no way we are touching them [Sabina, Marley Greiner, and Bastard Nation] with a 10 foot pole next year, we have learned our lesson. Next year… we are not letting them near us.”
5. For current examples of invective being thrown about by members of the ARD organizing coalition, take a look at this blog post by current committee member Jimm Mandenberg that contains this: “Baby Love-child? BLC? Gimme a break. More like Bitchy Little C*nt.” There’s also, of course, this lovely little blog post by coalition member and alleged “founder” Kali Coultas, who did in fact not bother to show up this year to see her stillborn creation, repeating more falsehoods alleging that there was an organized Bastard Nation campaign against their event (”… BN mocks the very people who would fight hard for them. They… will turn on you in a heartbeat if needed.”) In fact, BN, organizationally, has been silent about the ARD since withdrawing from the coalition over one year ago. Coultas further alleges that by simply operating a blog, or showing up on a Philadelphia street corner to watch, Sabina/BLC “has tried to sabotage the protest from the moment she was asked to leave the committee.” Sabina and I voluntarily resigned, after a number of irregularities and the attempted involvement of an adoption agency in last year’s event came to light, and were never asked to leave, as I discuss below.
6. ARD organizers and its “founder” falsely allege or imply that Sabina and Bastard Nation are conspiring together, by attributing commentary written by Sabina/BLC to Bastard Nation, or by claiming that Sabina was “sent” by BN, as in this by Joy Madsen: “… BN bailed, that was their choice. I mean obviously they are so busy with, with, with, well something I am sure. Not too busy to send nutter BabyCakes to stalk the protest. “ Our only relationship with Bastard Nation is as lifetime members. We do not set policy or otherwise direct the organization. Likewise, Sabina and I are independent and our writings reflect our opinions and not those of any other individuals or organizations.

That said, I’ll throw out a few more points that will perhaps clarify the rest of my comments. These come from a decade of being around activists who’ve worked on these matters in the field of restoring access to original birth certificates, with a track record of success and a great deal of knowledge of the history of these efforts.

1. You might, in fact, want your original birth certificate. That’s great. But if the visuals and words you’re providing to the media and the public are full of “I want my mommy” sorts of messages, when it’s time to deal with an actual bunch of legislators with the power to change the laws, don’t be surprised if they try, instead of the simple act of unsealing birth certificates, to “give you your mommy” by some other means. Namely, through the expansion of “mutual consent” registries with vetoes and the use of intermediaries, both of which insert other parties and institutions – in many cases, the same institutions that promote adoption and have an interest in keeping records sealed – between you and your birth certificate.
2. Likewise, emphasis on finding “my mommy” brings up a whole set of complicating details, that often involve the gross misuse, misunderstanding and outright abuse of the word, “privacy.” So every public discussion that drags in the slightest whiff of the stench of “I want my mommy” gets answered with some intentionally-created-out-of-thin-air obstruction like “We must respect your mommy’s ‘privacy’.” See “mutual-consent” registries, above.

Exhibit A for the above two points is the Philadelphia Inquirer article that accompanied this outright assault on the cause of adoptee rights orchestrated in the form of the so-called “Adoptee Rights Demonstration.” With a photo of a “demonstrator” carrying a sign saying “WHOSE MY MOMMA” – let’s hear it for the organizers who certainly went out of their way to check demonstrators’ signs for horribly stupid, humiliating spelling errors – the article is yet another litany of the manufactured objections to open records by the institutions who have the most to lose from open records, containing no articulation or response to those objections. It makes adoptees look like delusional children.

I understand that some ARD organizers are quite proud of that article. Perhaps they suffer from some problem with gross illiteracy or even simple understanding of what actually appeared in the newspaper; certainly the photo suggests that the ARD has some general difficulty dealing with the English language.

It’s not enough to see yourself reflected in a newspaper article. The rest of the article isn’t about you. It’s about maintaining the status quo of sealed birth certificates; today, much of the function of the press has become maintaining the status quo and ridiculing, mocking and making impotent those who advocate change. ARD, with its childish signs and messaging, fell right into their trap.

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As I wrote above in # 4 of the first list, Sabina, Bastard Nation, Marley Greiner, and others along with I were attacked and vilified for merely withdrawing our support of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” one year ago and speaking about it. That withdrawal and its aftermath set the stage for what is happening now.

There’s a fundamental difference between those who continued with these demonstrations and us, and that is that we want to see, and work toward, concrete progress toward open records.

Despite many claims that the ARD organizers likewise are working toward open records, as far as I can tell, the ARD organizers are instead solely focused on a (poorly funded and ineffective) presence and awareness raising at this particular yearly conference, hopefully, from their perspective in perpetuity, paid for by others in the community, and a(n attempt at a) street “demonstration” nearby. Neither can be shown to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of producing such progress. Neither has generated any progress over the past year since the first event in New Orleans. (We’ve asked if there is any evidence of progress as a result of ARD 2008. None has been forthcoming. It seems these questions are sidestepped by wild accusations of “slander” and “stalking” directed at us, perhaps because we merely raised this question.)

When the pointlessness of the event became evident to us last year, along with all other irregularities, we pulled out. I’d written on my blog how among other reasons, the active involvement of an adoption agency, which was fundraising by using the demonstration as some kind of marketing opportunity, without our knowledge and consent, and the close relationship between one of the organizers (Amy Burt, aka “Amy Adoptee”) and that agency, fundamentally made this something that I could not be involved with.

But I think there’s a kind of perfect storm here, which starts with a group of people who basically knows nothing about how government works and doesn’t care to learn. (Here’s one such example.) As is true of a lot of noise we see elsewhere, government seems to serve as a kind of sink for complaints that government cannot rectify. “I want my mommy,” clearly front and center among the “demonstrators,” is one such complaint, which is another part of this perfect storm; it’s the personal component. But that won’t get you an open birth certificate because the government can’t get you your mommy for you, nor can it get you your medical records.

The third part is the basic militant ignorance of members of the ARD coalition who, when faced with people who see what they’re doing and choose not to participate (and worse yet, clearly articulate why they refuse to participate), cast them out as outsiders, and lash out at them should they dare comment on their continuing actions which are potentially damaging to, generally, all activists everywhere and the cause of open records. Going to watch, to confirm that the event actually took place, and so that we can knowledgeably and accurately discuss their action, just gets us labeled as “stalkers,” since to them we are clearly already the enemy for simply refusing to participate in what we’ve come to believe is a destructive effort.

There was to have been a ”bastard boot camp,” an educational session that was to have been a core component of the New Orleans ARD event while Bastard Nation was involved with it. BN offered a preliminary educational effort, before people went out on the street or met with legislators, discussing the history of sealed records and open records activism, and what strategies, rhetoric and tactics have been effective in opening records in the states that BN has helped open.

Unfortunately, these plans were met with a clear, militant, outraged, contemptuous response from a subset of ARD organizers, many of whom remain today. They believed that they did not need, nor would they participate in, such an instructional session. It also became clear that we were dealing with a narcissistic bunch of uneducatable, incurious fools who would do whatever they were going to do without regard for how much damage they would do to the cause, both through their uncivil online behavior and their incapability of sticking to a rational focused message that would result in open records legislation instead of some alternative mess like the most recent round in California (to address “privacy”) or state mandated mediators or registries (as an alternate but ineffective method of finding one’s mommy while continuing to empower the adoption industry’s institutions.)

So as for the comments we’re seeing in various threads noting our non-participation and asking why we aren’t involved and actively engaging with the ARD organizers,we have done that, to no avail; this is why we cannot do that, they won’t let us do that, they’ve demonstrated since last year that they will take zero constructive input from us. Unfortunately, their actions, without the involvement of BN or any group of experienced activists who’ve historically worked around this issue, is making adoptee rights activism look ridiculous. That the ARD organizers don’t recognize that that’s what they’re doing, and call any criticism that points that out to them “slander,” makes clear that civil discussion with them is impossible.

---

The fact that ARD leaders completely avoid considering what messages they are sending becomes obvious when they complain that Sabina “attacked” a 13 year old for posting a YouTube video. In fact, if the 13 year olds among this group of adults are coming away from the event with a message, spread all over the net, that continues to infantilize adults as eternal children, incapable of self-defining as mature individuals and political actors – and that, if popularized, will undercut any future efforts to obtain open records – an objection must be raised. This is clearly the message that the next generation gets from ARD – and ARD organizers seem quite pleased with this result!

The creation of a video montage with pictures of adults, and labeling them “forgotten children,” only serves make all future political progress impossible. It plays into the widespread, pre-existing insistence that adoptees will be forever children, without the rights of adults, including the right to an unaltered birth certificate. That ARD organizers are incapable of seeing the problem of this message shows what the ARD has become: a group of narcissistic, blathering, clueless and ultimately ineffectual people, who cannot be bothered to understand that some messages that their participants (regardless of age) come away from the event with will completely undermine any progress toward their alleged goal of opening records. But of course, if the actual goal is completely inwardly focused on this group of individuals, their social interactions, their group’s self-perpetuation, and their issues that would better be handled in therapy rather than out on the street, then we’ll just be seeing more of this, and perhaps, no further progress toward open records for the next few lifetimes, were they to become the sole focus of adoptee activism.

Fortunately, there are viable and experienced alternatives.

Olga Lopez, Norma Cruz and Raquel Par, after receiving the news of the acceptance of the procedures for revocation.

(photo courtesy of Prensa Libre)

(Following up on my post, Guatemalan Mothers go on hunger strike, demand the return of their stolen children, from July 17th)

It has taken me several days to get this update up, but the result appears worth the wait.

On Saturday (July 25th), the ten day hunger strike in Guatemala staged by Sobrevivientes activist Norma Cruz and a number of Guatemalan mothers whose children had been stolen came to its conclusion.

The courts issued a finding admitting the invalidity of, and beginning the procedures for revocation of the adoptions of their their three daughters who had been kidnapped and placed for American adoptions back in 2006.

Norma Cruz, (also see here as but one of many profiles) co-founder and director of Sobrevivientes, is one of the recipients of the third annual US Secretary of State’s Award for International Women of Courage. Sobrevivientes (or “Survivor’s Foundation”, an NGO- click here for English translation, also see the blog, and English translation thereof)

Again, I’m going to primarily point readers toward the raw materials and English translations rather than attempt to characterize the materials. The post will be constructed of several parts:

• part I, excerpts from articles about the the hunger strike
• part II, some details on the arrests in connection to the kiddnappings
• part III, images and day by day reports from the newspapers about the hunger strike
• part IV, further details about the prosecution of Judge Mario Castañeda Fernando Peralta who enabled such adoptions
• part V, recent news articles pertaining to the broader context Guatemalan adoptions play out against and the situation of womyn in Guatemala
• part VI, adoption statistics from children imported from Guatemala to the United States 2002-2007 (Keeping in mind Guatemala has currently suspended international adoptions, previously, it was one of the highest volume “sending countries” to the U.S. market)

part I

From a piece in El periodico on the hunger strike, Saturday, July 25, 2009 – 6:46 hours
and (via Google translate, Spanish to English)

Lasted ten days on hunger strike undertaken by the association Sobrevivientes activist Norma Cruz. The result of the demonstration was positive. Yesterday the second trial, the Eighth and Tenth Ramo Civil admitted the invalidity of adoption proceedings brought before the judiciary in cases of three girls who were stolen in 2006.

A justice activist brings an open process for recovering stolen three girls, AFP 25/07/2009

and (via google translation, Spanish into English)

Cruz, president of the Survivors’ Foundation, from which helps women victims of domestic violence, or in this case, the system of impunity that prevails in it as this Central American country, began a hunger strike on 15 July, outside the Supreme Court (CSJ).

and

“The mothers of these girls have long suffered because the justice system does not work. It was worth far, we have managed to move the system. We achieved a positive resolution,” said Cruz, satisfied after being informed of the decision judicial.

