An Extreme Danger

Christopher and Michelle Pence, of Cedar City UT, were actively seeking children to adopt, advertising themselves through a ‘family profile’. In addition to the 5 children adopted at the core of this story, they had 5 other children.

Pence admitted that between July 16 and August 9, 2021, from his computer at his home in Utah, he accessed a “darknet” website dedicated to arranging contract killings. Through the website, Pence arranged for the murder of the biological parents (a 35-year-old man and 38-year-old woman) of his adopted children and paid a website administrator approximately $16,000 worth of Bitcoin to facilitate the murders. Neither killing took place.

Pence provided the website administrator with the names, address and photographs of the intended victims, instructed the administrator to make the murders look like an accident or botched robbery, and requested that care be taken not to harm any of the children who resided with the victims.

The FBI arrested Pence in Utah on October 27, 2021. He has remained in federal custody until his sentencing. Following his arrest, Pence told investigators that he solicited the murders of the victims because of the fraught relationship between his family and the victims following Pence’s family’s adoption of several of the victims’ children.

Their sense of morality stemmed from their Christian beliefs. Therefore, his wife Michelle urged GoFundMe donors to pray that the charges would be dropped. There were 6 other specific prayer requests including favor with the guards and the judge as well as family unity and a strengthened marriage. Christopher Pence was sentenced to seven years in prison and three years of post-release supervision.

Product Placement

Product placement is a marketing technique in which a product or service is showcased in some form of media, such as television shows, movies, music videos, social media platforms, or even ads for other products. Advertising professionals sometimes call this an embedded marketing strategy.

We watched this movie, Believe In Me, last night. It was an engaging and heartwarming story about the coach of a girl’s basketball team in the 1960s. What was a bit surprising was the insertion of a very common kind of adoption narrative into a movie that didn’t need that to succeed. The narrative was true enough on the surface, as depicted in the movie – the male’s infertility, the woman’s deep desire to become a mother, the visit by the social worker and the last minute call to rush to the hospital to get their soon to be adopted baby girl. I loved the part about the girls rockin and rollin dance moves on the basketball court, as a strategy that made the coach’s effort different from how boys would be coached to play.

Because I have been sensitized to all things adoption, I noticed and my husband even noticed too. He wondered what I thought of it. So, I went looking to see if the adoption part of the movie was part of the true story. The 2006 film is based on the novel “Brief Garland: Ponytails, Basketball and Nothing but Net” by Harold Keith. The novel is about Keith’s real life nephew, Jim Keith. Asked about how factual the book or movie were, the coach laughed and said, “The book about 80 percent and the movie maybe 70.” The coach passed away in 2011. That part of his story is in this WordPress blog – LINK>”Here I Stand“. His wife, Jorene, had died before him in October of 2009.

I eventually found that the adoption part of the story is true – as written up in The Oklahoman LINK>Oklahoman’s novel to become movie – the couple adopted two children: a son, James, who lives in Oologah OK, and a daughter, Jeri, who lives in Lansing KS. They also eventually were able to enjoy their three grandchildren being part of their lives.

So, I will admit that the insertion of an adoption story into this movie does not appear to be an effort by the adoption industry to add a positive element into a movie, that it was not otherwise a part of. No way of knowing how intentional the push may have been by anyone involved with the industry. However, the movie didn’t really need that additional part of the couple’s story. Common adoption narratives are – that the birth parent did not want the child, the birth parent could not afford to provide for the child (sadly, too often absolutely believed by the mother to be a real reason), the birth parent was negligent, abusive, or somehow incapable of parenting, and finally that the adoptive parents so wanted these children, and that does appear to be true in the actual story of Coach Keith.

Mary Baker Eddy

In my reading today, I learned that Mary Baker Eddy (the Christian Science founder) was a mother of loss, having given up her son to adoption. I went looking and it appears to be true but interesting to me is how women were disenfranchised at that time. I am only slightly familiar with her philosophy, for I once had a friend long ago who was steeped in it.

McClure’s magazine published “Mary Baker G. Eddy: The Story of Her Life and the History of Christian Science” under Georgine Milmine’s byline, in 14 installments between January 1907 and June 1908, when Eddy was by then 85 years old.

The articles offered examples of Eddy’s “marital, maternal, and domestic inadequacies.” Most notably the loss of her son: Eddy was widowed when she was 22 years old and pregnant, after which she returned to live in her father’s home. Her son was raised there for the first few years of his life, looked after by domestic staff because of Eddy’s poor health.

McClure’s alleges that she allowed him to be adopted when he was four. According to Eddy, she was unable to prevent the adoption. Women in the United States at the time could not be their own children’s guardians, per the legal doctrine of coverture. A married woman’s legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own.

