Mother Sues to Overturn Adoption, Says Son Was Stolen

Eight years after her 3-year-old son disappeared, the boy’s mother traced him to Orange County.

But the relief she felt at hearing last fall that he was alive has been all but overshadowed by anger and disbelief. For the boy, now 11, has been adopted, with the county’s approval, and officials refuse to provide any information on his whereabouts.

“When that woman (a government worker in Nashville, Tenn.) told her, quote unquote, ‘This is no longer your child--you have no rights,’ she dropped the phone and busted out in tears,” her present husband said recently. “She’s still not the same. She had nightmares about it.

“She’d wake up screaming, ‘He is my child!’ ”

The ordeal has left the 28-year-old mother from Orlando, Fla., frustrated and angry. And on Friday, her lawyers filed an Orange County lawsuit on her behalf, alleging the county was negligent in ending her parental rights without informing her. It also seeks to set aside the adoption decree and demands $40 million in damages.

Kay Nelson R., as she is referred to in the lawsuit, claims that she has not seen her son since her ex-husband disappeared with him during a court-ordered visitation in Nashville, Tenn., in 1980, a year after she was awarded custody in a Tennessee divorce decree.

Despite repeated pleas, Nelson and her lawyers say, Orange County officials have refused to reveal the names of the adoptive parents or to pass on a note to her son. Even a request for a picture was turned down, according to the mother.

“I just want my son to know that I love him very much--and that I’m here for him,” Nelson declared.

Deputy County Counsel Susan Strom, who represents the Orange County Social Services Agency, could not be reached for comment Friday. But in an earlier interview, she declined to comment on Nelson’s claims, citing the confidentiality required by state law in adoption cases. Strom did say, however, that, “in every case, we follow every statute and regulation to the letter.”

Everyone involved professes concern for the child. Nelson, worried that her sudden appearance would have an adverse impact on him, insisted that his true name not be used. For the same reason, her legal name is not being used in the lawsuit.

“It’s such an unpleasant thing to think about,” said Harold LaFlamme, the lawyer who was appointed to represent the interests of the son in Juvenile Court proceedings before the adoption. “You want the mother to be treated fairly, and you want the boy to be treated fairly. It’s certainly not his fault.”

Nelson’s marriage ended in divorce in 1979 in Nashville. Custody of her only child, called Baby L. in the lawsuit, was awarded to her.

The father, a construction worker who had moved to Florida, was granted visitation rights, according to the divorce decree. There were no problems until Oct. 17, 1980.

During a visit, both son and father disappeared. Sources said their next contact with authorities was in Orange County two years later.

After their disappearance, Nelson said she went looking for them at her ex-husband’s last known address in St. Petersburg.

“I just went down there,” she said. “He was no longer living there. He had gotten up in the middle of the night and left. He left no forwarding address, no forwarding anything.

“I questioned a few neighbors. I checked out one of his job sites. I finally went to the police. They told me I would have to contact someone in Nashville. They said I would have to go through the local law authorities.”

After two weeks of searching construction sites in Florida and of trying to find forwarding addresses from the post office and public utilties, Nelson returned to Tennessee.

“I contacted the lawyer who handled my divorce, and I contacted the police. There was nothing that I could do. They said all I could do was hire a private investigator, and I didn’t have the money for that.”

At that point, she said, she believed she had nowhere else to turn.

In 1986, she remarried. And her new husband helped her resolve to renew the search for her son.

By this time, she and her husband were living near Orlando. She tried several agencies that help parents find missing children before she contacted Childrens’ Rights of America, a nonprofit group in Largo, Fla. A volunteer, Carol Parsley, suggested that she obtain copies of her original custody order and a birth certificate.

“I had to have proof of custody, so I wrote and got that,” Nelson said. “Then I wrote and requested a birth certificate, and they refused to send it.”

Finally, she learned that the birth certificate, in Nashville, had been sealed by order of a judge in Orange County because the boy had been adopted.