Also participating in the hunger strike Olga Lopez, whose daughter, Arlene, was stolen on September 27, 2006 when he was barely six months old and Raquel Par Loyda Rodriguez, mother of Angely and Heidy, abducted in April and November of that year.

According to research conducted by the Survivor Foundation, girls stolen, given up for adoption so presumably illegal, now live with their adoptive families in different parts of the United States and respond to the names of Sindy Colwell, Karen and Kimberly Abigail Azucena.

The process of revocation would reverse adoptions by foster families, who must return to the minors to their biological mothers.

According to Cruz, this “could last many months and even years.”

and

In May last year, these three mothers, along with Ana Escobar, whose daughter had also been stolen, held a hunger strike outside the National Palace of Culture, who wanted to denounce the mafia engaged in these practices.

In July 2008, thanks to investigations of lawyers from the Survivor Foundation, Escobar retrieved her daughter Esther, stolen on March 26, 2006 and ready to be released for adoption abroad.

The National Civil Police (PNC) on Thursday arrested two persons who allegedly stole a pair of Rachel’s daughter, and Abner Cifuentes Telma Velasquez, who are under arrest warrant since May last year and now in custody for the crimes aggravated theft, abduction and trafficking.

In the coming days, the House of Amparo and the preliminary CSJ must decide whether, as requested by Cruz, he withdrew the immunity to a judge of the Family, Mario Fernando Peralta, who approved the anomalous form of adoptions of stolen children.

Peralta is accused of crimes of abuse of authority, breach of trust and breach of duties.

“It will be the first judge who brought the justice system for committing unlawful,” said Cruz.

As well as an older piece, Three mothers began a hunger strike to regain their stolen children in Guatemala,AFP – 15/07/2009

and (via Google translate, Spanish into English)

part II

Foto Prensa Libre: Esbin by García

More on the two arrested

Thelma Virginia Velásquez Revolorio, 53 and Ludwing Cifuentes Abner Peralta, 34

Young remains in custody and linked to the process by stealing girl 17:10, 23/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

Aggrieved identify suspected stolen children 9:50 25/07/2009

and (via Google translate, Spanish into English)

part III

The hunger strike begins

Activist Norma Cruz began a hunger strike to get three girls, 11:39, 15/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

photo courtesy of Prensa Libre

Day 2

Mothers call for justice, 14:13, 15/07/2009

and via Gooogle translate, Spanish into English

(also see related video in the upper right hand corner)

Day 4

Norma Cruz takes four days fasting, 14:14, 18/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

Day 6

Activist Norma Cruz meets with president of the Supreme Court, 20:24, 20/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

Day 7

Norma Cruz said feel weak, but resist until justice, 19:14, 21/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

Day 8, Foto Prensa Libre: Daniel Herrera

Day 8

Norma Cruz urged judges to dismiss hunger strike, 18:52, 22/07/2009

and, via Google translate, English into Spanish

Day 10- strike ends

Norma Cruz arrives at the tenth day of hunger strike, 10:22, 24/07/2009

and via Google translate, English to Spanish

Norma Cruz ends hunger strike, 14:10, 24/07/2009

and via Google Translate, Spanish into English

Norma Cruz ends hunger strike by anomalous cases of adoptions, 15:50, 24/07/2009

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

part IV

Here is another piece about the prosecution of the Judge, Mario Castañeda Fernando Peralta

MP seeks preliminary against Judge Escuintla for several offenses, July 14, 2009 – 7:09 hours

and via Google translate, Spanish into English

“There is evidence to show that Mario Castañeda Fernando Peralta committed the crime of human trafficking, abuse of authority, dereliction of duty and prevarication,” said Rony Lopez prosecutor against organized crime.

The official referred to two cases: that of Karen girls Abigail López García, given up for adoption on December 10, 2008 to a family and that of Naomi Yahaira Muyus, both stolen from their biological mothers. The latter investigates the whereabouts and the date it was given to another family. It is assumed that the real name of the former is Aniely Hernandez, daughter of Loyda Rodriguez.

However there are at least 20 more cases that are investigated.Thus the section called yesterday to the Administrative Center for Management of Criminal Judiciary (OJ), which started a process against the preliminary judging. According to the MP, there are documents which indicate that Peralta Castañeda is involved in a network used for the trafficking of children.

part V

A Couple recent pieces pertaining to the context Guatemalan womyn live (and die) in

• The BBC’s “This World:Killer’s Paradise” from 2006 (also see video extract)
• Norma Cruz Fights to End the Killing of Guatemalan Women 06 March 2009

Speaking of Cruz’s Survivors Foundation, particularly as it pertains to illegal adoptions

…The NGO runs a victims’ shelter – one of only a handful in the country – and also fights to protect mothers whose babies are stolen as the first link in an illegal and lucrative supply chain for international adoptions.

(emphasis added)

• Round death round, 27/07/2009 and via Google translate, Spanish into English

part VI

Finally, the (dripping with adoption marketing) Adoptive Families Magazine provides the INS Immigration Statistics on Guatemalan children adopted in the U.S. while Guatemala was still open to American adopters. Note the gold rush mentality ramp up just prior to the May 2008 suspension:

Number of Adoptions from Guatemala:
2007: 4,728
2006: 4,135
2005: 3,783
2004: 3,252
2003: 2,328
2002: 2,219

All of this set against the broader backdrop of Guatemalan women increasingly being murdered and left in the streets.

David Joles, Star Tribune August 2008

I began compiling notes to do a post last week about the sentencing and conclusion of the attempted murder trial of 61 year old defendant Sylvia Sieferman. It has taken me a bit of time to get my ducks in a row, so while this is slightly belated, it’s still deeply important, particularly in light of the broader questions (far beyond that of sentencing Sieferman) of how these events were enabled to unfold.

In August 2008 Sieferman went on a bloody rampage, wielding first a knife, then an axe trying to murder her two adopteed Chinese daughers, (now named) Hannah and Linnea.

The attack was concluded by Hannah’s escape to a neighbor’s home who called the police, Sieferman’s own attempted suicide, and a note left in the bedroom saying among other things “sorry, I can’t deal with them anymore.”

Linnea had her throat slashed and multiple stab wounds.

Hannah, after first seeing her sister attacked, was then also attacked with a knife, and struck at least five times by an axe. In the course of the attack she ran downstairs to a bathroom, but neglected to lock the door. Sieferman found her and Hannah suffered further attempts to stab her in the neck and in the heart.

Incredibly, she defended herself by grabbing the blade, causing severe lacerations on her hand. Somehow she was able to escape and made it to a neighbor’s house to call for help.

When police arrived at the house,

The 60-year-old woman, sitting cross-legged in front of her house in this St. Paul suburb, was bleeding profusely from her neck.

Inside the house, the horror continued: Blood was everywhere, and the woman’s 11-year-old daughter was lying unresponsive on her bedroom floor in a pool of blood. Her throat had been cut. And at a neighbor’s house, the woman’s other 11-year-old daughter was also bleeding – from knife and ax wounds.

“Kill me! Kill me!” the woman yelled as police approached her, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Ramsey County District Court.

The girls barely surived.

Linnea Sieferman suffered life-threatening injuries and was in critical condition at Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul.

and

Hannah was in good condition at Gillette Children’s Hospital, where she was being treated for head trauma, a fractured skull and severe lacerations to her hand.

Here is a Star Tribune piece filed at the time, back in August almost a year ago.

Sieferman’s excuse for the vicious attack? (also see video connected to the piece,)

When Sieferman entered her plea, she told the court she planned to kill the girls because she feared they would be placed in foster care and raised by strangers.

Ironic, in that at the time she adopted the girls Sieferman, herself an American “stranger” became a single mother (adopting Hannah at age 53.)

This twisted form of rationalization is all too familiar to those who work in the domestic violence field or adoptionland: family members who decide “their” families are better off dead than beyond their reach.

As part of her adoption process Sieferman blogged about the adoptions, though the blog has since been taken down.

Neighbors said Sieferman is a single mother who adopted the girls from China. Her online blog identifies the girls as Hannah, adopted in 1999, and Linnea, adopted in 2003.

The blog contains Sieferman’s account of her longheld desire to adopt daughters from overseas and her joy upon meeting them and watching them grow.

Quotes from the blog can still be found online such as this one, describing the final post dated 2005,

“I suppose my adoption journey really started 25 years ago, when I used to dream of adopting an Asian girl someday,” Sieferman wrote. After reading an article on the subject, “(I) started off to explore exactly what would prevent me, then nearly 50 and single, from becoming a mom.”

But this attack did not come out of the blue, Sieferman had told medical personnel she feared harming the girls,

Sylvia Sieferman was hospitalized two months ago after fearing she might hurt herself or her daughters, former neighbor Carrie Micko told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

Micko said she didn’t understand how Sieferman could be released and the girls go back into the home, apparently without any follow-up. “Somebody should have gotten the clue that unless the circumstances at home changed those kids should not have gone back into the house,” she told the newspaper.

Roseville police Capt. Rick Mathwig said that in this case, rules involving patient confidentiality would have likely prevented police from knowing if there had been trouble in the home.

“Bad Mom,”

During the assault, Sylvia Sieferman said “I’m a bad mom” and “I had to do this,” according to her daughter’s account of the assault.

Clearly her self image and self doubts as a(n adoptive) Mother played an important role in the attack.

At least one neighbor was aware of the concerns,

A former neighbor, Carrie Micko, said Sieferman was severely depressed and worried about the safety of the girls.

Micko, in fact, was the one who took her to the hospital,

In the six and half years between when she adopted Hannah and now, Micko said many things changed. She said one of Sieferman’s homes was in foreclosure and she’d lost several jobs.

About two months ago, Micko took Sieferman to the hospital. Sieferman had been making comments that she wanted to hurt herself and her children.

“Her children were everything to her. Her whole life was about her kids,” she said. “And after a series of financial mishaps, she just couldn’t see her way through. She was under extreme financial, emotional and spiritual distress and didn’t want to fail them. She couldn’t bear to have them see her fail.”

Micko said Sieferman left the hospital after three days because she had some job interviews lined up. Sieferman also feared the county might take her children away. Micko said she tried to talk to the social workers and hospital personnel but couldn’t get through because she wasn’t family.

Fear of failure and adopter expectations, and appearing to fail against the societal standard of parents appear to have played an important role.

From further down in the story, we learn,

Neighbors said Sieferman had foreclosed on a home and was having legal problems.

and

“It didn’t have to happen. She was very clear about her intentions and told them and I think that was her way of saying help me, that the children,” Micko said. “They didn’t respond the way she was hoping or I was hoping.”

According to the Mental Health Association of Minnesota, doctors could have involuntarily committed Sieferman for six months. Generally, though, they prefer friends or families members to encourage them to stay voluntarily.

Tom Johnson, a client advocate with the Mental Health Association, wouldn’t talk specifically about Sieferman’s case, but said ones like hers are difficult.

“It can be an easy process if it’s very clear the person is a danger to herself or others,” he said. “It’s not quite as easy is someone has said outside ‘I’m going to do something to myself’ but then they come in to the hospital and the doctor sees them and the person says ‘I wasn’t really serious about that.'”

Ironically, Minneapolis IS one of the places in the county that is set up to provide a sort of “time out” by way of emergency child care, though it is unclear whether Sieferman was aware of the program at the time. Clearly fear of losing the girls is part of what led to her decision to leave the mental health services.

Micko said a group of neighbors stepped into the watch Hannah and Linnea when Sieferman was in the hospital. She also when social workers mentioned protective custody to Sieferman, she wanted to leave the hospital.

