Tuesday, July 08, 2008

ADOPTION AGENCIES NO REGULATIONS PART THREE

This is the final part of this series. It is about the National Council for Adoption and its member agencies. They are just the organization that we all love to hate. I think what bothers me most is they use my tax dollars against me and all living adoption. They use my tax dollars to create a new scheme to get more mothers relinquish. They use my tax dollars to force fathers out of the picture.

They present themselves as the absolute on adoption. They represent adoption agencies. They have their best interest at heart. Not adoptees, adoptive parents and natural parents. They don't have members of Bastard Nation, Ethica, OriginsUSA, PEAR or Concerned United Birthparents in their organization.

According to their website, this is their staff:

Thomas Atwood is the CEO/President of this organization. His earnings for 2007 was $157,713 plus $8,338 in benefits (medical, dental and retirement). He is their spoke person for anything adoption. He is the one that usually testifies in front of Congress or state legislators when bills are pending that affect the livelihood of the member adoption agencies. He was the Director of Coalition Relations and Executive Editor of Policy Review for the Heritage Foundation Her also served on the Board of Directors of Bethany Christian Services. He was also the Vice President of Policy and Programs for the Family Research Council

Rodney Huey is in charge of Public Relations.

Chuck Johnson is Vice President and Training/Agency Services Director. He is also working on the Infant Adoption Training Initiative.

Janelle Kreeb is the Recruitment Coordinator. She too is working on the Infant Adoption Training Initiative.

Lauren Ridenour is the Assistant Director, Development and External Relations.

Karen Sherman is the Coordinator of Training and Agency Services.

Angie Vineyard is Assistant Director of Development.

Sarah Yaklic is Director of Operations.

Marc Zappala is the Assistant Director of Research. I know that this gentleman keeps an eye on the blogs. He does much of his research keeping an eye on us delightful ornery adoptees who speak out so loudly.

According to their website, this is their Board of Directors.

Stan Swim is the President of the GFC Foundation. This foundation is non profit grant making organization. They keep a list of churces and other types of non profit organizations. Their assets are $79,935,679 according to their IRS Form 990. Mr. Swim was the Senior Analyst at Probity Advisers. He was also the Database Administrator at Ancestry.com/MyFamily.com. They also gave the NCFA $45,000. They also gave grants to The Heritage Foundation ($20,000). They also gave $3,595,515 to the Temple Fund for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Bill Blacquiere is the President of Bethany Christian Services. Bethany Christian Services has its own organization.

Heidi Bruegel Cox is the legal counsel of Gladney Adoption Center in Fort Worth, Texas. She has for sixteen years fought against adoptees and their families having access to their own original birth certificates. She at one of the many NCFA conference recommended to their member agencies to target women in jails, prisons, and state hospitals.

Lou Davidson is married to Ralph P. Davidson. Her husband runs Davidson & Associates. He is on the board of Refugees International. He has been on the board of Time, Inc. He is also on the board of Phoenix House which is a non profit agency for the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse in men, women, and teens. She and her husband seem to be philanthropists.

Ted Kim is the founder and executive director of the Adoption Service Information agency (ASIA). ASIA has now merged with the Children's Home Society.

Scott Mackin

Larisa Mason runs the International Assistance Group which is an international adoption agency.

Rosemary McDonough is a right to lifer.

Kimberly Newman is an attorney for O'Melveny & Meyers. She is also on the Youth Service America. She is the partner in charge of charitable donations and community service in the Washington, D.C. office and member of the Firm's Diversity Advisory Board.

Fred Riley is the commissioner of LDS Family Services. He has said LDS Family Services -- which already has offices in Australia, England, New Zealand and Japan -- opened an office in Mexico in January, and it will be opening new offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile, in July. Pilot programs will be offered in those locations, he said, anticipating that, in "three to five years, we'll be opening up significantly more offices around the world." Wow, going to other countries and performing more corrupt adoptions. All I can say is wow.

Jim Savley was the Executive Director of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority Save-A-Baby program. Another right to lifer.

Wayne Sharp is the senior financial advisor for Ameriprise Financial Services. If you want to leave a generous donation to the NCFA (NOT), you can contact him. He will help you set it up in your last will and testament.

Louis Stern is a marketing professor.

Pamela Stevenson

Delia Stroud

EMERITUS BOARD

Mary Cunningham Agee ran the Nurturing Network and Semper Charitable Foundation as CEO and President. She has also served on Aguinas House at Dartmouth, the Susan B. Anthony list, the Thomas More Law School, The National Memorial for the Unborn and Women Affirming Life. Nuturing Network is basically a crisis pregnancy center. They place a woman in a family home in an area far away from her family. Hmmm that sounds like the Baby Scoop Era. This woman is really scary.

