Adoption Nightmare Prompts Suit : Family: Former San Diego couple tell of falling under spell of 3-year-old boy, now a 16-year-old with a long record of violence.

When Paul Kramer was 7 years old, strangers would stop his mother on the street to coo over her son’s big brown eyes and angelic smile.

“You don’t have any idea,” she wanted to tell them, “you don’t have to live with this kid.”

The admirers couldn’t see the inner demons that drove Paul to lie and steal constantly, to try to strangle a neighbor’s baby, to hold safety scissors to his neck and threaten to kill himself in his second-grade classroom.

Sharon and Keith Kramer understood how Paul could charm strangers. They fell under his spell, and quickly adopted him, when they met Paul as a 3-year-old: a chubby, elfin boy with long, flirty eyelashes and sandy brown hair, a child so cute he won modeling work.

Today Paul is 16, with a long record of sudden mood swings and bizarre, violent behavior. He has been charged with assault and accused of attempting to molest an 8-year-old girl.

Paul’s doctors say his mind was damaged by poisonous levels of alcohol while he was still in his mother’s womb. He has been confined to treatment centers for emotionally disturbed youths for two years.

The Kramers, who now live in White Hall, Pa., believe adoption officials in San Diego County, Calif., knew Paul’s past was a formula for disaster, but failed to warn them. They are proceeding with a lawsuit, seeking almost $5 million to pay for Paul’s treatment plus an unspecified amount in damages.

Their case and others played out in courts across the country are cautionary tales for people considering adoption, especially of older children, adoption advocates say.

State adoption agencies generally provide parents more background today than when Paul was adopted, said Joe Kroll, executive director of the North American Council for Adoptable Children, an advocacy and support group based in St. Paul, Minn.

But he believes in many cases vital information is still withheld, or the agencies themselves don’t have it to give--information about whether prospective adoptees have been sexually abused, severely neglected or exposed to drugs in the womb.

“We’re just saying to parents, ‘Expect the worst, or plan for the worst, so that you’re prepared,’ ” Kroll said. “You’ve got to be realistic. People need to understand what the problems of these children are, and ask, can they meet those needs realistically.”

When the Kramers, unable to have a second child, decided to add to their family through adoption, the couple agreed that they were not able to care for a child with severe emotional problems. They told adoption caseworkers that.

They were told Paul was the “perfect placement” for them, said Keith Kramer, a 45-year-old accountant.

“The limited information we were given showed him to be well-adjusted, happy and lovable, with no medical problems,” said Sharon Kramer, 42.

A California law that took effect more than a year before the Kramers’ adopted Paul in February, 1981, required full disclosure of his medical records, his family life and his parents’ medical history, said the Kramers’ attorney, Richard Alexander.

Officials of the county Social Services Department said they can’t talk about Paul’s case because of confidentiality laws.

But Ivory Johnson, who runs the department’s Children’s Services Bureau, said the county shares with adopting families all of the child’s medical information and “anything that might affect their ability to parent.”

Johnson said, however, that child welfare workers didn’t know about fetal alcohol syndrome in the early 1980s, when Paul was adopted, and did not understand the importance of the mother’s history of drug or alcohol abuse.

“Now it’s one of the first things you talk about,” she said.

San Diego County gives the Kramers $4,400 per month, the maximum the county pays in aid to families of adopted children. That covers just over half the cost of Paul’s current institution.

But the Kramers say Paul has become more than that facility, his third, can handle. He has attacked other patients, bitten nurses and smashed windows, and the center has requested that he be transferred.

The Kramers hope their lawsuit will bring enough money to put Paul in a treatment center that specializes in fetal alcohol syndrome at a cost of $12,500 per month.

Paul’s psychiatrists first made the fetal alcohol syndrome diagnosis last February, after San Diego County sent them information about Paul’s birth mother that the Kramers say they had been repeatedly denied.

The county records showed that Paul’s 14-year-old mother was emotionally troubled and drank heavily, and Paul was abused while in her care, according to the Kramers’ attorney.

They say that information could have helped diagnose and treat Paul years earlier.

“That’s the crime, the absolute crime, in these cases,” said David Forter of San Jose, who won a $1.6-million settlement in a similar lawsuit. “The sooner you can treat these things correctly, the higher the success rate.”

Forter and his former wife sued San Mateo County for the cost of treating their son, now 17, who was physically abused before they adopted him at age 4.

The Forters were not told that the boy had been scalded with hot water, smothered under a plastic bag and repeatedly bruised, according to court records.

Gary Morgan, who is in charge of adoptions for Illinois, said state agencies have made great strides because of a highly publicized set of lawsuits against Texas.

Federal courts ruled against the six Dallas-area families who said they were not told enough about the troubled children they adopted. The case sent ripples across the country nonetheless, Morgan said.

Morgan has created an affidavit that caseworkers and adopting parents in Illinois must sign to certify that adopting parents have been told about any physical abuse, neglect or trauma suffered by the child.

He acknowledges that full disclosure makes it more difficult to place some children, such as victims of sexual abuse.

But the truth is the only way to go. You can’t bury history,” he said. “These issues come back, and you’ve not only destroyed a child, but you’ve destroyed a family.”

The Kramers feel bitter that they were robbed of a normal family life. But they say they want to stand by Paul, and get him the help he needs.

“If we had known when we took him what we know today, I don’t think for a minute we would have considered the adoption,” Sharon Kramer said. “But 12 years later, he’s our child, we love him, and we couldn’t give him up.”