Molly Kenney, interim program director for the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, said her organization is there to help families like the Siefermans. Families in need of help can call the nursery for advice or a safe place for kids to stay. Children can stay there for three nights at no cost to give parents a break. Kenney said it helps to prevent violence.

“The point is they have to call us and that reaching out for help is the first point of entry we see as a sign of strength,” she said. “They want what’s best for their kids.”

The Crisis Nursery parent hotline is open 24 hours a day. Each county in Minnesota also has a 24 hours crisis hotline.

Hennepin (Children): 612-348-2233
Hennepin (Adult): 612-379-6363
Washington: 651-777-5222
Anoka: 1-888-422-6522
Dakota: 952-891-7171
Carver: 952-442-7601
Ramsey (Adult): 651-266-7900
Ramsey (Children): 651-774-7000

Still, in light of the fact that she Sieferman was explicit about being a potential threat to the girls, where was the follow up? Why was she simply allowed to return home to them?

The lack of follow up, and unwillingness to step in to protect the girls was a direct factor that led to the horror that ensued.

Thus this is not merely a matter of Sylvia Sieferman failing these girls in one of the worst ways imaginable, it is ALSO a failure of the system itself.

Where is the investigation of ultimately whose job it was to ensure that a woman who had threatened her adopted kids lives wasn’t just left alone with them to do with as she pleased?

Apparently with Sieferman now sentenced there appears to be a growing consensus that everything has been taken care of and it was all merely an individual problem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ignoring the systemic failures only ensures the same mistakes will be repeated.

By and large I’ve been unable to find the direct voices of the girls speaking for themselves, though I did find this one small paragraph

When police arrived Hannah told them her mother “attacked me and my sister with a knife. My sister should be dead.” She said that during the assault her mother said, “I’m a bad mom, I had to do this.”

Police at the scene discribed it thusly

“This townhome has five levels to it and when I went in there and looked, there was blood on at least three levels. Pools, splatters and things like that. It’s a horrible, horrible thing to look at,” said Captain Rick Mathwig of the Roseville Police Department.

Sieferman…

…was sentenced in Ramsey County District Court to 16 years and six months for one second-degree attempted murder charge, and 12 years and 7 1/2 months for the other charge. She will serve at least two-thirds of that time for each concurrent sentence.

Sieferman pleaded guilty in May to spare her daughters the trauma of trial, her attorney, Paul Rogosheske, said. She initially faced a first-degree attempted murder charge.

While you might think there would be massive media coverage, or international coverage, most of what you” find online treats it as a mere local story.

What coverage there has been has often tied it to the larger story of the American financial meltdown (see this piece as well,) rather than understanding it in the context of the nuances of adoption and expectations specific to adoption marketing like giving a child “a better life” so often create. (As better life” so often translates directly to children coming from economic dire circumstances to wealthy western adopters.)

The girls are recovering from their many injuries and are now living with a family member (of their adoptive mother.)

A fund has been set up to help them go forward with their lives.

HOW TO HELP HANNAH AND LINNEA

A trust fund has been set up for Sylvia Sieferman’s former adopted daughters. Donors can contribute at any Wells Fargo branch, or they can mail donations to Sieferman’s civil attorney, Cynthia Stange, at 1970 Oakcrest Ave., Suite 217, Roseville, MN 55113, payable to the Hannah & Linnea Sieferman Trust.

Much as I wish that was all there was to the story, naturally it isn’t. Because in the midst of it all a quack pseudo-therapy “attachment disorder” self promoter has decided the brutal attacks could make a useful career stepping stone.

A Search for Survivors has a comprehensive overview of the case and then reports on Heather Forbes’ efforts to utilize the attempted murders to gain media personal appearances in this piece,

Attachment Therapist Heather Forbes tries to twist the repeated stabbings of adopted children Hannah & Linnea Sieferman into personal publicity campaign

Far beyond mere ‘ambulance chasers’, people like Heather Forbes view every blood spattered townhouse as an opportunity.

Attachquacks of course, don’t blame the Adoptive Mother, they don’t blame the system, nope, they blame the adoptees themselves, (quoting the ASFS post,)

Never mind the fact that Hannah and Linnea Sieferman were clearly intelligent, sweet children. Never mind the fact that their adoptive mother had serious mental problems, to the point where she was willingly checked into a hospital to prevent her from hurting herself and others.

No, to Heather Forbes and the rest of the RAD cultists, the fault lies with the children, never the parent. By virtue of being adopted, children are automatically written off as traumatized, disabled, inferior and ultimately the catalyst for any tragedy, no matter how undeserved or utterly indefensible.

It’s taken me up until opening day, but of course, I’ve got something to say about Orphan, just not what you might expect.

I actually wasn’t planning on blogging about it, but in light of some of the lunacy campaigning surrounding the movie, I figured another Bastard voice tossed into the fray might not be the worst thing.

So my two cents, in seven acts, since so many have asked.

(And just to get it out of the way upfront: yup, pigtails, not unlike a certain blogger you might know… .)

ACT I

Yeah fine, movie.

Get OVER it already.

Plenty of people out there hear the word, “Orphan” or read about the upcoming flick, and assume this somehow is some kind of reflection on them, their industry, their christian evangelism efforts, their adopted kids, or whatever.

It has become nothing less than a sick form of ultimate adoptionland Rorschach test, with plenty of people (many of whom are not adoptees themselves) taking offense.

Seems what any one given person sees in the poster has far more to do with who THEY are than the product itself.

All of adoptionland sees what it wants in it.

And lots of people are in for a bit of a surprise by that measure.

But how do you sit these people down and say “you know, your narcissism aside, for once, it’s not all about you” is just a losing game.

Particularly when there’s cash and media to be gained by their course of action.

Look, I’m a Bastard, an ‘orphan’ if you must, and in all honesty, I could give a rat’s ass.

The squeeky wheels of adoptionland have panicked over Orphan, convinced it will destroy adoption.

Meanwhile, idiot adoptees are running around wanting “Orphan” T-shirts and “adopting” the film’s protagonist, “Esther” as some kind of adoptee heroine, convinced her “evil deeds” all stem from adoptee lack of access to our original birth certificates.

Far as I’m concerned, these two polar extremes deserve one another, both factions are completely nuts.

No, the arrival of “Esther” on the scene does not mean no one will ever adopt again, and that worldwide, unwanted (and now supposedly feared due to a movie) children will be stacked up like so many Tribbles.

That’s the lie at the heart of the Anti-Orphan whiner’s rant, that supply will outweigh demand if the movie goes forward.

This in a land where demand (for a certain kind of a adoptee that is) outstripped supply a LONG time back.

Nor is she any kind of Bastard superhero.

Those “adopting” her as one of us are equally, collectively, off their rockers.

As I said, all these folks, deeply invested in their own projections as they are, are in for a bit of a surprise come tonight.

The various pro-adoption factions, from secular left, to evangelical right have all found a fundraising friend in Orphan. Question is, of course, has the studio found a friend in them to help its marketing efforts? Who’s using whom, and does it even matter at this point?

ACT II

Then there’s the whole hoopla over the “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own” line. The whiners whined, the studio pulled it. Now the whiners want pro-adoption materials included in the DVD sales, adoption cross marketing tie ins at theaters etc.

Me? I think removing the line was cowardly.

Further, I think the line, spoken by Ester the Orphan actually does strike at a certain Bastard truth:

Not only IS it hard to love a Bastard as your own, I personally feel it SHOULD be.

Huh?

Yeah, you heard me, right.

Adoption takes an extraordinary effort of extraordinary people. It is not and should not be, and should not be marketed as easy.

Adoption is a special circumstance. It is not ‘just like everyone else’ and there are aspects of it that are absolutely difficult.

Glossing over those, failing to acknowledge them, and otherwise sweeping them under the rug tries to drive any encountered ‘bumps’ under the rug as well, morphing them into mere personal problems, rather than acknowledging that those adopting and adopted face certain situations that non-adopted people and non-adoptive parents do not. We do so as classes of people, not only as individuals.

It is hard to love an adopted child as much as one’s own, it should be, and yes, it should take the extra effort.

Adoption and its aftermath for the people affected, takes work.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, who says it’s all easy and rainbows and pink candy cotton fluff is the real problem here, not a line in a movie that for all of about one second managed to speak a Bastard truth.

But not to fear, it’s been cut.

ACT III

In this post at least I’m not going to go into the particulars of the various Anti-Orphan factions nor the pro-Orphan folks.

Marley/Bastardette has been tracking some of the Anti-Orphan lunacy though, and I’d advise exploring her coverage to date,

“ORPHAN,” ESTHER, AND US: ADOPTION MUCKETY-MUCKS LOOK STUPID AGAIN

ADOPTION MUCKETY-MUCKS CONTINUE TO ACT STUPID OVER “ORPHAN”

ORPHAN: THE ADOPTION INDUSTRY AND BELTWAY WINGNUTS SQUEAK THE WHEEL

ACT IV

See the thing is, whining is cheap and easy.

If some of these nuts were at all serious, they’d be doing a bit more than mere webpage creation or whining at any microphone they can worm their way in front of.

Take the example of Queer Nation. As some of you might remember, when the Bisexual Bashing and rape glamorizing film “Basic Instinct” came out in the early 90’s, Queer Nation launched its nationwide “Basically, It Stinks!” campaign, complete with plot spoiling “Catherine Did It!” materials.

The Queer Nation focus on Basic Instinct (BI) was always about far more than just a single movie, it was a teaching example that QN focused upon as part of its broader agenda of exposing Hollywood’s ongoing pattern of homophobia.

Queer Nationals out in California got a hold of the script and production schedule and repeatedly disrupted.

Among the more creative actions was showing up with American Flags and “honk if you support our troops” or “honk for the 49ers!” as the film crew attempted to work in San Francisco.

From the start, a media campaign was launched criticizing Hollywood’s portrayals of Queers.

When the movie was finally released, QN members descended on theaters with flyers doing educational campaigns, using lines from the movie’s script to pull the rape scene out into the light of day, allowing people to evaluate it outside experience of the film.

There were attempts to gum up theater ticketing lines at single screen theaters running the film by attempting to buy movie tickets with (Queer as a) three dollar bills featuring famous Queers. While no tickets could be purchased with such, the amount of time wasted on dealing with activists ensured patrons missed start times, and cut into theater profits.

Theater goers often had to pass through picket lines and chants of “Catherine did it,” “Basically, it stinks!” or “We’re here, we’re groovy, we wanna see our REAL Queer lives in the movies.”

Domestic Violence and anti-rape materials or even a booth were set up, using the film as an educational activity. Cars in theater parking lots were flyered, stickers were made. At least one theater was treated to dead fish in its heating and cooling system, making the “Basically it stinks!” quite viceral.

Come the Oscars, Queer Nationals enacted a massive plan on many fronts and managed to get inside and disrupt, creating a rare unscripted few moments of national television.

All of which is to say, if you’re going to take on Hollywood, go big or go home. Don’t whine on webpages and attempt to fill column inches in the remaining dead tree print media.

But then again, as I said, sometimes, everything you’re whining about might just turn out to not be all about you at all.

Besides, unlike Queers fighting against their own appropriated images being utilized by Hollywood and thus working on their own behalf, many of those whining about Orphan are most certainly not Orphans themselves.

Some are members of the adoption industry, others have built their ministries on the backs of those ever useful orphans, and still others are academics, some are those desiring adoption normalization (both adoption as “normal” and THEIR adoptions as “normal”, not distinct from other forms of childraising,) and an (often overlapping) subset are adopters. But in their noisemaking ‘on behalf of’ orphans, they ultimately tend to appropriate our voices.