Leo LiVolsi is on the Communications Advisory Board for the town of West Field, NJ. He works for Securities America, Inc.

Robert Parker is a partner in the Paul Weiss Law firm. In addition to litigating a wide variety of matters in federal district courts, the Court of International Trade, and in domestic and international arbitration proceedings, Mr. Parker has also appeared before the International Trade Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Election Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He represented a government official in a Congressional investigation, and has argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Federal and Eleventh Circuits and the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Mr. Parker served as counsel to the Rudman Committee which, in 1995, recommended changes to the governance and structure of the National Association of Securities Dealers, the organization that operates the Nasdaq Stock Market. He has also worked with clients’ management and directors in several major internal corporate investigations, including Fannie Mae, Xerox Corp., The Boeing Company and Rent-a-Center.

A past president of the International Trade Commission Trial Lawyers Association, Mr. Parker is on the board and has served as chairman of the National Council for Adoption.

Mr. Parker was counsel to the chairman of the International Trade Commission from 1988-91.

Robert Vitillo is Father Robert Vitillo . He has worked with Catholic Social Services. Father Vitillo, a Catholic priest, is the Special Advisor on HIV/AIDS to Caritas Internationalis, Vatican-based global confederation of national Catholic social service and development organizations that operates in some 200 countries. In this capacity, he coordinates an advisory group on HIV/AIDS, serves on the AIDS Funding Network Group of Catholic organizations engaged in HIV and AIDS programs in the developing countries, and assists the Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis in liaison with the Pontifical Council on Health Care and the Holy See Permanent Observer at the United Nations. Vitillo is also president of the National Catholic AIDS Network board of directors, serves as co-convenor of the Strategy Group on HIV and AIDS for the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (based at the World Council of Churches), and is a member of the Boards of Directors of the National Council for Adoption, the Global Community Service Foundation, and Medicines for Humanity. He coordinates collaboration with other Catholic organizations and directs the Caritas Internationalis response to wide-ranging aspects of the global pandemic in various parts of the world.

Here is the financial information on their IRS Form 990:

Government contributions in 2007 was $349,932. Their total earnings was $1,545,967. They received $57,934 in membership dues. This was the only organization in this series that actually claims the lobbying costs. They spent $2,953 in direct lobbying. In other lobbying, they spent $234,280. In their grassroots lobbying, they spent $58,570.

Their current objectives for the year:

1. Infant Adoption Revival Project
2. International Adoption
3. Foster Care Reform

This organization and the Family Research Council headed by Tony Perkins hired the Right Brain people to understand how to convince more women to relinquish their children. The result was the Birthmother, Good mother: Her Story to Heroic Redemption. booklet. They created this to counter the "I can not give up my child."

Then you have the Infant Adoption Awareness Training which gives counselors tools to help coerce women out of their children. This is an organization that believes women should have absolute control over the choice of adoption. They use our tax dollars to lobby against adoptee access in all of the states.

LDS Family Services and all of their agencies are also major player in the NCFA. We know that LDS Family Services is having major issues with contested adoptions. Shawn McDonald has won his tort claim against the LDS Church and their LDS Family Services. There is another case in the Houston area for the same kind of thing. Then there is Matt Tenneson, Camira Bailey, Cody O'Dea, Bryn Ayre, and Joshua Simmerson.There are many other cases that have been placed under a gag order.

Bethany Christian Services is another one of the majors in the NCFA. I know that they have edited a natural mother friend of mine on their forum. They specialize in domestic, international, embryo services, foster care, infertility ministries, orphan care, and last but not least estate planning. Gotta love that estate planning part. They provide valuable services to the orphanages in various countries. When I see that in their mission statements, I bet money that they are paying the orphanage directors money to direct children to their agency. I can't prove it but this is happening in various countries with all kinds of adoption agencies.

Bethany Christian Services are members of the following organizations:

Alliance for Children & Families
Christian Charities USA
Council of Reformed Charities
Council on Accreditation
National Council for Adoption
Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability
Independent Charities of America
Joint Council on International Children's Services
Michigan Federation for Children and Families
North American Council on Adoptable Children(a Bethany organization)
North American Association of Christian Social Workers
Willow Creek Association

All three of these organizations are very powerful. All three of these agencies are intertwined with each other. They all believe that adoptees should not have access to their own records. They all fight hard against it. All three get governmental funds and grants. These are our tax dollars. With their opposition of adoptee rights, I believe that they should stand down and aside. It is a major conflict of interest.

I along with many other adoptees, natural parents, and adoptive parents are tax paying citizens. As such, we should be afforded the same rights as the non adoption related folks. We should not separated because of our connection to adoption. The laws in 44 fifty states does exactly that. They separate us but tell us that we are equal. In Brown vs. Board of Education, separate is not equal. The adoption industry will be made to concede this issue.




No comments: