MOTHERS NEEDED FOR ACADEMIC STUDY REGARDING POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative (BSERI) is participating in the initial stages of a research project. The project is the work of two psychology researchers in the UK . It will explore adoption loss during the BSE with subsequent development of PTSD. We are collecting personal accounts regarding Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in mothers who lost children to adoption during the Baby Scoop Era (approximately post WWII through Roe v. Wade).

If you are willing to participate in this first round of data collection, please write up your story (include dates, and all physical, mental, medical, and emotional consequences post-surrender) and email it to us.

Origins, Inc. NSW (Australia) is collecting submissions for Oz, Trackers International is collecting submissions for the UK, and BSERI is collecting submissions from mothers in the United States.

Please keep your submission to no more than 2 pages, single spaced. Names and other identifying information will not be published. Your submission MUST be accompanied by a note stating that it may be used anonymously for this research project.

If you have any questions, please contact BSERI at bseri@babyscoopera.com

You are warmly encouraged to blog this, link to it, and post it on other websites and boards.

The Dems Still Don't Get It

Europe gets it - the Dems, not so much.

The 2008 Democratic Platform on Choice

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empowers people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care,parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

From The Evan B.Donaldson Institute's 2006 White Paper titled

"Safeguarding the Rights and Wellbeing of Birthparents In The Adoption Process."

According to this report, parents who choose adoption for their infants do not have their rights and needs sufficiently addressed in U.S. law and practice - largely because of basic misconceptions about who these women and men are - and they invariably fare better when they have ongoing information about and/or contact with the children they place into new families.
------------------

Executive Summary
Each year in the United States, approximately 14,000 women and a growing number of men make an agonizing parenting decision that they hope will provide their children with the best possible future: They place their babies for adoption. At the same time, policy-makers across this country each year propose and implement measures meant to improve adoption, often based on their perceptions of what these parents want and need. Historically and through the present day, however, adoption-related laws, policies and practices have been made without the benefit of solid research that might answer the most basic, underlying questions: What are the characteristics of mothers and fathers who relinquish their infants for adoption? Why do they choose this path? And how can their needs and rights best be served and protected?

Due largely to the secretive nature of adoption's past, the state of knowledge about infant adoptions in the 21st century is deficient, at best. There is no broad, concrete body of work on who these women and men typically are, what forces shape their decisions, or how adoption impacts the rest of their lives. We do not even know precisely how many babies are placed for adoption in this country annually. Indeed, though domestic infant adoption is what most people think of when they hear the word "adoption," it is the least common type in the U.S. today (after adoption from foster care, from abroad, and by step-parents), and it is the type we know the least about.

Well, Dems, I hardly know what to say. You want to provide for "caring adoption programs." You put it in your platform! This despite the fact that the authoritative American voice on adoption practice says that the rights of natural families are not being protected in adoption. Perhaps even more importantly, they say that no one really has any idea about the life long impact of adoption on people who lose children, because there is precious little research on the topic.

I might add that the little research that has been done indicates that more than half the women who lose children this way suffer devastating life long effects - both emotional and physical.

One more thing, Dems. How did the right wing agenda make its way onto your platform? If you missed my earlier posts on this, The Family Research Council collaborated with the The National Council For Adoption to produce materials marketing adoption to young women.

"Birthmother, Goodmother: Her Story of Heroic Rdemption" is available from the Family Research Council's website. It is offered along with other enlightening materials, such as "The Top Ten Myths About Abortion," "Homosexuality Is Not a Civil Right," "Politicized Science: the Manipulated Approval of RU-486 and Its Dangers to Women's Health," "Homosexuality In Your Child's School " and "How To Raise an AMERICAN."

Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself. Warning: Link takes you to the Family Research Council's website, so bring a generously sized barf bucket.

Besides the obvious questions (WHY would Dems align themselves with the pro-life movement?) I have a few more questions for the Democrats:

What will you do to assure that the rights of natural families are protected in this country from unethical adoption practices? Will you establish a national clearinghouse and an ombudsman for handling adoption complaints from natural families? Will you regulate the currrently unregulated business of adoption? Will you establish laws under which people wrongfully defrauded of their children can receive the due process guaranteed by the Constitution?

What will you do about the problems in Intercountry Adoption?

And what measures will you institute to protect the defenseless babies who are the end-all, be-all of adoption? What will you do to prevent future Lisa Steinbergs and Nicoli Emelyantsevs? What do you intend to do about The Rogue's Gallery of Adoption?

Nearest and dearest to MY heart, Democrats, two questions: When are you going open your eyes to the fact that life in AdoptionLand is NOT the way the public (including you, dear`Dems,) perceive it. As a progressive, I have a very difficult time reconciling the exploitative nature of unethical adoption with Democratic values.

The other question: When, oh when, is the Democratic Party, the protector of social justice in America, going to wake up to the fact that a million or so Lady Baby Boomers suffered an outrageous attack on their human and civil rights via coerced/forced adoptions during the Baby Scoop Era.

I'd really like an answer, Dems.


Barb, for myself

On Being Flat Out Wrong: A Brief History Of Adoption Theory During the BSE

In 1940, Columbia University established a graduate program in Social Work. The discipline had ambitions to elevate its status to that of other professionals. Columbia began awarding Masters' Degrees in Social Work in 1940 and Doctoral Degrees in 1952. Importantly, Columbia also pioneered the field of psychiatric social work.

Freudian thought was much in vogue after WWII, and the developing discipline of psychiatric social work was heavily influenced by his theories. This was a boon for social workers striving to raise the professional profile of their discipline. By claiming expertise in an esoteric and poorly understood field (psychoanalysis), social work could stake out some professional territory for itself.

In 1963, Social Worker Leontine R. Young was awarded her Doctoral Degree from Columbia University. Although her dissertation was titled The Behavior Syndrome of Parents Who Neglect and Abuse Their Children, she also claimed expertise in the area of unmarried mothers. Young's view of unmarried mothers was directly informed by Freudian theory. Her view was that unmarried mothers were mentally ill individuals who came from sick families.

Nope. No kidding. This is what she believed.

From The University of Oregon's Adoption History Project http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/archive/YoungPPUM.htm

Leontine Young was considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on unmarried mothers in the early postwar era. She contends here that non-marital pregnancy expressed deep neuroses and required sophisticated psychological
interpretation and adjustment. Illegitimacy, Young believed, was the result of emotional conflicts rooted in predictable, negative patterns of childhood development and family life. The study on which this conclusion was based deliberately excluded “girls coming from a cultural background where illegitimacy is more or less socially acceptable.” This was an indirect reference to African-Americans and other minority communities whose supposed toleration of nonmarital pregnancy frequently justified racial discrimination in the delivery of adoption services. The perception that illegitimacy was most problematic among white Americans was widely shared, by professionals and laypeople alike, at a time when Freudianism—and therapeutic culture generally—had reached its zenith in the United States.

The above is an abstract of an article Young penned titled Personality Patterns in Unmarried Mothers, 1945-1947

An excerpt from the article:

Some Inferences

Certainly there are common elements in the backgrounds of these girls. Most conspicuous is the fact that none of them had happy, healthy relationships with their parents. Whatever the particular family situation, the conflicting feelings of love and hate remained a basic and potent source of unhappiness and trouble. Almost equally noticeable was the dominance of the mother, the strength and the pervasiveness of the role she played in this complex drama. . . . The more dominating, the more sadistic, the more rejecting the mother, the sicker and more hopeless was the girl. . . .

All these girls, unhappy and driven by unconscious needs, had blindly sought a way out of their emotional dilemma by having an out-of-wedlock child. . . . None of these violent neurotic conflicts are helpful ingredients in creating a good mother. . . .

Young went on to author four books and became a professor at Ohio State. Her writings became vastly influential and were cited numerous times by scholars. The influence of her theory on field workers was enormous. Leontine Young became a Social Work Goddess. Her theory became CW, and was widely disseminated to physicians, pastors... anyone who might have contact with these young women. Her theory was exported to other English speaking countries, even making it into the British Medical Journal in 1966.

