New Jersey Adoption Gone Wrong

“It was only the third time Gloria Roman held her son — and she knew it would be  the last.

The 7-pound, healthy baby boy was only a few days old. Roman gazed at him and saw herself in his tiny face.

Holding him felt “like home,” she said.

As she handed him over to his new mother, Roman said she was filled with doubt. Was she doing the right thing giving up her baby for adoption?

“It hurt me because I didn’t want to do it,” said Roman, 20, of Roselle Park. “I wanted to take him home with me. I wish I could’ve. I would think about it — and then I would have to kind of be realistic because of my situation.”

Roman was working a minimum wage job and planning to start her freshman year at Kean University when she learned she was pregnant at age 19. She and her mother, a machine operator, were being evicted from their house and staying with different relatives. The baby’s father wanted nothing to do with the pregnancy, she said.

Unwilling to have an abortion, Roman hid her pregnancy from her family and started talking to a local adoption agency she found through a Google search. A woman from the agency met her at Starbucks and showed her a portfolio of prospective adoptive parents for her baby.

It wasn’t until August, a month after she gave birth and signed the papers surrendering her baby, that Roman fell apart. Through tears, she told her mother and sister that she secretly had a baby and gave him up for adoption. They were stunned.

“I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. I just wanted to have him back,” Roman said.

A legal showdown

The revelation began an unusual legal battle in family court that highlights New Jersey’s complex adoption laws and the often heart-wrenching stories behind adoptions gone wrong.

The case remains under seal by the court, limiting what Roman and her attorneys can say, they said.

They declined to name the adoption agency Roman used, the name of the baby and his adoptive family, where they are living or some of the other details of the case. They also declined to name the baby’s father, who did not object to the adoption and is not involved in the legal case, Roman said.

Because the case is sealed, no court records are publicly available to review. Several local adoption agencies either declined to speak about the case or did not return messages to comment.

During a two-week trial behind closed doors in family court, Roman’s lawyers said they argued that the adoption agency misled the Union County teenager. They argued the agency failed to tell her about alternatives to adoption, as required by New Jersey law, before she signed the papers forever giving up her rights to the baby boy.

“We felt that the agency had not met its obligation to counseling with Gloria before she signed the surrender papers,” said Michael Farhi, one of Roman’s attorneys.

The adoption agency counselor who met with Roman in Starbucks in June 2017, a few weeks before her baby was due, told her the benefits to adoption and sent her a packet of information, the lawyers contend.

But Roman said the woman never told her she could apply for government assistance if she wanted to keep the baby or put the baby in the New Jersey state foster care system and get him back when her finances were more stable.

“They are required to counsel mothers on the alternative to an adoption agency. That’s the way New Jersey law works because they want to make sure that you know all your options before you commit to an adoption,” said Sandra Barsoum, another of Romans’ attorneys. “And that information was withheld or misrepresented.”

The family court judge ruled in February in Roman’s favor and set a deadline for the adoptive family to return the baby to his birth mother within two weeks, her attorneys said.

Roman, who now has a full-time job as a receptionist and new house with her mother, was ecstatic. She got a crib, filled a closet with baby clothes and supplies and prepared to fly several states away to pick up her son.

She arranged with her boss at her job at a legal services firm to work from home for a few months, so she could stay home with the baby. She made plans to eventually return to Kean University to finish her early childhood education degree.

But, at the last minute, the adoptive family filed an appeal with the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division, her attorneys said. That meant the adoptive parents were permited to keep the baby while a panel of appellate judges reviews the case.

Both sides are awaiting the appellate court decision, which they expect to come any day, the attorneys said.

A plea for help

Roman went public with her story when she set up a GoFundMe page last month to help cover her legal bills. She is trying to raise $90,000 to cover her current legal bills and the anticipated cost of the appeal.

“I should not be kept from him because I could not afford to fight the appeal against the adoptive parents . . . I want my son back in my arms,” Roman wrote on the page.

As of last week, the page had raised $4,690, mostly from friends and relatives who were surprised to hear Roman had given birth to a baby.

Roman said she never wanted to go to court. She texted and emailed the baby’s adoptive mother directly, pleading with the family to return her son. But the couple refused.

“I told her I was never going after her personally. It was me trying to fight for my son because I felt like I was taken advantage of,” Roman said.

Despite the legal battle, the adoptive mother still sends Roman photos and updates about the baby weekly via email. The 9-month-old baby seems happy and healthy, living several states away in the middle of the country in a state she declined to name.

Roman said she knows on the other side of the case is a kind and loving couple who have raised the little boy, stayed up with him at night, changed thousands of diapers and loved him since the day he was born.

“Nobody wins in this,” said Barsoum, Roman’s attorney.

No option to change your mind

A domestic adoption of a healthy, newborn baby by someone not related to the birth parents is increasingly rare – and in demand — in the U.S.

International adoptions have dropped sharply (from 22,991 in 2004 to 4,714 last year) due to tougher rules for adoptions out of China and other countries and Russia’s ban on adoptions by U.S. families.

That has put more emphasis on domestic adoptions, even though the number of available U.S. infants has fallen sharply over the decades due partly to the rise in the availability of birth control and abortion.

Many of the U.S.-born newborns available for adoption are born drug-addicted, with health problems or other special needs, adoption advocates say.

In 2014, there were 1,261 adoptions in New Jersey by families unrelated to the birth parents. Only 302 were infants, according to the National Council for Adoption’s most recent statistics.

Exactly how a family adopts a baby varies from state to state. There are usually restrictions on how long a birth mother has to change her mind, how much power a birth father has to object and how adoption agencies are regulated.

In New Jersey, adoptions can be arranged through the state Department of Children and Families, which oversees the foster care system, or one of 38 licensed private adoption agencies, including Catholic and Jewish charitable organizations.

A birth parent must wait until 72 hours after a baby’s birth to sign the “surrender” documents to give up a baby for adoption under New Jersey’s law.

Unlike many other states, there is no period for a birth mother to change her mind. The surrender is irrevocable unless the birth mother goes to court and proves the papers were signed due to fraud, duress or misrepresentation, according to the law.

Cases where a birth mother goes to court to get back a newborn are unusual, said Chuck Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the National Council for Adoption, a nonprofit adoption advocacy group.

“These are messy situations, but rare,” Johnson said. “NCFA would advocate for much clarity and specificity in state laws to avoid things like this happening. No one wins in cases like this, even when you get a final verdict.”

Domestic adoptions through private agencies usually cost between $25,000 and $50,000 in fees and other costs, adoption agencies say. New Jersey law allows the adoptive parents to pay the birth mother’s living expenses while she is pregnant and for a month after the birth, but she cannot be given cash in exchange for the baby.

Almost all domestic adoptions of infants are open, meaning the birth mother can continue to have some contact with the adoptive family and get updates on the child.

Choosing a name

In Roman’s case, she refused to take any money from the adoptive family for her living or medical expenses, she said.

“I never accepted anything from them. Zero. I didn’t want it to be the reason I was giving up my son,” Roman said.

However, she did accept a necklace with a heart from the adoptive mother when she came to visit her in the hospital the day the baby was born.

Roman said she held her newborn son once that day and handed him over to a social worker working with the adoption agency. Then, she checked herself out of the hospital the same day she gave birth.

It wasn’t until a few days later that she visited the adoptive family at the place they were staying nearby to hold her son for the second time. She returned a few days later to hold her son for the third, and perhaps last, time after she signed his surrender papers.

By then, the adoptive family had named the boy.

Roman had another name for her son in mind. She said she hopes to give it to him when, and if, he comes back to New Jersey. She doesn’t want to say it aloud until he is back in her arms.

“It’s just a name I’ve always loved,” Roman said.”

‘I want my son back’: The inside story of a N.J. adoption gone wrong

[NJ 4/16/18 by Kelly Heyboer]

REFORM Puzzle Piece