Her parental rights, according to her lawsuit, had been terminated in 1985 by the Orange County Superior Court.

There is expected to be sharp disagreement over whether Orange County officials did all they could to locate the mother before putting her son up for adoption.

Deputy County Counsel Strom said a missing mother’s parental rights are terminated by a court only after a thorough search by the Social Services Agency.

Social Services Agency procedures call for interviews with friends and relatives, letters to the last known address and letters to parents of missing parents, if they can be found, Strom said.

Records checked as a matter of policy include social services, probation, family support, directory assistance, criminal, postal, voter registration and assessor, Strom said. Lawsuits and military records also are checked, she said.

If the search is unsuccessful, the county Probation Department rechecks many of the same sources, according to Glenda Pruett, a deputy probation officer. And ultimately, a judge reviews the adequacy of the search, Strom said.

Strom pointed out that routine search procedures are “complicated, lengthy and detailed.” When unsuccessful, ads are printed four times in a California newspaper, and the legal requirements for terminating rights have been met, Strom said.

Nelson’s lawyers, Wilma E. Presley and Jeffrey W. Doeringer of Santa Ana and Jay Howell of Jacksonville, Fla., allege that the county failed to “make reasonable inquiry and investigation.”

Orange County’s finding that Nelson had “abandoned” her child is “contrary to fact,”according to the lawsuit filed Friday.

Howell, in arguing that the search for his client was insufficient, points to the fact that the Orange County authorities were able to find the birth certificate in Nashville.

“In the same building where California authorities were able to seal the records, there was the evidence of Kay’s divorce and custody and the name and address of her lawyer, who is still there,” Howell said. “A pretty rudimentary inquiry there, or the driver’s license, would have certainly produced serious evidence.”

Nelson’s divorce lawyer, John M. Thrower of Nashville, said in a phone interview that he had never been contacted by Orange County authorities.

Howell said he made “about 20” calls to Strom and other officials, suggesting informal contact with the adoptive parents, before he got a straight answer.

Everyone, he said, refused to discuss the matter in the absence of a lawsuit.

“They said they didn’t want anything to do with this,” Howell said. “They wanted the legal papers filed. They said they wouldn’t do anything without them.”

Strom said that if Nelson “is, in fact, telling the truth, I feel for her.”

But the adoption is final and there is “no legal basis” for challenging it, Strom said.

Nelson described her son as a healthy, normal child at the time he disappeared in 1980.

In December, 1982, he was taken into custody by Orange County juvenile authorities, according to a source familiar with the case. In March, 1983, he was declared a dependent of the state.

He spent some months in the county’s old shelter for neglected youth, the Albert Sitton Home, a source said.

In late 1983, a psychologist who examined him concluded that he was “a delightful boy who is in desperate need of a loving living environment.” A family setting was recommended. He was kept in at least two foster homes. It was the last foster parents who adopted him.

While insisting the boy is hers, Nelson quietly concedes that she does not know how best to deal with the situation.

“I’m not sure what would be the best way to even approach it,” she said. “It will be difficult enough that he knows I’m here. Because I don’t know what he’s been told. And I don’t know what he’s been through.”

She says she is prepared to leave her son where he is if that eventually proves to be best for him.

“She wants what’s best for her son, but she wants her son back,” her husband said, “and it may not be the same thing.”

That ambivalence, based on lack of information, pervades her life, Nelson said.

She thinks of the foster parents with a curious mix of gratitude and hope.

“I try to put myself in their shoes,” she said. “I hope and pray they’ll put themselves in my shoes. They did this in good faith; I know they didn’t do it to hurt (the boy). They took him into their home and loved him. And they made him a part of their family. Heaven knows, I respect them for that.

“But I would also like them to put themselves in my shoes.

“I would try to respect their feelings the best I could, but I would try to get my point across. I did not abandon my son. I did not leave him and run off for greener pastures. This child was stolen from me, and I have never been given the chance to bring him back.”