Happy Ending for Rape Victim and Daughter : Family Members Sees a Divine Purpose in Their Reunion 22 Years After Adoption
Lee Ezell says she has no regrets about the past--or the improbable present. Neither does her daughter Julie, though she was conceived in a shameful and humiliating act.
Despite its harsh and sometimes terrible elements, they believe their story is--above all else--a story about the grace of God.
In fact, mother and daughter believe their story is so important, so filled with moral instruction and divine purpose, that they will tell it at a press conference in Los Angeles this morning. They will be joined by Lee’s husband, controversial Immigration and Naturalization Service Western Commissioner Harold Ezell, and Julie’s adoptive parents, Harold and Eileen Anderson, all “born-again” Christians. The press conference also starts a week of Mother’s Day-related appearances around the state by Lee, Julie and Eileen.
This is what they’ll have to say, pieced together from interviews and a book Lee (Kinney) Ezell has written:
A Naive Young Woman
In 1963, Lee Kinney was a naive 18-year-old secretary in the San Francisco area. After working late one night, she accepted an invitation to an acquaintance’s house trailer for pizza.
He raped her.
Nine months later--in Los Angeles where she fled to spare her mother and sisters the shame of her unwed pregnancy--Kinney, who did not tell police or relatives of the assault, gave birth to a daughter. She never saw the child because she delivered under anesthesia and the baby was immediately turned over to adoption agency authorities.
As the years and decades passed, Kinney (later Ezell) became reconciled to the probability that she would never see her daughter, although she was not totally immune to twinges of regret and speculation about the girl’s fate. She had been young, unmarried, inexperienced and too poor to properly care for a child. Moreover, she had made her decision with the help of prayer, meditation and involvement with the Baptist church. She kept the fact that she was raped and had a child a secret from everyone but her husband. The “dark chapter” in her life was closed.
But for a young married woman in northern Michigan, the secret of her birth was too much to passively endure. With the aid of an organization that helps adopted children find their natural parents, Julie Makimaa launched a search she knew might never pay off. But in a break that those involved see as divinely directed, a 20-year-old phone number faintly penciled in a margin of Makimaa’s adoption papers turned out to be the key clue. The number not only was still working, it still belonged to the woman, Villa Croft, who had befriended Kinney during her pregnancy. Had Julie made the call only a few weeks later, her search probably would have ended in failure because the phone was disconnected after “Mom” Croft moved into an old age home.
But Croft did give Lee Ezell the number in Michigan. And after some introspection and trepidation Ezell found the courage to dial the number.
Here is Ezell’s account of that incident in her book, “The Missing Piece” (Harvest House Publishers, $5.95):
“I had truly resolved my problem, and the missing piece of my past had been filled with the peace of God. So what did it mean now that he was revealing that missing piece?
“The weight of all these questions motivated me to speak aloud with Jesus. ‘Well, Lord, You know all the questions racing through my mind. And You already know all the answers. I really want to meet Julie, but where will this lead? I can’t count the cost, and neither can (her husband) Hal. . . . I don’t know the answers, but I believe You have said, ‘Yes, now is the time.’ So I will agree with You and make the call.”
Today, both Ezell and Makimaa want their lives and experience to stand as an example of the right to life and of the positive value that reuniting adopted children with a natural parent or parents can have, they said in telephone interviews.
They also believe that their reunion was paved with signs of divine approval. Besides the ancient telephone number, Lee Ezell, now 42, cited that fact that both she and Julie’s adoptive mother married widowers named Harold who brought two children each into the marriages. Furthermore, when she was dealing with the adoption agency, Lee Ezell insisted that the baby be given only to a Christian family.
More important, they say that their happy ending is a lesson for people in similar circumstances. Rather than creating mistrust between adoptive and biological parents, such reunions can broaden and strengthen the family net, they said. “We just feel like we’re a little bigger family,” Ezell explained.
Since last fall Ezell’s story has been available through her book, which she said has sold about 60,000 copies through Christian bookstores. However, she and her publisher are now seeking a wider audience through national bookstore chains. Ezell said she hopes that her story of Christian faith in God will serve as something of a corrective to the scandal that has rocked the world of television evangelists this spring.
Ezell, who reports that she was a virgin at the time of the rape, said she has received the support of her husband, whom she married in 1973, throughout the nearly two years she has been in contact with Julie. In fact, as told in the book, it was Harold Ezell who insisted that Julie be told she was conceived through a sexual assault.
Resisted the Idea
Lee Ezell writes that she resisted this suggestion. When she asked why her husband favored it, he replied, “Because you need to make it clear that you are not the type of girl who was just sleeping around and got caught.” The Ezells, who had not yet met Julie in person, soon called Julie’s husband with the news. In “The Missing Piece,” Bob Makimaa responded by saying, “Just think . . . that happened more than 20 years ago . . . just to give me my Julie. . . . “
Today, Lee Ezell said she is glad she had the baby but she concedes that if abortion had been widely available and legal in 1964, “I don’t know what I would have done.” When she speaks to church groups today, Ezell, who also has a syndicated radio program, says she does not deliver a strident anti-abortion message.
“I don’t speak really strongly for pro-life,” she said. “I just tell my story and let the chips fall where they may.” She added, “I really believe that a couple may decide when to make love but God decides when to make life.”
Julie’s adoptive parents also have no regrets that the daughter they took into their home when she was 7 months old was the child of a rape. “I frankly felt relieved that her mother was not a promiscuous young lady,” Eileen Anderson said in a telephone interview.
Anderson added that Julie began her search with the support of herself and her husband, although they had some reservations. “Before she found Lee, we were a little bit anxious. When children are looking for a natural parent, you never know what they’re going to find,” she said.
Ezell and Julie finally met each other for the first time in a Washington hotel room early in 1985. “She knocked on the door and through the door walked an exact copy of me,” Ezell recalled.
With Julie was her daughter, Casey, then 2. It was the first time Ezell had seen daughter or granddaughter (Julie also has a son, Herbie, now 1 1/2). Although that first meeting had awkward moments, both women say it renewed their determination to build the relationship they had begun establishing over the phone.
No one seems to know what happened to the man who raped Lee Ezell. For a while before she learned the truth about her parentage, Julie said she was looking for her father as well as her mother. But she has now called that part of the search off, although she believes her biological father is still alive and would be easy to find because of the information she already has collected.
However, if her father found her, Julie said she would probably agree to meet with him. “Part of me is him whether I want it to be that way or not,” she said.
Because she is adopted, Julie said she might have gravitated toward the anti-abortion movement anyway. But now that she knows the full story behind her existence, she is more convinced than ever that her anti-abortion beliefs are right. “I’m not ashamed at all because if it hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be here,” she said.