Real orphans and adoptees have no uniform position on the film.

So, no I may be a Bastard, but won’t be mounting an all hands on deck campaign to ‘do something’ about something as irrelevant as Orphan.

To do so would mean mounting a full scale campaign against Bastard and adoptee depictions in media, and once you take that on, you can pretty much start with Disney and work from now until forever.

Which, not surprisingly is precisely what some of these same whiners have done, a bit more scattershot perhaps, but from Stuart Little on to the Esthers of this world, some of these groups have come to realize that being upset on our behalf can fill one’s organizational coffers.

ACT V

This current noisefest in adoptionland is little more than providing one hell of a distraction from real things happening in adoption, like women in Guatemala on a hunger strike, trying to regain their children stolen for American adoptions.

ACT VI

Are there genuine reasons to critique the damn film? Sure, and they’re plenty ‘horrific’ all on their own.

To name but a few (Quotes are taken from the PDF online production notes) :

Adoption as fix all and replacement

How about the idea of the adoptee as replacement child for a miscarriage (that over and over again is labeled an “unborn child,” (propagandistic language like that alone is enough to lose my horror film dollars.)

…Kate, a wife and mother and recovering alcoholic who recently endured a stillbirth in her third trimester. “She has a gaping hole in her womb and in her heart,” …

Clearly Kate is a model potential adoptive parent.

“She lost a child in childbirth. She’s an alcoholic, and she almost lost another one of her children because of it. She’s tortured.

Sounds like Kate’s relationship with her husband, John is no winner either.

“At its core, this is a family that was broken. Kate has extreme guilt over Max’s accident, the drinking, and even the stillbirth. Despite trying to get past all of that, John’s still not sure he can trust her, and even blames himself.”

The notion of adoptees as family fixes, and interchangeable replacements and how normalized such has become culturally here in the US is plenty scary.

The idea of bringing home a new adoptee to “heal” a marriage, is likewise, a disaster waiting to happen. The two in combination, though is pretty much precisely the kind of profile that should, at least until these crises are past precluded gaining a child. But no, both in the movies and real life, getting a hold of a kid is easier than it perhaps has any business being.

Referring to the stillbirth (here propagandistically referred to as a “child”) classic ‘transference’ language is used, take all that love for your wished for child and heap it on an adoptee.

…she’s trying to persevere and to heal her marriage and her family. Her choice to adopt is an act of kindness. She needs to do something with all the love that she had in her heart for that child…to give it to somebody in need.

Do tell, what kind of homestudy is that?

‘We’re grieving like there’s no tomorrow, and our marriage is on the rocks, oh and I almost let my other kid die, but give us a new kid, it’ll make everything all better… .’

Hmmmm, how about instead, you first work through your grief and pull yourselves together before you even begin to consider taking on some other kid. A kid who will need to be approached on their own terms, who has their own needs, and is a person in their own right, not an interchangeable cog in a machine.

But no, rather than telling such potential adopters ‘now might not be the time, you have some work to do first’, seems there are plenty of folks willing to find them a kid, the proverbial ‘Oh, that one didn’t work out? No problem, we’ll just get you another.’

Yeah, adoptees as replacements, or as a therapeutic means for adults to work out their own shit and family dramas? Yup, that’s pretty scary alright.

But rather than focusing on the everyday horror that is replacement child procurement, the act of getting an adoptee replacement is viewed as ‘good’, it’s just the details of which one they selected that makes things ‘bad.’ Had they chosen some other kid instead of Esther, we’d have a Hallmark or Lifetime channel movie instead.

Added bonus? One of the kids almost died while under the mother’s care.

Kate, still healing from her loss, is a recovering alcoholic, and her drinking has led to near-tragedy in the past when their daughter Max nearly drowned on her watch. John continues to fight the urge to blame his wife for what might have happened. The fractures in their relationship run deep, making them vulnerable and giving Esther an opportunity.

Yup this is precisely who were I a social worker (or nun) I would want to entrust a troubled child to.

The whole Russian adoptee crap

Or how about the idea of psychopath dangerous murderous Esther as a Russian adoptee?

Because Esther is supposed to be of Russian descent, and because the character Max uses sign language to communicate, Fuhrman was also busy behind the scenes learning both sign language and an accent for the role. “It was a lot of fun learning sign language,” she says. “And I liked the accent because having a different voice changed me a bit and helped me become the character.”

Right down to the costuming.

“Esther’s silhouette is what makes her Esther—her ribbons, the traditional sort of Russian dresses that she had.

In the real world, it’s American adoptive parents murdering their Russian adoptees at a rather remarkable rate, not murderous Russian adoptees going after their American adoptive families.

Americans have certain ‘built in’ feelings about Russians, yet one has to wonder, how would the same story play were the adoptee Ethiopian?

Biological determinism and Essentialism

Or the way the film has written both womyn and children from an ‘essentialist nature’ or biological determinism viewpoint; that womyn are ‘natural nuturers’ laden with maternal instinct, for whom family comes first willing to dump their careers overboard, forsaking such to raise children, that the Mother is “fighting for her family” etc.

Kate is also a gifted pianist. We learn she had a career teaching at a prestigious music school, and she gave that up to raise a family. But her son couldn’t care less about music and her daughter is profoundly deaf and can’t hear it. However, the biggest impact on her was the loss of a child, followed by Max’s terrible accident, a near-drowning she could have prevented had she not been drinking.

She becomes a womyn defined purely by her act of motherhood, or lack thereof.

In addition to the thriller aspects of the film, Killoran was also drawn to the mother-child relationships at the heart of the story. “I think Kate is a wonderful portrayal of a woman trying desperately to do right by her children, whether biological or adopted. She just wants the best for them.”

and

“There’s just something really primal in that mother-child relationship,” says Johnson, “so I felt like that was really the best relationship to exploit and corrupt; to take what should be the most natural bond in the world and turn them into enemies. And I gave the mother a troubled background so that when she starts saying there’s something wrong with Esther, everyone has reason to doubt her because she’s not the most reliable person.”

The biological children, particularly the daughter character are portrayed as everything Esther is not, genuinely innocent and good.

Sign language was necessary because Kate and John’s younger daughter, Max, is deaf. The filmmakers cast first-time actress Aryana Engineer, just six years old, in the part. “Aryana was really special,” offers Collet-Serra. “She was so innocent and so full of life. In one sense, this movie is about protecting this young girl’s innocence, so that really needed to come through.”

Then there’s Esther the Orphan herself, who, looking so young, obviously must, by her very nature be considered “innocent,” “angelic” even, because that’s what children ARE. Except of course, in every sense of the word, she isn’t.

Downey notes, “The character of Esther starts off one way—you have to believe that she’s this sweet, angelic girl, who’s had a bit of a difficult past, but is excited to be part of this new family. Then you realize, no, she’s pretty evil, and she has intentions. And then you go deeper into why she has those intentions.

Likewise, much of the focus on Ether is the constructed tension between “childhood innocence” and the evil child, who has infiltrated that most sacred of institutions, the family home.

In a film, when you have an evil kid who does evil things, you start small and more subtly than you might expect in a horror movie. Little things start happening, and before you realize it you have an enemy inside the house, this little girl manipulating the situation.

The Essentialist “Nature” of Orphans in Hollywood and Bastard as intruder from within

Then there is the essentialist Hollywood portrayal of orphans themselves, starting with “The Bad Seed.”

The Orphan is portrayed as potential snoop, or as potentially being where they don’t belong, always around the corner, listening.

But the Coleman house was almost to scale, and also an open design with different angles and walls built for specific psychological purposes, or to hide some of the violence taking place. “We wanted a house that was open in order to get the sense that Esther could always be around the corner listening.” Jeff Cutter, the director of photography, lit the house with the same intention. “Jeff created pools of light so there was never a sense that you were able to see who was in the room; Esther could be there and the others not know it,” says Collet-Serra.

Thus they intend she be transformed into a pervasive presence, a presence that makes those around her not even safe in their own homes. She becomes “the enemy on the inside.”

“Tension and fear go hand-in-hand,” says director Jaume Collet-Serra. “The horror aspect comes in with the brutal violence the family and others face in fighting this little girl, this enemy on the inside.

and

Producer Susan Downey states, “We were definitely trying to tap into a primal fear that people have about what they allow into their homes, or into their lives. And I think with the best intentions Kate and John open their home to Esther, and they get completely undermined by this girl. That’s something that I think will get to people, that hopefully will create fear in viewers. But I think also that the mistakes these characters have made in their past come back to haunt them because they allow this girl to get in there and find out their darkest secrets.

The plot centers around the notion of a child’s essential nature as that of innocence, movie villans such as Esther, then are made ‘horrific’ in their violation of such notions of essentialism.

“I think a villain like this is interesting to watch,” states producer Joel Silver. “You wouldn’t want to see her in the real world, but it’s fun to see her in a movie. She’s a psychopath in the shape of a little girl who will stop at nothing.”

Stylistically they wanted “innocent” yet “rotten to the core.”

“Things that look okay, things that look completely, excruciatingly normal, are normally things to stay away from,” warns actor Peter Sarsgaard. “Even the way Esther looks—she looks like this neat, clean, perfect little girl—but of course she’s rotten to the core.”

Much as the filmmakers love to insist they’re doing something new, the heart of the matter is that it’s been done before in endless variation. Stories about orphans and those adopted, relying upon secrets and lies to provide essential plot twists are an all too familiar story. While I can appreciate the screenwriter’s love of the genre starting with “The Bad Seed” that hardly means such ‘twists’ are all that special.

Working from a story by Appian Way’s Alex Mace, screenwriter David Leslie Johnson wrote the script. “David’s screenplay delivered,” attests Silver. “He really made the story and the characters come to life.” For Johnson, it was a labor of love. “I’ve loved the genre ever since I saw ‘The Bad Seed,’” he notes. “It’s one of my favorite horror sub-genres—the evil child. There’s something very visceral to it. Viewers have a strong reaction, whether it’s a child being corrupted by the devil, or whether it’s just a bad kid…we’re very knee-jerk in our reaction to it. And I didn’t want to do it in a way that it had been done before. I wanted to find a new way into it, to bring a new angle to the subject matter. I came up with the twist at the end, the secret, and sort of worked backward from there.”

Bastard lives would be useless to storytellers were it not for our built in secrets.

And everybody has a secret— Kate has secrets in her past, John has secrets in his. Even Max is being forced to keep secrets. Of course, Esther has the biggest secret of all.”

Some of us would prefer to see real Bastard lives without secrets up on the big screen, but then what would be the draw? An orphan with no hidden twist? Why make such a film. Where’s the commerical appeal?

ACT VII

But my most stinging criticism of Orphan?

I grew up in the 70’s and ’80’s. I know a good horror film when I see one.

I also know a BAD one when I see one, if it’s bad enough, I’ll pop some popcorn and settle in!

From late night double chiller theater with Fritz the Nightowl, to festivals at the Drexel, to the local drive ins, I got my fair share of horror flix both good and bad.

But those in the mushy middle? Regardless of budget if the storytelling and plot devices relegate it to a predictable average, it’s forgettable at best.

House of Wax, (also directed by Jaume Collet-Serra) didn’t suck quite as much as most of the recent crop, it had moments that hearkened back to some of the classics, but the Golden and the Silver ages of horror are unfortunately behind us now.

Orphan, far from “showing us something new” built on the frame of the Bad Seed genre, instead gives us more of the same; a “bastard” doing the see-saw act between “angelic” and “evil,” a broken mother turning to her maternal instincts and fighting for her family against an intruder, a husband who finds his wife untrustworthy, and two biological children, the boy who questions the presence of the adoptee and a girl whose “innocence” must be protected, all set against a snowstorm.