Born in Ontario, Canada, Georgine Milmine Welles, who went by her maiden name Georgine Milmine, had worked for the Syracuse Herald as a proofreader and had done some journalistic work. She wanted to write a 12-part monthly series on famous women in America, including Eddy, and had gone to Eddy’s home to ask for an interview but was denied.

She then went to Josephine Woodbury and Frederick Peabody, fierce critics of Eddy, and Peabody especially became extremely influential to Milmine’s research and her views of Eddy. Peabody was actually hired later on by McClure’s to collect affidavits. There is documented evidence that a number of Milmine’s sources were paid to give their testimony.

S S McClure saw Eddy as a “natural” for the magazine, because of her marital history and idiosyncrasies: “The material was touchy, and would attract a world of readers both of the faithful and the doubters. … The job seemed to [Willa Cather] a little infra dig, not on the level where she cared to move. But she inspired confidence, had the mind of a judge and the nose of a detective when she needed it.”

What Makes The Difference ?

I could say this a million times and it will never be enough. Let’s break this down.

Money means choices.

No money means no choices.

Therapy is a privilege. It is a privilege 99% of those in poverty do not have. At least not, quality mental health care. Don’t even get me started on primary care.

Everything costs money. Not having money means you don’t have options. I’m so sick and tired of people from a place of privilege recommending shit those without privilege can’t afford. Like those who need it don’t even think of it….

Even people in poverty don’t live under a rock. They know what they need and could use but there’s no money!!!

Don’t judge because they haven’t done this or that – unless you want to pay for it.

Because I am in a good mood today –
No More Excuses . . . it’s all about the money.

It’s OK to Remain Childless

I stumbled on this “letter” the other day while looking for an image for one of these blogs. So often, infertility leads to an adoption. Among reform activists is of the suggestion to look upon being childless from a positive perspective. Here’s that article, from The Mom Cafe, with a LINK>Dear Childless Mother . . .

Christine Carter writes – “I may never truly understand your pain.” She adds an acknowledgement of “your ongoing breath of sadness for the child you don’t have in your arms and in your life.”

She admits – “I can only guess … how you feel. Empty of dreams, empty of hope, empty of the life you thought you’d have as a mother.” And then goes on to say “I am not more of a woman, simply because I was able to have kids.”

She honestly adds – “The gift of being a parent is not conditional upon being a person worthy of having a child.”

If this speaks to you, then you can read the entire letter at the link above.

Kinship Adoptee

Walden Robert Cassotto better known as Bobby Darin

Later in adult life, Darin discovered he had been raised by his grandmother, Vivian “Polly” Fern Walden, not his mother, and that the girl he thought was his sister, Vanina Juliette Casotto, was actually his mother. These events deeply affected Darin and sent him into a long period of seclusion. The identity of his birth father was never publicly disclosed. Bobby Darin’s, 17 year old mother, gave him up for adoption by his grandmother at birth.

He was politically active with the presidential campaign for Robert F. Kennedy and devastated when he was assassinated. He wrote an anti-war folk song, Simple Song of Freedom.

He was only 37 when he died. He had lifelong heart issues due to suffering from acute rheumatic fever as a child. “Life to me is struggles, successes, and failures. Living is what is going on in between those things. I have life, but whether or not I am living is something else.” he was quoted as saying not long before his death. After his first open heart surgery in 1971, he said when released from the hospital – “I had expected to kick off by the time I was 30, so I bought a few extra years.”

In 1990, they inducted Darin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which his son, Dodd who was only 12 when Darin died, accepted. He brought his daughters with him.

The 2004 biopic, “Beyond the Sea”, is how I learned about his life, though I knew his name and was familiar with some of his songs without really knowing they were his. Though the actor who plays him has been disgraced, he really put his all into the role. It was an odd kind of presentation, sort of like a song and dance musical and in an old Frank Sinatra kind of way.

Childless Mother

I learned about this book today. From Pegasus Publishers comes this description – 1970, pre-Choice America. After their eighth move in her thirteen short years, the lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, Tracy Mayo longed for a normal adolescence – to have friends, to feel rooted. What she got was a pregnancy at fourteen and exile to a maternity home. There, she bore not only a child but also the weight of the culture’s shame. She was required to surrender her baby boy at birth and pretend it never happened. Twenty-two years later, her longing undiminished, Tracy set out to find him – and perhaps, through her search, to reclaim her self. Are we moving back to a world where women have no agency, stripped of control of their bodies and their futures? More than fifty years after one frightened, grief-stricken young mother was ordered to forget, Tracy’s story is even more important to remember.

A book note from KATE MOSES, author of Wintering, Cakewalk: A Memoir, and Mothers Who Think – In her courageous and beautifully rendered memoir, Childless Mother, Tracy Mayo breaks ranks with the institutionalized secrecy, shame, and silencing that shattered countless pregnant girls and young women prior to legalized abortion and open adoption.