An excerpt: Leontine Young and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles "-Some Thoughts on Illegitimacy by ALFRED WHITE FRANKLIN, M.B.,B.CH., F.R.C.P. reads as follows:

Conclusion

Immoral, wicked, vicious, unfortunate, wronged, ignorant- all these diagnoses colour the picture. Few concerned try to discover what is really wrong. The too-ready pity of the doctor may lead to unwise advice. Perhaps only through fully experiencing the pregnancy, facing the result, and possessing and caring for the baby can the girl penetrate the obscuring veil of fantasy, self-deceit, self-torture, to emerge into the necessary world of reality. Cold and hard this may be, but perhaps it is -her one chance to be freed from her crippling involvement in the web of family emotions. Many of these girls are mentally sick people whose self-prescribing of a pregnancy has only added one more social problem for themselves, their families, and the community. (Emphasis added.)

For the complete article, please see:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1844555&blobtype=pdf (warning: pdf)

The interesting thing about this article is that while Franklin is in agreement with Young about the diagnosis, he is in disagreement with the treatment for the problem. More on this further down this entry.

The bottom line here is that this psychosocial theory of single motherhood as neuroses rapidly gained ascendancy in the United States and in English speaking countries around the globe. It had currency anywhere that single mothers contacted the social welfare system - maternity homes, doctors' offices, hospitals,the psychological consulting room, the pastor's office. Single mothers were not viewed as healthy, sexually active women who were trapped between their biology and the culture of their times. (Please remember that in the U.S. Griswold was decided in 1965 and only applied to married couples, and that Roe was years off into the future.)

As a result, single mothers were regarded everywhere as living examples of infantile sexuality run amok... neurotic sex delinquents.

BUT, happily, scientifically, in the best American spirit of ingenuity and can-do, the system offered hope of a cure, too. The claim was that the unmarried mom could be cured of her neurosis IF she released her baby for adoption. The result was that, in the United States and in Canada, the UK and Australia, (all of whom followed the American model) the pressure on white unmarried mothers to release their newborn babies for adoption became enormous.

It must be mentioned that this pressure dovetailed nicely with the political agendas of people who wished to keep single mothers off welfare, people who wished to advance their moral agendas by punishing women who exercized sexual agency,people who made a profit from adoption fees, people who were infertile, and garden
variety misogynists.

For instance:

. . . babies born out of wedlock [are] no longer considered a social problem . . . white, physically healthy babies are considered by many to be a social boon . . . " (i.e. a valuable commodity..). - Social Work and Social Problems (1964), National Association of Social Workers.

(quote courtesy Karen WB of BSERI)

Or:

. . . society has seemed more interested in punishing the unwed mother and her illegitimate child than in understanding the social, economic, and psychological forces which have placed them in a deviant social position." The Unwed Mother, edited by Robert W. Roberts, (Harper & Row) copyright 1966

(quote courtesy Karen WB of BSERI)

Or:

Unwed mothers should be punished and they should be punished by taking their children away." - Dr. Marion Hilliard of Women's College Hospital, Daily Telegraph, (Toronto, November 1956)

(quote courtesy Karen WB of BSERI)

It should further be mentioned that the adoption option was an ahistoric one. The redemptive aspects of responsible single motherhood had long been regarded by the child welfare community as the prescription for the sin of premarital sex. Social workers entering the field changed all that during the Baby Scoop Era. Unmarried mothers became a boon to people more powerful than us. Some coveted our babies - for profit, or to raise. To others, we were just another political tool.

This was all, of course, regardless of the costs to us moms.



Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!



These social and political pressure played out in maternity home policies that kept women isolated and immersed in a carefully cultivated atmosphere of intense powerlessness and shame. Women in these homes were subjected to a thoughtfully designed counselling program whose goal was to lead them to the "inescapable" conclusion that adoption was not only best for their babies, it was also their ticket out of the neuroses the experts alleged was the cause of their pregnancies.

On admission to these homes, women were stripped of all ties to their previous lives - clothing, possessions, personal money - none of it was allowed. False names were assigned to be used in the home. Incoming and outgoing mail was read. Phone contact was extremely limited. Leaving the premises was tightly controlled and never, ever, ever, allowed without a chaperone of some kind.

Women were routinely and by design not advised of the rights, nor of any specific social welfare resource available to them to help them keep and raise their babies. Women have testified repeatedly that if they asked, they were informed that welfare was not going not be sufficient for their needs. They were further told that they and their children would be outcasts for life. They were told they had nothing of value to offer their own children, and in fact, they would be harmful, even toxic to their own children.

Women were not permitted access to attorneys, personal friends (including the baby's fathers), or anyone else who might act as a social support, offer help, or offer a different view of alternatives to adoption. Only mortified grandparents-in-waiting were permitted visitation for a few hours on Sundays.

A few quotes from contemporaneous writings:

An unwed mother who releases her child for adoption needs legal counsel, as to her rights and the termination of same. Only an attorney is qualified to spell out and interpret these rights to her..... Unfortunately, most mothers of children born out of wedlock .... are frequently in fear or shame, misguided legally by persons not qualified to interpret these rights." Counseling the Unwed Mother, by Helen E. Terkelsen, copyright 1964

(quote courtesy Karen WB of BSERI)

Here's another:

The first thing the unmarried mother is likely to lose is her right to make important decisions. The agency or community tells her what she must do if she is to receive the services she needs . . . In most instances the plan for the baby is pre-determined. Often these matters are decided without her being able to state her own preferences. HELPING UNMARRIED MOTHERS, by Rose Bernstein, copyright 1971 (Emphasis added)

(quote courtesy Karen WB of BSERI)

These pressures played out in hospital policies as well. Young mothers were frequently left to labor alone. Many women have testified to punitive obstetric practices such as not administering pain medication in a timely manner, if at all. Other places practiced veterinary obstetrics; heavily sedating women, and then delivering the babies via forceps while mom was in full leather restraints. Many hospitals did not allow the newly delivered woman any access to the baby at all. In fact, many women were never even allowed to see their children after birth. It can not be emphasized enough that these women were the legal mothers of these babies, yet their babies were forcibly removed and secreted away.

It also must be said that practices varied from place to place. Some women were allowed to see, hold and feed their babies, even for up to 10 days afterwards. It was thought that at the end of the ten day interval, removing the baby taught a more
memorable lesson to the youthful sex deviant than merely removing her baby from her at birth.

Surrender practices also varied. Some women succumbed to the pressures and signed surrender papers, believing it was best. There are women who have stated that the baby was snatched from their arms as they tried to leave the hospital. There are women, like me, who were threatened with involuntary incarceration in mental health facilities and removal of any subsequent children if we did not sign. (Remember: we were "neurotic" and possibly even "psychotic"). There are women who have stated they were incarcerated in mental health facilities during their pregnancies. There are women who have stated that they were made to sign papers while sedated. There are women who still have amnesia for the signing of the papers down to this very day.

And there are women, many many women in fact, who have remained silent all their lives about their adoption experiences. One can only conjecture why -- there are a lot of possibilities.

But the final outcome of these practices was that all these women lost their babies to closed, stranger adoption.

The consequences of this loss have been life long for many of us. Known consequences range from secondary infertility to clinical depression, with many varied grief reactions. The stories so many of these women tell are enlightening and depressing.


What subsequent social history and these narratives show is that Leontine Young was simply, baldly, flat out wrong. Unmarried mothers are not neurotic sex delinquents. They are by and large healthy young women exercizing their human right to autonomy. Babies are the product of sexual activity, not neuroses. Emotional ills are not CAUSES of adoption, as Leontine Young maintained. But they are its EFFECTS.

Uncounted numbers of women lost their babies to adoption during the BSE because of Young's untested, unfounded, incorrect theory. Real women sustained real damage and suffered real pain for a really long time because Leontine was wrong.

The coerced, forced, or othewise illegal methods used for taking adoption consents from unmarried mothers during the BSE has never been acknowledged or addressed in any way, shape or form by the NASW. The consequences of these adoptions in the lives of women who lost their babies have never been addressed. The records remained sealed to this day, partly because, in my opinion, the contents of those records may be legal poison for the individuals and institutions who participated in these practices.

Adoption practice during the BSE is, as of this writing, a matter of serious social injustice that has never been addressed.


Barb, for BSERI

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For more information and research on the Baby Scoop Era, please vist our website www.babyscoopera.com , The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative

Europe Gets It: "Preventing the first form of violence against children: abandonment at birth.

THIS report is from the June 27, 2009 Council of Europe's meeting. The first part of the meeting is titled "Preventing the first form of violence against children: abandonment at birth."

It contains a wealth of material. The report addresses adoption, maternity homes, anonymous infant abandonment, along with affirmations for supporting unmarried mothers and their children.


A quote:

Mr HANCOCK (United Kingdom)rapporteur.

..."I agree entirely with Ms Woldseth that trafficking and selling of babies is an obscene act. Turning babies into a commodity and making money out of them is evil."


..."I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw in Ukraine. The Ukrainians tried to bring couples together again but, more important, to bring mothers and babies together again, giving them sustained help – funding them and looking after them for a two-year period. Some of the mothers we met were only 14 or 15-year-olds and had given up their children but, because of the support they were able to receive, they had been reunited with their child only three or four months later. They lived in caring communities of six mothers with close support. One of the girls had gone back to school and was hoping to go to university. She was looking after her baby, and I am delighted to say that the baby now has recognition from his father. That was due to the determined efforts of the mother to make something of her life and because Ukrainian society had put in the resources to make that happen. I should like such examples to be followed in many different places. They are small projects but there is much hope arising from them."


..."In all instances, I am sure that every mother wants to keep her child with her if it is at all practical or possible. Even in the direst situations, they hold on to their children. One of the most tragic scenes I have ever witnessed was in Ethiopia in 1984. A mother had walked across the desert for 10 days during the worst of the famine on the borders of Eritrea and Ethiopia, carrying her child. She was a young woman in her early 20s and her baby was very weak and sick. The baby had literally drained her mother of all the fluids in her body. For 10 days, the mother had walked across the desert. When she arrived at the aid station where I was privileged to be, the baby was taken from her and was saved. The last words that the mother said to the Ethiopian nurse who was looking after her were, “Will my baby live?” Within minutes of being told that her baby would live, she died. I do not know where that girl is now, but I hope that she always remembers the sacrifice that her mother made to keep her alive."

These speeches were made prior to a vote taken on "Preventing the first form of violence against children: abandonment at birth (Doc. 11538.)" You can read the entire resolution here.

Item 4 of the resolution states:

4. The Assembly notes that adoption has become a market and that the shortage of adoptable babies in the west makes matters worse. Adoption is closely tied up with abandonment, just as it is with child trafficking. Non-governmental organisations often complain that mothers in distress are not sufficiently well informed about the options open to them and that their vulnerability is exploited to persuade them in effect to abandon their newborn children. (Emphasis added.)

The resolution passed 29/1/0.

It's good for all of us to take a moment to reflect on the fact that even though at times it seems as though the adoption industry has effectively created an alterative version of reality regarding adoption and its outcomes in this country, rational people elsewhere do get it. European leaders are making it clear that they, at least, refuse to live in a Potemkin Village in AdoptionLand.

More Light Reading

From the Marsh Law Blog : The International Best Interests of the Child and US Child Welfare Industry Hypocrisy

http://www.childlaw.us/2008/07/the-international-best-interes.html


H/T to BL for bringing to our attention these next two essays on how the words we choose to use when speaking about interpersonal violence work to reframe and conceal that violence. The relevance of this topic will be clear to those of us whose children were taken away by force, against our will.

http://www.yaletownfamilytherapy.com/tcpapers/allanwade03.doc

Language and Violence:
Analysis of Four Discursive Operations

Linda Coates and Allan Wade


http://www.yaletownfamilytherapy.com/tcpapers/allanwade01.doc

Despair, Resistance, Hope:
Response-Based Therapy with Victims of Violence

Allan Wade, Ph.D.



Barb, for myself

You Do The Math

Please bookmark this paper: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hotz/working_papers/teen.pdf

I am not going to comment on this. I simply want to going to bring this paper to your attention. Everything you read is a direct quote from the paper.


Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences:Exploiting a Natural Experiment*

Abstract

"We exploit a “natural experiment” associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing."