Kick in a nun, a spooky orphanage and a good biblical name like Esther and we’re off to the races.

Far from taking the genre and challenging assumptions, or pushing boundaries, audiences will instead be given yet another helping of gender and role stereotypes. Constructs of family and home are front and center in ways that again, do not challenge the dominant paradigm.

All of which is tethered to hypernatalist notions such as the miscarriage now reframed into a missing “child” in the family whose absent space must be filled (by an adoptee) and guess what? Now you have a recipe for a movie that floats along on the tide of what Americans already think about themselves and what they already want.

These bedrock assumptions are all around us in the everyday, from what roles and expectations are for womyn on into our adoption international foreign policy.

The best horror films rely on more than a mere ‘twist,’ they challenge audiences assumptions, about who they are, about what is possible, about the value of “safe” and about what “family” means.

For Orphan to provide a genuine surprise, it would first have to transcend pretty much everything laid out in the production notes.

But twists like that are once in a director’s lifetime if they’re lucky.

And horror fans as of late, have by and large not had fortune on their side.

Yes, Orphan has a secret.

But it takes more than a secret to make a film that ascends and becomes a true classic.

So in the end, I made the last minute decision to head up to Philly and see it with my own eyes.

I took a little over 24 hours to decide whether or not I actually wanted to blog this, but as once again, the Adoptee Rights Committee isn’t doing a very good job of communicating what actually took place people are frustrated. Again, this year I’ve been urged by readers to put up a report.

Still, why go?

Lots of reasons. Not the least of which being, there was always the outside chance, I could actually see something that I didn’t expect, that genuinely changed my thinking about this current incarnation of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Adoptee Rights Day (ARD). Had such happened, yes, I would have written about that as well.

Ultimately, nothing substitutes for actually going out and taking a good hard look.

So I went, knowing that there can be quite a difference between those creating the events and those attending the events.

Regardless of what some of the “Adoptee Rights Coalition” members have said and done in the past, I still understand that an organizing committee is only that, the key component here has always been about those others who show up.

Particularly so, as the original framing of the event has been that of it as a “mass action” capable of not merely interacting with legislators but of placing pressure on legislators through sheer numbers and dogging their every step over the conference, demanding they enact legislation to restore access to Adult Adoptees’ original (unmodified) birth certificates.

So I was interested in how this actually plays out in the streets, and what it looks like in practice.

My partner, Mike Doughney, “Sleeps with Bastard” joined in. We grabbed our small video camera so we could travel light, and a still camera and headed off . Philly, being just a short hop skip and a jump from our home in Maryland, it was quick and easy.

Besides, Philly holds a lot of fond (and a few not so fond) memories for us, it’s actually the city where we first came together as a couple well over a decade ago.

What we saw yesterday held very little in common with most of the Bastard Activism, particularly public demonstrations we are familiar with or have participated in.

Comparing yesterday’s events to Bastard Nation’s 1997 Bastards at the Bell, “Our Records Our Rights Rally in Philly” (which I was not present for) provides a particularly stark contrast. (Mind you, I’m not exactly a fan of invocations… .)

The very structure of that event was different, focusing on speakers, actions, and the strong visual of Bastard Nation having quite literally raised the flag.

The event took place within a broader context of fighting the states’ versions of the Uniform Adoption Act. Oregon had not opened records yet, and BN was in its early years.

Cindy Bertrand Holub – Pennsylvania Director, Bastard Nation – 1997 Bastards at the Bell / Our Records Our Rights Rally in Philly

Over a decade later, the ARD was to take place in the footsteps of Bastard Nation, the difference between the two couldn’t have been clearer. I strongly advise readers to look though the speeches, the actions, the fact that both Pennsylvania and New Jersey local groups (among others) were represented in 1997, and ultimately, the differences in attitude between the two. But then, I think Bastard Nation has come a long way in its politic since then as well.

Now a decade later? All I can say is that from my perspective, it’s a shame it’s devolved down to this.

While there will be analysis in this piece, much of the core of it is simply a matter of what it looked like to any bystander who was present and in the vicinity of the 2009 Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

The summary?

• They gathered at People’s Plaza over the course of an hour and a half and stood around talking to one another, with a few doing interviews.
• At roughly noon, 66 people (give or take one or two) spread out into a line and began chanting and walking along the sidewalks the 8 blocks or so over to the Convention Center.
• At the convention center they hung out and sign held briefly.
• By 12:40 most of the participants had already left the convention center, leaving a few stragglers behind.

The actual “doing” portion of the event was less than 45 minutes long.

Astounding.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Just as we had anticipated, it was drizzly overcast with the tops of buildings moving in and out of the low ceiling cloud cover.

There were some brief periods of light rain, but for the most part, it was a drizzly mist, letting up well before the noon step off.

The setting for the starting place for this year’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration was Independence National Historic Park, the grassy mall which includes Independence Hall, the visitor’s center, the National Constitution Center, and the Liberty Bell Center, among its many monuments and markers.

At the very heart of the park, surrounded by these icons sits the People’s Plaza, a designated site for protest, dissent, rabble rousing, complaint, and general soapbox standing for those with a cause of whatever persuasion. As the city virtual tour mentions,

“The Park receives over 300 requests each year for permits to hold public events or gatherings in the park.”

So long as a group first completes the permitting process their cause can be at the center of Independence Mall for the allotted period. (The designation of a specified site for expressions of dissent has been a definite point of contention.) None the less, there at the very heart of the Mall is a site where the grass won’t be trampled and the First Amendment stands alongside, carved in stone.

Picture courtesy of ushistory.org

With the first permit issued in January 2008, the People’s Plaza is a relatively recent addition to the Mall, paid for by the Friends of Independence Park who raised the funds for its construction.

The ARD scheduled their event to begin at the People’s Plaza at 10:30 Tuesday morning.

From across Market street, this is what the ARD looked like not long thereafter.

Here’s a nice long shot, the ARD folks have gathered to the left, Independence hall is at the back, and the Liberty Bell Center is to the right.

Over the next hour and a half, they stood in the on again off again drizzle and talked amongst themselves. While there are many things I could say about the ARD’s morning spent at People’s Plaza, the primary impression I left with was a feeling of wasted opportunity for money and time spent.

Seemingly, there was no strategy of ongoing intentional interaction with anyone else in the space, as there were no speeches, nor other central means of communication, they by and large, just hung out.

• There was no banner explaining who they were or why they were there
• No speakers or speeches, no use of sound equipment, not even a lousy ‘radio shack special’ bullhorn
• No flyers nor educational materials passed out to bystanders unless you count a small ARD business card, one of which was left behind as litter on the ground. (Yes, I did ‘litter patrol’, after they left the Plaza.) On the back it stated “End discrimination against adopted persons” without ever defining what possible “discrimination” we might endure.
• No chanting until later, when they got underway
• Not even so much a set of ‘burma shave’ style signs held along Market Street for the traffic stopped at the traffic light

Over the course of the hour and a half hundreds of cars passed, tour groups went by, tourists wandered the area, those who live and work in the area strolled past, there were even multiple TV trucks just around the corner (set up for a separate unrelated event just over a block away). Instead of interacting, they gathered and occupied the space, hardly speaking to anyone other than themselves and a reporter for most of the time they were there.

How this possibly justified the effort to gain a permit, when they could have just as easily (and more certainly in a more dry place) hung out anywhere in the city is beyond me.

As an activist who has been around a few genuine protests in my time, the silence was beyond comprehension. Why on earth would you get a permit to stand in the damp for an hour and a half holding signs upside down and chatting one anther up?

This is one of the few early pictures I have where some number of signs are held aloft.

As not much was going on, I strolled across the mall to take a few more pictures.

Here’s Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell Center. Those gathering for the ARD are behind me here.

And facing the opposite direction, towards the National Constitution Center, those gathering for the ARD are to the right of the picture…

Having been there, and now, looking at these pictures, I can’t help but be reminded of the words from Ron’s initial articulation of what went on to become the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

Past marches on Washington by Open Records organizers were a bad idea, poorly executed. I think it’s fair to say that they had minimal effect in changing any laws. Worse, by bringing together a few dozen Open Records supporters in the largest possible venue, they create the perception that the Open Records movement is weak and small. Bad political actions discourage people from participating in further actions. Why should they follow leaders that waste their time and resources?

(Emphasis added.)

The venue chosen could not have made the ARD look more irrelevant and small. Coupled with the fact that all they did was stand around and talk amongst themselves, they could not have appeared more insular if they tried.

Note that the people in the middle of this shot are with the ARD, there is a small grassy patch between them and the walkway, then to the right on the walkway is a tour group, as large if not larger than the ARD at this point. No real effort was made to interact or educate.

Here’s another view with the visitor’s center at the left.

Bored, I wandered up into the Garden nearby, as it’s one of my favorite areas along the Mall.

Still not much going on, people hanging out, talking amongst themselves.

Directly across the Mall from the garden the line of tourists waiting to see the Liberty Bell had begun spill outside. The line goes off to the left along the side of the building for a ways, and as you can see, drizzle or no, clearly there were tourists in the area, essentially, a captive audience, had anyone bothered with a sound system, or had anything to say.

We wandered down closer along Market Street to get a few better pictures. By now the rain was letting up.

As you can see, mainly folks hung out in little knots, talking, finally meeting friends they knew from facebook, and otherwise doing what for the most part could have been done in any hotel lobby. Most of those gathered had their backs turned to both the street and any pedestrians walking past.

The signs, to adverage Joe bystander, would not have made a great deal of sense, for the most part, a bystander would have seen a jumble of bits: the word “denied” in red ink several times, terms like “OBC” and signs about “Moms” and “Daddys.”

Getting in closer they MIGHT have seen “adoptee” although it was sometimes written in a very ‘groovy’ 60’s style font often rendering it and similar terms illegible from any distance.

Some participants wore the family tree logoed ARD cafe press gear. Again, the family tree is a visual metaphor for search and reunion, not records restoration. Others had written in magic marker on t-shirts.

Here are a sampling of the signs that we were able to document, (keep in mind some of these are two opposite sides of the same signs.)

Some simply made no sense without a broader context.

• OBC Equal Rights
• We are opposed to state lies
• How would it feel if you were denied?
• You have yours (Denied) we want ours
• a piece of posterboard made to look like some kind of document with DENIED written in red lettering across it
• Original identity basic human right
• Original identity = human right
• We didn’t ask 4 confidentiality from our children
• This is a legalized lie. Give me my OBC
• Identity is a right
• My identity is a state secret
• (denied certificate) our civil right
• You have yours, mine is denied
• We never asked for promises of secrecy
• I did not sign up for the witness protection program
• Access Denied: Do you know your truth? Name? Birthdate? Birthplace? Mother? Father? Footprint? (Um, Footprint?!?)
• Our rights are a state secret

Others were search and reunion focused.

• Who’s my Daddy?
• Whose my Momma? (messaging issues aside for the moment that should at least be Who’s my Momma?)
• Searching for Identity
• Hi Mom!
• Are you my (heart shape)?
• (A drawing of a family tree with the words) Do you know… (written across it)

Additionally, there was the occasional incoherent rambling sign along the lines of this little gem

• I am a part of- not “apart from” – my birth parents’ privacy.

Perhaps winner for strangest and most obscure messaging ever – one with the sticker and ‘denied’ (certificate) with the single word “NOW!” in the middle (National Organization for Women perhaps? Unclear.)

There were at least a few that gave some context as to what all this was supposed to be about.

