Continued form Part One

The referral director was cold in tone when she explained that the birth mother had selected another family. How could that be? It was odd that the referral director called us at precisely the time that the potential birthmom had agreed to call me, or was it? Honestly we had many irons in the fire to locate a situation so we put this aside and forged forward and with good results. We located our second daughter’s birth family two weeks later and thirty days after that match we welcomed our baby girl home.

Once our baby was home I called the referral service director to cancel and announce our daughters arrival. Her reaction was very unexpected and set the wheels to my further investigation of what really had occurred in motion. The woman was shocked and rude, yelling at me and chastising us for adopting a GIRL when we had specified a BOY to her. Actually we had simply said we preferred a boy (we already had one daughter) but were open to any sex. The lady added insult to injury when she informed us that we should have passed the information (about our daughter’s birthmother) along to HER as she had many couples waiting specifically for a girl. Well as you can imagine once the steam stopped rolling out my ears I sat down and started to take a better look at the match that mysteriously fell through. I did not however like what I found, we had been what I believe could be best termed scammed by this referral service. How? Well I called the agency director who had originally contacted and matched us to the other birthmother to get more details.

It seems that they (as had we) just signed with that referral service at around the same time. Shortly after our match, which the agency director put together herself outside of the referral service, the agency director received a call from the referral service that they had matched our family with another situation (they hadn’t). She convinced the adoption agency that we were looking at the other situation and that she had other adoptive parents who would help her “re-match” her situation. The baby was due in less than thirty days so the adoption agency director took the referral service on their word and matched her with one of their other clients. The adoption agency director did not call us, the referral service told her not to, that we did not wish to discuss our reasons for pulling out of the match with them directly. The referral service simply called and told us that the birthmother had chosen someone else (she did after they told her we had backed out ). Later, as in after we had found another situation and brought our new daughter home, is when we found out how we had been scammed. The referral service stood to lose out on money if the agency matched us, or the birthmother on their own, so they lied about details to both of us in order to make a match, one with in their contract with the agency. I would love nothing better than to share who this referral service is as they are still in business and in fact went on to become a licensed adoption agency themselves, but in this forum I am prohibited. The number one thing I learned from that experience was always confirm everything, with everyone involved. If I, or the agency, had made a few calls to each other we would have found out what happened much earlier. I am not saying that things would have worked to our benefit but perhaps we might have elected at to at least report the unethical behavior of this particular referral service to the better business bureau.

On another occasion a well known adoption agency did something that was not so kosher to some friends of mine who were hoping to adopt. The agency had an African American expectant mother seeking a black or transracial couple to adopt but the agency had no such waiting couples and were placed in touch with me through a mutual friend who worked for them. Did I know of someone? Yes I did, a transracial couple who I put in touch with the agency and helped to get all the details in order to be presented to this expectant mom. The mutual friend who had put me in touch with the agency also did foster care for them while adoptive parents awaited TPR and she was excited that the baby would come to her during the wait period. It looked very promising for my friends, but then the scam occurred. . .

Continued in Part Three