V. Joseph Hotz
Department of Economics
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Susan Williams McElroy
School of Social Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, TX 75083

Seth G. Sanders
Department of Economics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742




"Our major finding is that many of the apparent negative consequences of teenage child bearing on the subsequent socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers are much smaller than those found in studies that use alternative methodologies to identify the causal effects of teenage childbearing. We also find evidence that teenage mothers earn more in the labor market at older ages than they would have earned if they had delayed their births. Comparing our IV estimates with estimates based on ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods that control for observable characteristics, we find that the apparent negative consequences previously attributed to teenage childbearing appear to be the result of the failure to account for other, unobservable factors. "(pg.5)

V. Conclusion "In this study, we have used an alternative and innovative strategy to estimate the causal effects associated with teenage childbearing in the U.S. In particular, we have focused on women who first become pregnant as teenagers and employ a natural experiment to obtain a more comparable,and plausible, comparison group with which to derive estimates of counterfactual outcomes for teen mothers. Our results suggest that much of the “concern” that has been registered regarding teenage childbearing is misplaced, at least based on its consequences for the subsequent educational and economic attainment of teen mothers. In particular, our estimates imply that the “poor” outcomes attained by such women cannot be attributed, in a causal sense, primarily to their decision to begin their childbearing at an early age. Rather, it appears that these outcomes are more the result of social and economic circumstances than they are the result of the early childbearing of these women.Furthermore, our estimates suggest that simply delaying their childbearing would not greatly enhance their educational attainment or subsequent earnings or affect their family structure. " (pg.28)


"Taken together, the results presented in this article call into question the view that teenage childbearing is one of the nation’s most serious social problems, at least when one measures its severity in terms of the potential financial gains to these women and to taxpayers of having allteen mothers delay their childbearing until they are older. At the same time, we caution the reader not to generalize from these findings. We have considered only selected potential consequences of teenage childbearing. Furthermore, the findings from one study cannot be considered as conclusive. However, for many of the socioeconomic outcomes considered in this article, our findings are consistent with the estimated effects of teenage childbearing found in the work of Geronimus and Korenman (1992) and Grogger and Bronars (1993). Our work, along with these earlier studies, raises serious doubts about the extent and nature of teenage childbearing as a “social problem” in the U.S. More importantly, our research casts doubt on the view that postponing childbearing will improve the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers in any substantial way. " (pg. 29)

Nobody Is Forgotten

NOBODY with any interest in adoption should fail to visit Bastardette's Memoriam for Russian adoptees killed by their "forever families" Nikto Ne Zabyt - Nichto Ne Zabyto - Nobody is Forgotten - Nothing is Forgotten.

Bastardette writes:

On August 3, 2005, The Daily Bastardette published "Forever Family - Forever Dead: A Memoriam to Russian Adoptees Murdered by their Forever Families." Since then, that entry and my other pieces on abused and murdered Russian adoptees in the United States, I have received hundreds if not thousands of hits from the US Government, courts, child welfare agencies, the media, Russia and other countries of the Former Soviet Union, and the general public. To make it easier for these pieces to be found and read together in one place, I have collected all the entries here: Nikto Ne Zabyt - Nichto Ne Zabyto - Nobody is Forgotten - Nothing is Forgotten.

My entries on Masha Allen adopted by a divorced male pedophile, staved and sexually abused for years before her rescue by the FBI, are also here. Though freed from her Forever Father, she remains victim of the adoption industry and a blind and silent child welfare system that wants her to go away You see, Masha has talked too much She lifted up the rock. She is the Rosetta Stone of corrupt international adoption. Masha, too, must be remembered for the brave and beautiful girl she is--and to be encouraged to keep fighting. Masha, you are not alone!

The words "nobody is forgotten - nothing is forgotten" were written by Russian poet Olga Berggolts, a survivor of Stalin's purges and the Siege of Leningrad. They are carved in the wall of Piskaryevskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

The entries here also appear, some in a slightly different form, on the Daily Bastardette and will continue to be posted there.

Please take a few minutes out of your day to visit this worthy ( and tragic) site.

Barb, for myself