BEFORE and AFTER by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate
The Incredible Read Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived The Tennessee Children's Home Society.
Commentary: Highly Recommended.
This book is about the children who were adopted through the Tennessee Children's Home Society, which was run by a woman named Georgia Tann, who owned TCHS and whose means for acquiring newborns and babies to be put up for adoption were questionably honorable and then became downright criminal. These children searched for their birth parents and the news was bad. Georgia Tann died with criminal charges against her business pending.
It's a series of emotional stories by the adoptees and their families describing the situations in which mothers gave up their babies to Tann. These birth mothers were in desperate circumstances, not unimaginable today, but during the years when social services in America were not in place, when abortion was always dangerous or illegal, and when open adoption was non-existent. Information about the origins of the baby and their parentage was edited by Tann. Adoptive parents were grateful to her and not always asking questions, so long as the baby was healthy. Money went into her pocket. Eventually many others who should have known better were lying to parents that meant to keep their babies that the baby had died in the night. Instead these were stolen. So imagine if you found out that your parents had been lied to in this way and that you had started life out as a baby they intended to keep.
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Years ago I had a friend who, with her husband, and after a bout of cancer in her 30's, wished to adopt. They went through a living hell to qualify to adopt a child, even with the help of a sympathetic and honorable lawyer. Ads were placed in three states where abortion was looked down upon. Birth mothers phoned long distance. My friend and her husband had to turn over health and financial records. The birth mothers who were doing the choosing. My friend and her husband owned a home and had a spare bedroom.
Good thing because an adopted child had to have their own room. They paid out thousands for investigations and home inspections and interviews.
They were told there were years long wait for babies born addicted to crack. Insulting to me, though not personal, was that they also had to have twelve letters of recommendations by other married couples, so unmarried friend's recommendations or input were not sought. And they were told that if either of them hit the age of 40 without adopting it was hopeless. NO WONDER SO MANY CHILDREN SPEND THEIR LIVES IN FOSTER CARE, where it is OK to be stacked up in bunk beds in shared rooms and people do not have to be homeowners or financially well off.
Her cancer seemed to be an obstacle and after many rejections by birth mothers who were opting for open adoptions, a roller coaster ride of hope and dejection, they never did succeed.
If two college educated people who have a hundred thousand in the bank and own a nice house, have no criminal background or addiction experiences can't get a baby, well, one must have to be really elite. NO WONDER SO MANY PEOPLE ARE HAVING BABIES BY SURROGATE!
All that said, it seems some, if not many, adoptees do want to know how it is that they were adopted and this book's chapters reveal some of the stories discovered by those adopted out of Tann's business.
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The following excerpts are so revealing about Tann's "toxic" adoption practices which went on for twenty-five years which ended about 1950 :
Prologue: "Tanns empire at the Tennessee Children;s Home Society - shortened to TCHS by those familiar with the operation - has been built with a combustible blend of desperate pregnant women shattered children, vulnerable poverty-stricken families, eager adoptive parents, powerful politicians, ego, and greed. ... The new Tennessee governor, Gordon Browing. appoints attorney Robert Taylor to ferret out the grisly truth of TCHS' Memphis operations. He has already discovered damning evidence. Only a small network of co- conspirators know the truth. With the investigation under way, they flee into the crevasses of Memphis and disappear like rats running into the city's sewers. .... Governor Brown releases Taylor's shocking initial report, which details Tann's years of nefarious dealings in the adoption market. She has, the governor reveals, made herself rich and completed an unknown number of horrendous deals involving flesh-and-blood products. ...
page 7 : Within days --- it is announced that she (Tann) has died. The orphanage is not mentioned. The Tennessee State Legislature quickly and quietly seals the paperwork of thousands of TCHS children, which will leave adoptees desperately searching for decades to uncover the truth about their heritage. The investigation concludes that Tann profited from the operation of TCHS in Memphis in excess of five hundred thousand dollars in the last ten years of her life (she died age 59 of, interestingly, uterine cancer) in excess of five hundred thousand dollars - taking in today's equivalent of between five and ten million dollars. .... During that period, the investigation found, she placed more than a thousand children for adoption outside the state of Tennessee, principally in New York and California, the exact number unknown....
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NOTE: TENNESSEE LAW CHANGES and the records that have been maintained become available though an adoptee has to pay fees and got though proving they are eligible for the research service.
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