• Adoptees deserve equal rights
• Birth Moms support equal rights
• Why is access denied for adoptees? Unseal our birth certificates.
• I am (denied) my birth certificate (which unfortunately, since the “denied” certificate was mostly illegible from any distance, it appeared to read “I am my birth certificate”)
• Adoptee Rights. Do I look like a dirty little secret?

And even several Bastard Nation slogans appeared.

• Equal Rights for Adult Adoptees
• Are you adopted? Are you Sure?

A number of these signs were made together at the ARD sign making party the night before.

As I said, there was no main banner or signage for the ‘march’, so to those wandering the area there was no real explanation of quite what this little knot of people many wearing green or tree logoed things was, other than glimpses of signs often held upside down as they stood around in the plaza.

Finally, as noon approached, some people began to actually hold their signs up, even as others stood around, still talking.

Interestingly, they never so much as posed for a group shot in the space they had paid to get.

So I moved around in order to get at least one clear shot of participants with Independence Hall in the background.

As I said, there wasn’t a great deal of ‘going on’ going on on at the Plaza. Sadly, the shot looks far more active than what was actually going on at the time, but this is probably among the more flattering shots I got.

Ironically, the person holding the “Birth Moms Support Adoptee Rights” sign is a man. (Later along the ‘march’ it was held by a woman.)

One of the few things that was taking place during all this were some interviews.

Sadly, this was about as close to the sidewalk and those passing by as I saw any ARD participant get. The large stone block in the lefthand side of the picture is where the First Amendment is inscribed.

Mostly, though, those gathered stayed in the plaza itself, huddled in little groups talking.

As the interview concluded we were treated to “Who’s my daddy?”

We went for another little walk towards Market Street and took some long view pictures just before noon to get a feel for how many were there. Along the sidewalk there were a number of unrelated pedestrians and tourists.

All told it had been nearly an hour and a half of standing around, by and large twiddling their thumbs.

In what amounts to perhaps the nearest thing this country has to a secular ‘hallowed ground’ dedicated to free speech, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration simply had nothing to say.

Stunning.

At this point, as they appeared to be preparing to move, we switched over to our video camera rather than the still.

As noon came around, they began chanting as they lined up and spread out, walking off down the sidewalk along Market street, chanting  as they went, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer:

“You got yours . . .” came the call from protest organizers.

“I want mine!” shouted the marchers.

It could not have been anything other than completely impenetrable to the tourists in the Mall. No explanation of what anyone “had” or what they “wanted,” let alone who they were nor why they were there.

I’ve seen flash mobs with more coherent messaging to the outside world. Those near us looked puzzled.

We now take a brief interlude to watch the video of perhaps the most “exciting” thing the ARD did in Independence National Historic Park, leave.

(This is me, shaking my head, completely puzzled)

Throughout the two minutes worth of footage they chanted. In an act of pure mercy to viewers, we’ve stripped off the broken record chanting, (well that, and I was on the phone nearby.)

So they lengthened out into a group and began walking down the sidewalk holding signs and chanting their bizarre chant and headed off to the convention center.

Their numbers had varied over the course of the morning at People’s Plaza, slowly building over time. But when the time finally came from them to step off and begin their sidewalk ‘march’ a total of 66 people (give or take one or two) set off towards the convention center.

Yes, that’s right, all this internet noise and hoopla over 66 people.

Just goes to show what a small pond and echo chamber adoptionland can be.

As I said in my first piece about this year’s ARD Philly (See my section on “Shifting event premise, conceptual, tactical, and strategic problems”),

The bottom line is, there is no adoptee rights mass movement waiting in the wings somewhere to show up for such an event.

For those of you interested in the demographics?

66 total:

• 51 Women
• 13 Men (adults)
• 2 teenage boys

Which means those ‘marching’ in the ARD this year were 77% female, 23% male.

Here in this last picture taken on the Mall, you can see what they looked like having crossed and now heading down the street.

Keep in mind, I said step off from the People’s Plaza was pretty much noon.

We decided to head down and see the other end. The convention center is a little under a mile away, roughly 8 blocks worth of a sidewalk ‘march’. So we headed over to take a look.

Fortunately, I missed at least some of the ‘festivities.’ One participant’s blogged account of the ‘march’ included this tidbit:

One adoptee occasionally yelled out, or asked women as they approached, “Are you my mommy?”

Not ‘merely’ a messaging problem, or a mental health problem, this unfortunately goes to the heart of the lack of sensitivity to context some of those making the ARD happen and responsible for the ARD have displayed over and over again.

Behavior such as this (particularly while claiming to represent “adoptee rights”) is beyond mere problematic, it’s unconscionable.

As if that weren’t bad enough all by itself, this year’s event in Philadelphia far from taking place in a vacuum, was unfortunately taking place in the context of a lawsuit in Camden, New Jersey, directly across the river, less than three miles away from where the ARD was taking place. It involved allegations of “undesired contact” with a surrendered adoptee: Distraught woman sues, alleging N.J. helped child of rape find her. (Obviously, I have a great deal to say about the case, but for the moment, let’s stay on track, saving such for another day.)

This particular article hit roughly a month before the ARD. At least some people involved in the ARD were well aware of the case, as it cluttered adoption venue after adoption related blog, press release, news story, etc.

Amy Adoptee, who was on last year’s committee, blathered delusionally and incoherently on her blog about the article, postulating the lawsuit’s entire existence was a direct response to, and retaliation against the work of open records activists and the ARD:

I do believe that this entire situation is in response to both the Adoptee Rights Demonstration and New Jersey’s bill

She’s convinced it’s all a BIG CONSPIRACY and can’t fathom why a Philly paper would cover a story from just across the river.

The placement of this story in the Philly newspaper is also suspicious as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration in Philadelphia is set to occur a month later. The information in this article is about constituents in New Jersey, not Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Lest anyone think my bringing up the broader context would be making a mountain out of a molehill, care to guess what the Philadelphia Inquirer’s ( don’t get me started) article, Adoption-records advocates to protest in Phila., published the day of the ARD included?

Privacy clearly is a concern.

In New Jersey, an Atlantic City woman is suing the state for $1 million after being approached by a daughter she surrendered 30 years ago, a child conceived by rape, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. She claims state authorities provided personal information that enabled her daughter to show up at her door.

Just a helpful hint, wandering up to total strangers on the street and pulling an

(for those unfamiliar, see the “plot summary” here) does not tend to make adopted people appear particularly trustworthy, able to conduct their own interfamily affairs, or for that matter stable, let alone sane.

But it does play perfectly into the larger narrative of “unwanted contact” and out of control adoptees. You know, that mythic archetype of the adoptee as always in a needly, reunion obsessed, consent and boundary violating, unable to cope, constantly in psychological dire need-to-find-Mommy state.

Pulling crap like that out on the public streets of Philadelphia, going up to women, total strangers, and demanding to know if they might be one’s long lost parent is a slap in the face to most Bastards’ reality, the sensitivity and delicacy with which MOST approach initial contact with potential kin. It’s a mockery, a mere cartoon of most of our reunion experiences or desires for such.

It plays into every expectation of the bad adoptee, and the picture so often painted of us by our opponents as out of control needy reunion obsessed nuts.

None of which has a damn thing to do with genuine records access, and equal treatment under law.

My complete disgust aside for the moment, back to the Convention Center.

When we first arrived roughly 12:25, there were a number of sign holding ARD supporters standing on the sidewalk along the convention center mostly clumped in small groups all over again. Participants were being interviewed, but by and large it entailed standing around.

Driving past, this is what it looked like by 12:32. The convention center is to the right, you can make out the first of the sign holders to the right of the tree, holding the sign, “How would it feel if you were denied?” (Denied what? Who knows.)

This was the initial thing those going past saw, not an arching statement building a narrative and providing any form of explanation of the next few sign holders further along. Nope, just another piece of completely decontextualized irrelevancy. Another missed opportunity.

d

Unfortunately the visual metaphor of a big red “denied” stamp, while close-ER, is still not it either.

Most Bastards will never have the absolutist clarity of a big red stamp on a piece a paper. Nope, we don’t even get the “gratification” of having a “DENIED” slip of paper to show for our troubles.

The more fitting visual metaphor would be an Empty Mailbox.

We fill out the request forms, we pay our money at Vital Statistics offices (only to be offered a state fabricated lie).

We re-apply, we write, we call, meet with those on Judge’s staffs, we contact legislators, we advocate, we do demonstrations, we ask politely, we write letters to the editor, and we fight for restored access, but each and every passing day of lack of access to our own authentic original unaltered birth certificates is another day of waiting, of checking, of finding nothing but an unresponsive government on the other end.

No mail today, none yesterday, and barring the unforeseen none tomorrow. We check methodically, every day, but the box is always empty.

No big red stamp, just silence, from those who feel they owe us nothing, and do not answer to us.

Outside the convention center?

Things were fizzling out.

There were still a few small clusters, but things had mostly broken up.

Signs were up against the convention center wall, often upside down. (Bear in mind that some in these pictures are uninvolved pedestrians.)

More of the stragglers, near an entrance an interview with a private camera (not news media) was ongoing.

Here’s what the ‘denied’ (birth certificate) sign looks like upside down and from a distance.

And the shot I could find with the most ARD participants in it from this time period.

The area they occupied was directly across from Reading Terminal market, an area with tons of ‘foot traffic’ on a market day like Tuesday. This was busy downtown Philly in the 12:30 lunch hour. Yet the Adoptee Rights Demonstration appears to have viewed the convention center as more of an end point than a key place to be for an extended period. Yet another missed opportunity.

We ‘circled’ the block to be certain we were not missing a larger group at another entrance, stunned that it could be this small this quickly, but by 12:38 there was little left.

The interview with the private camera continued near the entrance and a couple of people with their signs remained, but to the right of the ‘tunnel’ we found all of four ARD participants.

Here’s the “NOW!” sign.

By this point, the event was over and people were heading on in search of drinks at the Hard Rock, which was followed by a trip to a comedy club that evening.

RECAP

So let’s recap, step off from People’s Plaza was roughly noon and by 12:38 it was over.

I didn’t note precisely what time they arrived at the convention center, but clearly the bulk of the ARD participants spent less than 1/2 an hour sign holding there.

Which means they spent almost 3 times as much time standing around in the drizzle not doing much of anything at People’s Plaza than they did protesting at their target.

This is one of those rare moments that simply leaves me “holding my head like a stunned monkey.”

Yes, they will have the booth inside the convention and will be marketing as best they can alongside the other exhibitors over the next few days, but that task will be left to a small subset.

Most of those participating on the day of the ARD stood around waiting in the misty rainish morning, took a rather noisy walk, and then sign held for a few minutes outside a building.

In the final calculation, it amounted to this roughly 40 minutes worth of fewer than 70 people actually ‘marching’ down the sidewalk, signholding, being a “presence” etc.

The Adoptee Rights Committee behind the ARD laid out this rough “budget” of sorts, from their Donate page,

The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration has a base target goal of $2,000 for the protest. This money will be used to pay for permits, security, advertising and materials. For an additional $2,000, we will again be able to afford a booth inside the Convention Center.

They relied on the broader community of those who support restoration of records access to foot the bill and in two years have never had to account for the financial realities of the ARD.

Now that the “protest” portion of the event has taken place, perhaps it’s time for a some careful cost-benefit evaluation.

By way of ‘coverage,’ it’s been pretty slim pickings:

Here’s the ARD’s own sparse twitterstream from the event, and now in the aftermath from the booth inside the National Conference of State Legislators exhibitor’s hall.

Today in the aftermath, Philly.com, (also owned by the Philadelphia Inquirer) carried this piece by way of wrap up, Adoptees protest for access to original birth certificates. Once again, reunion focused messaging is portrayed as the prime motivator for why Adult Adoptees would seek access to their Original Birth Certificates.