You can also read an excerpt posted by the author courtesy of Severance Magazine at this LINK>The Still Point.

Tracy Mayo

An Evolving Approach

I don’t live in Florida and there may be aspects of this effort that I can’t know about. I learned about this organization, LINK>Embrace Families, from a post seeking a a home for a young woman before she turns 18. One kinship carer noted that – My cousin and friend was adopted at 17 years old. It was a long journey to her, but she prefers it that way. My aunt met her in a campaign of giving Christmas presents and progressed to a very unlikely adoption.

If this organization is true to their stated intentions, values and priorities – it is an example of how the approach to child welfare issues is evolving to be better than the old models. Their goal is to overcome the root causes of abuse and neglect through the programs they have created. Sadly, dominating local news where I live in Southeast Missouri is the story of the death of a 4 year old believed to be due to those causes.

They are committed to keeping struggling families intact and improving outcomes for children, teens and young adults. They feel their effort extends beyond the scope of traditional child welfare services. They feel that a child’s future should not be indelibly tarnished by events that brought them into the child welfare system.

They note that their investment in youth services ensures that teens and young adults in foster care have the supplies, resources and skills necessary to thrive personally, to achieve academically, and to prepare successfully for career and personal success. They provide the support needed for young adults to navigate the complex road to self-sufficient adulthood. This includes: mentoring, tutoring, youth advocacy preparation, housing support, academic support, career readiness, independent living transition planning, driver license training, and more.

Multi-Generational Impacts

I did read this book and I know that the impacts of adoption did have generational effects. I’ve written about this before. In today’s story, an adoptee shares it’s effects in her life and family.

I see many adoptees who have such beautiful relationships with their own children. Are there others out there who struggle with relationships with their own children? My birth mother and I were both products of the baby snatch era. She discovered she was bought by her parents only after they died. She abandoned me as a toddler to an orphanage. I was adopted but later returned to foster care by my adopted parents. I became pregnant at 15 and forced to give birth. I could not place my son for adoption due to my own negative experience as an adoptee but received no form of parenting support/skill training. My birth mother found me as a young adult (only after finding her birth mother first) – only to disown and reabandon me. I have no relationship with my adopted mother, my birth mother, or adult son. I feel like I failed to interrupt multi generational trauma. My failure pains me greatly and I feel very alone in this.

Bribing DNA Test Sites ?

I do have my doubts about the bribing but it is a real concern for the adoptee in today’s story.

I have semi-recently remembered that I am adopted, something that my parents hid from me and still do not admit. So are my siblings, but all of us are not related to our parents and each other. Certainly, not as closely as immediate family. We started to guess that we were adopted when we were children. Our allergies were very different. And for me again in 7th grade, when we did a genetics unit. My siblings and I don’t talk about it now as adults. When I was in college, I hired a private investigator and he unearthed so much that everyone was lying about, including this. I’m really wanting to do so again, but can’t afford it. A DNA test isn’t a given, because my parents have money (I don’t) and they can bribe the testing site to give fake results, it’s happened before. I did get real results when I was an adolescent, but I can’t remember what they were except for a few parts. I don’t know what happened to the test result papers. I had wanted to keep them forever.

One suggestion – Once you do an Ancestry or 23 and Me test, I suggest joining DNA Detectives and ask for a search angel. Search angels are volunteers who help you find your biological family for free, if you are interested in that.

Someone else pointed out – Ancestry, 23andMe etc have very strict rules and I very much doubt that they could be bribed to give you false results. You wouldn’t even have to get your parents to test. With a bit of detective work and some close enough matches, you can prove if you are related to your parents or not.

Yet another person notes – you’d probably be disturbed to learn the extents small local places are willing to go to protect recipient parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if a local facility was supportive and even somehow involved with misinforming the adoptee. Something can be illegal, yet people/businesses can still (and often do) break the law. “Illegal” doesn’t mean “impossible” or even “unlikely”.

More than one expressed this thought – now is NOT the time to tell original poster to seek mental health help. Dissociation is a trip. It’s not surprising someone would suppress or dissociate away from the information that they’re adopted. Imagine finding something like that out after being lied to. People are going to process something like that at their own speed and seek help when they feel ready.

One adoptee added – don’t we all need some professional mental healthcare for our adoptions and lifetimes of traumas!? The lucky few have access to those resources.

And something like this DOES happen and so someone shares this story about a person that didn’t find out he was adopted until he was 40. His sister said that they tried to tell him when he was 6 years old and he got really upset – so they decided to just not bring it up again. He was very different looking to his parents. He finally got tested. It took him a bit to be ok with it all but now he is.