None of those groups were present yesterday – nor did they need to be. They’re winning the argument, noted adoptee Dan Haines of Egg Harbor. That forces adoptees to mount a state- by- state appeal to lawmakers that could go on forever. And while that happens, he said, birth parents grow old and die.

That fact lends urgency to what adoptees call the nation’s last civil-rights battle.

( I’d HARDLY call us the “last civil rights battle!” There are still plenty of other frontiers…)

Still it’s not a terribly surprising ‘justification’ for the event/adoptee ‘activism’ considering much of the messaging coming from the ARD, such as the photo included with the article.

Photo: John Costello / The Philadelphia Inquirer

Finally, (only semi-amusingly) several people with, as well as the ARD homepage itself, appear to have mistaken Examiner.com for a newspaper or some other form of hard media.

In reality it is an online ‘content’ generator not dissimilar to about.com. (See this Examiner.com press release for an overview on their more than 4,000 “Examiners”/paid content generators. It’s out of date, they’re now up to well over 8,000. (Also see their Quality Writers Wanted: Join us page.) Space filling junk like this Live reports from today’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration pointing at ARD’s twitterstream hardly passes for “coverage.”

By way of blog coverage in the aftermath by those involved, from the ARD homepage: Greetings from Philadelphia (7-22-09, Day after the event)

(In which they bemoan what they perceived as the “miserable rain” and thanked those who showed up and to endure such.)

Kali’s “Anti-Adoption” blog: The Adoptee Rights Demonstration Philladelphia does it again!

In which she, as “founder” of the event, leads off with an interesting admission about last year in New Orleans and this year’s numbers.

Three times the amount of protestors there last year…

Just as I had suspected, I was being quite generous in my morning after recap of last year,

This New Orleans Times Picayune Article, poorly entitled Protesters seek to change laws sealing birth papers came out today, July 23rd.

It mentions “about 60 protesters” took part in the march from Lafayette Park to the Ernest N. Morial convention center.

This year’s numbers being what they are, again a mere 66 people, give or take one or two, marched out of the Park. If last year’s was 1/3 the size, that’s a rather startling admission.

She continues on, insisting that the ARD will go on and on, becoming an annual occurance (paid for by the broader community of those who support open records of course).

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration will never give up, it will continue year after year if it takes until I am one hundred I will be there at the convention, writing my leggies, introducing bills and voting those in office against adoptees equality OUT and getting people who support us in will happen if necessary!

An interesting insistence in light of my post she commented on the night before this year’s ARD, questioning the effectiveness of the tactic, the ARD’s finances, and the notion of becoming an annual habit.

Naturally, the “rain” has taken on a mythology all its own, becoming part of the ARD Philly narrative. Kali adds her notion of participants as dedicated to slog it out through the rains.

You know it means the heart and soul to someone when they’re willing to do it in the rain!

Sigh. Pretty much any “activist” who would even consider being dissuaded by the light misty drizzle that let up long before step off probably hasn’t earned the title street “activist… .”

I suppose for this reason alone it was worth the trip.

Someone had to be there to reality check whether it was torrential rains or merely the slight mistiness in the air that it had devolved down to by the time the ‘march’ began.

Emphasizing the rain as some kind of ‘oh see how dedicated’ or ‘look how much they suffered for the cause’ nonsense, is just a load of crap.

Finally, it’s important to look at what kind of media is internally produced by participants themselves using the footage gathered at the event and how participants are characterized in such:

“Forgotten Children”

Because apparently, there’s nothing like relabeling ADULT adoptees “forgotten children,” set to a ‘cheerful’ little tune, suitable for slitting one’s wrists to.

(Sarcasm kids, sarcasm.)

Marley/Bastardette has the details in her blog post,

NEBRASKA: POST-FIASCO BABY CATCH– ‘NO QUESTIONS ASKED”

Both her piece, and this have been crossposted to our Nebraska blog chronicling NE’s series of legalized child dumps, Children of the Corn.

Monday evening a baby boy was left at Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance under Nebraska’s aged down new dump law created over the legislative special session. (Nebraska law, originally accepted older kids, but was “aged down” in the wake of their “big kid” dump fiasco that made international headlines.)

This marks the first legalized infant abandonment in Nebraska since the final “big kid” dump in late November ’08.

Quoting Marley’s piece,

According to Nebraska Health and Human Services Chief Executive Officer Kerry Winterer (RIP Todd Landry), in an HHS press release:

“It’s important to gather information like family medical history to meet this child’s current and future needs,” he said.

Officials asked that anyone with information call the HHS office in Gering at 308-436-6559, the Box Butte County Sheriff’s Office at 308-762-6464, the Alliance Police Department at 308-762-4955 or the Nebraska State Patrol at 308-632-1211.

While it appears the “fiasco” taught Nebraska at least a little about the vital importance of preserving at least a few scraps of information for the kid, clearly Nebraska has yet to learn the broader lesson:

EVERY SINGLE LEGALIZED CHILD ABANDONMENT MARKS A FAILURE:

• a fundamental failure of the state to protect the long term interests and human rights of these kids.
• A failure of the state to treat these instances as what they are, marking a crisis for the parent (s), be that psychological, economic, covering over traumatic events such as incest or domestic abuse, etc.
• The state inexcusably providing what amounts to a “make it all just go away” vent, whereby underlying core issues, and genuine needs, are simply ignored. The kids themselves are left to deal with the legacy of such.

Monday marks yet another sad day, a day on which the State of Nebraska failed one of its most vulnerable and least able to protect their own interests, and a day when whatever family this child once had is left to disappear into shadows with their own lifetime’s worth of a festering secret that can never be rectified.

Nebraska had an opportunity after seeing what legalized child dumping or what is oh so politely reframed as “safe haven,” meant to those old enough to speak of their own experiences of being “legally abandoned.” An opportunity to dismantle its dump system. Instead they chose to preserve it, aging down to those unable to speak about their own experiences. In essence, Nebraska found a way to silence its most directly affected and experienced critics, at least until they grow older, long after this crop of politicians leaves office.

No, this is not some “greater good,” this is not a “save,” nor should this act be celebrated. This is nothing more than rot from within. Shame on Nebraska for maintaining its system of secrets and lies, pushing the lifelong consequences of such down onto a newborn.

So it’s been almost a year since this version of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration,” or ARD, held their initial event in New Orleans. This year, as their event centers around buying a booth inside the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) exhibit hall, they will be gathering in Philadelphia.

Once again, they still have yet to attract a single adoptee rights /open records membership organization as a co-sponsor. (This year, same as last year, their two sponsors include a cafepress shop and a podcast.)

The ARD itself lacks any form of structure beyond a central organizing “coalition” of individuals. It has donors, yet no rights, ability to vote, nor membership structure is implied by such. It lacks any form of formalized organization responsible for it.

When those speaking for the ARD in the booth or writing legislators do so, they speak for themselves, not any larger organization of the Adoptee Rights movement internationally.

(Speaking personally, obviously, I support individual actions. This blog and its independence are examples of that. That said however, it is important to differentiate when one is speaking as an individual from times one speaks for a broader organization or movement. The ARD cannot and does not speak for many of us long term adoptee rights advocates, nor any other formal organization.)

Unfortunately, the financial questions at the core of last year’s event still remain.

Those responsible for this Adoptee Rights Demonstration, the self described “Adoptee Rights Coalition,” to date have not provided any form of accounting for last year’s financial donations: those who gave, how many people donated, how much money, nor how it was spent. They’ve had a year, yet no financial report has been forthcoming.

Such an accounting is particularly important in light of the ARD’s lack of charitable donation status, lack of fiscal agent, and the fact that at least some of the donations from last year went directly into Kali Coultas’s personal account. As the date for last year’s ARD approached, they increasingly had problems with the Paypal account being shut down. There has never been visibility into nor accounting to the broader adoptee rights community as to where their money went.

In essence, those responsible for last year’s ARD asked the broader Adoptee Rights Community to trust them, yet provided no means by which to hold them accountable for either the financial aspects of the event, nor ultimately showing any form of political result. (Which I’ll address here in a minute.)

Monies were collected last year for a full page advertisement in the New Orleans Times Picayune that was to list names of individual supporters of the ARD event in NOLA. No disclaimer was placed on the collection of those monies stating that were not enough collected, or if the monies were needed for other purposes, they could be shifted to other projects. Yet when last year’s event took place, no advertisement was run and no monies were refunded. There was, in fact, no explanation offered.

Sadly the lack of promised advertisement was to be but one example of the complete lack of visibility into the finances of the ARD.

This year is no better. The Paypal donation page linked off the Adoptee Rights Demonstration homepage simply transfers funds to “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” (reference adopteerightsdotnet) an unverifed account.

Since I last wrote about the upcoming event in Philly, the “Adoptee Rights Coalition” (those responsible for the events) have added a few names. It now consists of:

Kali Coultas / Founder

Michelle Edmunds

Joy Madsen

Cathy Robishaw

Heather Holmes

Theresa Hood

Dory Martin

Diane Crossfield

and Jimm Mandenberg

(“Founder” is quite a stretch, considering the pre-existing history with the term “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” and the history of the way Kali ended up with it, but that’s a tale I’ve covered here before.)

Sadly, I think a number well intentioned and very serious about regaining records access people have ended up supporting the ARD. To my thinking at least, there is quite a difference between some of the folks who show up and some of those who can only be described as running the thing.

If you stumbled across it for the first time on facebook, or heard of it via a blog which has picked up the marketing, you may know nothing of the history, the many lingering issues from last year going into this year, or the personal viciousness that took place last year directed at longtime open records activists and Bastard Nation.

Further, as some number of people supporting or participating may be new to adoptee rights work itself, they may have little to measure the effectiveness or lack thereof of the ARD against.

As I mentioned previously on the history link above, clearly the vision for the event itself has changed greatly from Ron Morgan’s original inception. Clearly, by any measure, the current ARD is not the sort of mass action event originally envisioned.

Yet original vision aside, even judging it purely upon what last year’s event set out to do, its effectiveness even by that measure raises serious questions about whether or not the finances and efforts put into such ultimately make sense, or instead distract from the real work to be done.

Part of the disconnect appears to be structural.

Some of those donating do so in hopes of having people go to Philly to go essentially speak and work on their behalf. Meanwhile, those organizing the event are clearly viewing their presence as merely the prelude to what they want people back home to do. Each ends up staring at the other expecting SOMEONE else to do something. Donors want people to speak with their legislators via the purchased booth, those in the booth, apparently think they are collecting contacts for those back home to work on.

What measurable follow up has there been since last year? How many meetings in home districts? How many sponsors were gained? How many pieces of legislation were introduced as a direct result of buying exhibit space in New Orelans? What tangible milestones were marked as a direct result of having done so?

In short, what has been the cost benefit analysis of the strategy of having a few people “marching” on sidewalks without a permit, and buying a booth in the convention center?

While they can claim “contacts were made” has there been any genuine analysis on whether or not who they were talking to were ‘the right people’ or not? I.e. did they connect with people genuinely in a position to get legislation enacted (and did they then begin to work towards such?) or did they expend their time speaking with people with little to no genuine power to enact actual change? Do they even know?

Is this a strategy that actually makes sense? What has doing so done in terms of the goal, restoration of records access to the maximum number of people?

Oh, but wait, IS that their ultimate goal?

Let’s take a look.

As always, all we have are their own words and actions to go by.

From here:

All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

from here:

Our goal is to maintain a presence at the Annual Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

and from here:

We believe an annual presence at the NCSL Summit demonstrates the importance of this issue, and awakens those impacted by secrecy laws and subsequent treatment by states withholding personal information at various vital information offices across the country. A presence inside the booth is crucial to prove the seriousness of our intent to those who need to hear the message.

Let’s be realistic here, what they are discussing is a booth, one of many, all vying for attention and moments of time with staffers and some state legislators in the exhibition hall alongside plenty of other booths attempting exactly the same.

If the people attempting to market open records don’t even understand the difference between their nonsensical term “vital information offices” and state’s vital statistics offices, no amount of paying their entrance fees is going to help gain genuine open records.

Yes, alongside their stated “goal” of being a “presence,” there are other statements about records restoration, but since when did “maintaining a presence” become any kind “goal?”

See, for me? Even back when I was a member of the committee for last year’s ARD (before I and others resigned) a booth at the event was a TACTIC, never a goal.

It was a tactic being utilized towards the goal of records access restoration.

It was never an ends in and of itself. The idea of listing the upcoming cities the NCSL will take place in for the next three years down the side of the webpage under the heading

“Future Adoptee Rights Demonstrations at the NCSL”

means that for those running the ARD, they view this as a habit to get into, an annual vacation to plan on, and an annual event they expect to be able to count on the broader records access community to fund.

Not planned obsolescence.

I was working hard towards the idea of looking forward to the day of not having to booth such an event ever again. I was working towards the day when records access was restored and attending such an event would become unnecessary.

Furthermore, had I participated last year, in the aftermath, there would have been a careful assessment of whether or not the tactic had been successful, what the cost/benefit ratio was, and whether or not repeating such even still made sense. IF going forward, the tactic was to be repeated, there would have to be some very tangible (and marketable to the broader community) results justifying doing so again.

Taking up space at the NCSL as some kind of theraputic annual gathering for online buddies to finally meet one another and drink together, and (for example) listen to jazz musicians that they cannot even bother to get the names of is not genuine activism. It may be a working out of personal issues, and need for friends, but it doesn’t justify an ongoing utilization of the goodwill and pocketbooks of the broader adoptee community.

Vacations and parties and raffles can all be nice things, but if doing so means losing track of the real goal, such that an annual “presence” is suddenly on the list of “goals,” then genuine accomplishment has fallen by the wayside. It’s about keeping one’s eye on the ball, and failure to do so.

Basic messaging seems to be an ongoing problem for the ARD, starting with statements such as this from their demonstration details page:

All Americans, adopted or not, have a right to access government records about their own lives.

which they then immediately contradict:

Adult adoptees in most of the advanced, industrialized nations of the world have unrestricted access to their original birth records as a matter of right. In contrast, adult adoptees in all but six states in the U.S. are forbidden unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates, due to archaic laws that are a legacy of a culture of shame that stigmatized infertility, out-of-wedlock birth and adoption.

Obviously if we ALREADY HAD the right to full access there would be no need to hold an event such as ARD. Adult Adoptees would not have to organize, march, nor lobby for restored records access.

Clearly in our day to day lives we do not experience that equitable treatment that would put us on equal footing with all others.

That would be the entire premise for the ARD itself, yet how do they begin the page describing their event? By essentially saying there is no need for the event (except there is.)

Such self contradictory messaging is hardly the kind of ‘voice’ I would want representing my needs to legislators.

The messaging problems that a number of us brought up prior to our resignation last year still persist, such as the insistence upon utilizing a (family) tree based logo more indicative of search and reunion and personal quest to ‘know one’s roots’ than a rights based or records restoration based visual.

The ongoing conflation of restored records access with search and reunion is front and center in this year’s ARD page via their searchers page, on which they state,

The purpose of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration is to serve as an annual rally for those who care deeply about restoring unconditional access to all Americans. However, we realize that search is an important topic to many involved. To that end, we have compiled the following list of state specific search and reunion links and information.

When several of us pointed out last year that this only served to increase confusion and the tangling of open records with search and reunion, Kali’s excuse was that most of the people coming into the webpage were looking for search and reunion resources.

She wanted to use the provision of “search resources” as a hook to draw people into the page and increase web traffic.

Never mind the fact that genuine records restoration is not about the personal quest to reunite. It is about restoring equitable treatment to a class of people who have been wronged by the State.

Such intentional conflations of the two: records access and search and reunion, only leads to additional conflated legislation such as reunion registries, etc which bypass genuine restored access, and are attempts at placating those enduring inequitable treatment under law.

Worse, the ARD page markets itself towards legislative visitors as well. How they expect legislators unfamiliar with our issues to decipher search and reunion as distinct from records restoration when the supposed advocates thereof place them side by side is beyond me. It’s a ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ visual.

Finally, let’s take a moment to revisit the ongoing issue of the finances.

Lest last year’s troubling pattern of financial decisions not be enough to raise eyebrows, this year’s event features a new troubling twist: a payback for participating for one lucky winner.

This one falls under the heading of things I simply could not make up if I tried. I attended my first large scale national protest event in Washington DC back in 1986. In the 23 years I’ve been ‘doing activism’ I have to say, I’ve never quite run across a one of these:

Prizes to be won in Philly

The Adoptee Rights Committee is pleased to announce a draw to be held *July 22, 2009 *following the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

First prize is a *$100 VISA gift certificate* – always useful for travelers! Second and third prizes will also be awarded. The prizes have been donated by the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers as a way to thank protesters for their much-appreciated participation.

Protesters will be asked to enter their names either at the sign-making party the evening before, or immediately after the demonstration. The drawing will take place at a local restaurant (TBD) following the demonstration, where we will gather for rest, hydration, conversation and camaraderie.

Yup, it’s the ‘please come to Philly, you could win a Visa gift certificate’ pitch! Errrr, ‘come to Philly and fill out our database’ pitch.

Prizes for ‘protesting.’ Bribes for bodies?

As advertised on their Twitterstream:

100 reasons to come to the Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration! http://tr.im/jJB6

That’s bad enough in and off itself, after all, usually, protesters show up all on their own, without any expectation of a potential payoff for having done so, but the real question, once again, lies in the donations.

Are we talking about monies donated out of the ‘coalition’ members own pockets, or are we talking about the ‘coalition’ committee setting aside a portion of the event donations for this purpose?

If the latter, then the question becomes, did those donating to the event understand at the time that a portion of their donation could be used as reward “prize money” for demonstrators?

Usually, when people donate to a cause, they expect the funds to actually be used for the cause itself, not as a form of kickback to participants.

Again, having no explanation of the finances of the ARD, the answer to whether the money came out of donations or personal pockets remains simply unknown.

We can, however look at the few items they list as what donations should be designated towards in their fundraising to date.

The ARD cafepress page for example, lists some of the items the proceeds were to go to (although note that no specific line item budget has ever been released by those responsible for the ARD):

Adoptee Rights Day – July 21, 2009 – Philadelphia

http://www.cafepress.com/AdopteeRightsPA

20% is added to the base price of every item. All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures. Your purchase is deeply appreciated!

Nothing in that about monetary prizes to participants.

Likewise, nothing on the Donate page,

The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration has a base target goal of $2,000 for the protest. This money will be used to pay for permits, security, advertising and materials. For an additional $2,000, we will again be able to afford a booth inside the Convention Center.

Nor their sponsors page.

As “Adoptees Unite “is listed as one of the ARD sponsors, it’s likewise interesting to take a quick visit across to Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change‘s cafe press shop:

http://www.cafepress.com/adopteesunite

100% of the profits of sales will be donated to help fund the 2009 Adoptee Rights Protest in Philadelphia.

Despite there being no accounting of where the funding is actually going, they make a final pitch to every individual “protester,”

We are asking protesters to consider supporting the demonstration by making a small $5.00 donation towards expenses. Please note that this donation is not mandatory, and no one will be excluded from the event if they do not donate.

That’s right up there with some of the ‘not required, but suggested’ pay to march ‘activist’ parades.

Again, most events I’ve been supportive of over the years welcome participants and don’t offer up “suggested donation” amounts. If participants chose to give a donation, it tends to come of deep personal conviction, not expectation.

Two days ago, Sobrevivientes began a hunger strike, demanding the annulment of three of kidnap/adoption cases (The stolen Guatemalan children are now in the United States, living with those who adopted them.)

Rather than attempting to characterize any of the aspects of the story, I’d rather direct readers to the raw documentation, first in it’s original format, and then via ‘Google Translate’ to English.

Imprecise as the translations are, one can at least begin to get the feel of it.

***

First and foremost, here is the Sobrevivientes homepage itself,

and via Google Translate, Spanish into English. Be sure to also explore some of the sidebars and document links.

Sobrevivientes flyer-

(From the homepage via the translation,)

After 36 years of systematic human rights violations in Guatemala we have the slogan: “Never again” to the acts of violence that left thousands of Guatemalan families bereaved as were cases of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, massacres, forced disappearance, among others. However, despite the efforts of civil society because these acts were not repeated as we are sad day day Guatemalan families face today acts of violence that cause pain and fear,with impunity in most of them.

This is the situation for children; Angiely, Arlen Escarleth and Heidi Sarai, now under the identity of “Karen Lopez Garcia Abigail (Abigail Monahan Karen Vanhorn), Cindy Garcia (Cindy Thomas Colwell) and Kimberly Jimenez Azucena (Azucena Kimberly Ocheltree ) in 2006 were torn from the arms of their mothers, who since then have remained a constant struggle to determine the whereabouts of their minor daughters, as well as research that leads to identify those responsible so that they face justice for the crime of human trafficking among others.

Some consider that this is a losing battle that will not bring the children back to the country, which have other moms and kids that they want a “burden”, these people definitely do not know what love is A mother and what it can do for the love of a daughter or a son, only this feeling that we know we know that the struggle of Mrs. Rachel, Olga and Loyda is unwavering love of a fight and we have therefore decided to accompany and support them in this journey that is full of visitudes many challenges and risks. It has been two years of searching, and we know the truth and we have gone through the same thing in court to prove that the processes of adoption through which the children came out of the country are run by abnormal trafficking networks that for years have been enriched with the marketing of our children in the market for international adoptions, which is why we demand the annulment of these processes and the adoption is invalid and girls return to their country and within your home .

As we call upon the judges of the court of first instance civil fifth, seventh to the court of first instance and the civil court of first instance civil eighth to make the relevant proceedings in accordance with the law by applying the principles of speed, promptness, efficiency and justice above all a favor because it is not what is claimed before our courts, but law enforcement.

The event begins today, but we do not know when it will end as this will depend on the speed and promptness with acting judges. Found to be the solidarity of the people, social organizations and the involvement of institutions of state to President Alvaro Colom, President of Congress and chairman of the Judiciary, we can not ignore the responsibility levels State by these facts. Because this is not a problem but all three wells Guatemala bleeds that day by day the actions of criminal groups and the lack of enforcement of justice.

Guatemala, July 15 2009

Also see these two news stories:

Prosecution asks Guatemala withdraw the immunity of a judge accused of approving adoptions anomalous

and via Google Translate, Spanish into English

And

Mothers start a hunger strike to recover stolen daughters in Guatemala

and via Google Translate, Spanish into English

Three Guatemalan mothers, accompanied by activist Norma Cruz, today launched a hunger strike in the capital in order to recover his daughters, who were reportedly stolen in 2006 and given in adoption in United States.

Cruz, leader of the Survivor Foundation, which supports female victims of abuse and violence, told reporters today that the hunger strike that began on the outskirts of the Supreme Court (CSJ), the capital of Guatemala, will be for an indefinite period.

“What we seek with this measure is void of the three processes of adoption of the girls,” were presumed to be delivered illegally to the United States people, “he said.

The accompanying activist in the hunger strike Olga Lopez, Raquel Rodriguez and Loyda Par, whose daughters were allegedly stolen in 2006, at various points around the city of Guatemala.