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Why does Social Services take a truck load of kids away from a set of parents, let them be adopted off, and then let those same parents have more kids? I don’t know the answer to that one but here is my siblings story.

After we were all taken away from our parents, they went ahead and had more. Then they had my bio brother move back in with them, after he left our house. There he would find out  the abuse had never ended, but had just started again with a whole new set of kids. What my older brother grew up thinking was quite normal for a family to do, he was told to do to his younger sister, while our bio mother did what she pleased with my younger brother. My older brother had gone through this abuse since he was a young boy, now we know where his frustrations came from when he was in foster care.

I can’t imagine the pain he was feeling, and the emotions he went through during this time in his life, or even the things he goes through to this day trying to keep himself sane. One day I guess there was yelling and screaming going on and someone went and got my bio father from the farm, telling him something was going on in his home he needed to check on. Well he did and walked in on his son hurting the younger kids. Well I guess he started hitting him, and about that time the police got there. To make a long story short, he took the blame for the abuse to the kids and did a few years in prison. He didn’t want his son to be put away so he pleaded guilty to the chargers his son should have faced, along with his wife, but he took sole responsibility for it. Years later I would hear from the older girls that he had himself molested them as well, but when asked if it could have been our older brother, they really couldn’t put a finger on who it could have been, making them wonder too. They were all pretty young. Not that I doubt my bio father couldn’t have done any of this because I don’t, it is just there is so much grey area over that whole situation, it is just hard to know what is the truth.

I do know that my bio mother’s side has a deep history of this sort of thing, I thank God every day that this sickness didn’t pass down to me. Some how God saved me from these terrible things, and I praise him everyday for it. Not that we haven’t gone through this sort of thing because we have but that will come later when I hit upon a second generation of siblings being separated from one of my siblings.

So my younger sister and brother were of all things taken in by another Uncle and his wife. They thought since I had come out fine then this set would too, boy where they in for the ride of their lives.

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I have to tell you this one is going to jump a bit because one I was pressed for time, and two I wanted to get it all out while it was fresh and the typing was good.

What do you do when you are called in the middle of the night and you are offered one of the children that you tried to keep together? In my parents case they said yes right away. The very next day I was told that one of my brothers were going to be moving in with us. I was so excited. He must have been about 16 at the time, as he was in High school.

I remember the first few weeks he was at our house. If he wore jeans and a t-shirt. I wanted to wear jeans and a t-shirt. What ever he did I wanted to do. I loved having a real brother, and I wanted him to love me. He was very helpful around the house, and everything seemed fine and dandy. Soon enough we would see a whole different side.

It was around Christmas time ( I still believed in Santa), my brother had taken over my other brothers rooms which were on the top floor of our house, since they had already moved out and started families of their own. I remember one day my mother was out side getting the mail, or hanging laundry and my brother asked me to come up to his room. He wanted to show me something. He said it was a secret and I couldn’t tell anyone.

Well what did my wondering eyes see, but a truck load of toys for the Christmas tree. A Kitchen center, table and chairs, a rocking chair, and lots of wrapped presents in Santa’s special wrapping. I asked wow where did all of this come from, and he said with a smile your parents got these for you for Christmas. I said no only Santa uses this wrapping. He said there was no Santa.

I remember running down the stairs with tears running down my face. I went to my mother and said why did you lie to me again? She tried to calm me, while I kept going down the list of fictional characters and saying why, why did you lie to me? (this moment would come back to me in later years and change how we handled holidays in our family).

Once she calmed me down, and made a call to my father at work, she said Daddy and her would talk to me later. I was crushed, first when my parents lied to me about coming from them, and now about Santa, the Easter Bunny, Tooth fairy, I think you get the idea.

I remember me being in my room and my father coming in from work and taking my brother out to talk for a bit. I am not quite sure what was said that day, but things were better for a while. Christmas came and because we had my brother at our house, and he asked to see his real parents they came to our house to visit. I remember they brought me presents  too, and I also remember playing with my younger brother and sister.

As time went by my brother would get angry and sometimes try to hit me, or he would say really mean things. Once while in the car going to my father’s job (he was a farmer) my brother got mad and hit me. My father’s reaction was to hit him, but because I was in the middle he couldn’t reach him. My father and mother ended up making a call.

Years later I found out they had called DSS and asked questions on why he was taken out of the home he was in and offered to them. Well after pretty much threatening them they told my father, that he had raped the families daughter that he had been living in. They had asked them not to press charges and they would find him a new home. Ours, where a little girl lived. They didn’t even care, they just knew that my dad had wanted us all together. Needless to say my father said he had to go. By this time my brother didn’t want to go to school, was being mean to me on a daily basis and was showing his true colors.

He did leave and believe it or not DSS let him go back and live with our bio parents. I was questioned about things he did to me. I do have to say that thank God he did not touch me in that way, but it does happen in families, and apparently in families like ours. Years later he would say he was sorry, and he even came and visited from time to time.

Actually he calls me from time to time asking for rides. I won’t give him a ride without my husband with me and certainly not while I have the girls with me. I haven’t given him any rides as of yet.  Yes he may know to say I can’t be alone with your kids, but it just isn’t worth the chance. I know some people can do something once and not do it again, but others never learn and always look for the moment to pounce on their prey. I will get more into other things that happened before he was taken away and then once again  when he returned to our bio parents.

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Adoption can be a wonderful thing, but do you tell the child they are adopted or do you guard it a close kept secret? There are many who do something in between. You have open adoptions, and adoptions spanning from country to country. Many are forced to adopt from abroad because the adoption process in America is just so hard to do. As other countries have learned this they have even made adoptions a bit more hard for people from other countries adopting their children. Seems like be in America or another country they would rather see the child die, or suffer, then to give them to a loving home.

As for me I was supposed to never know I was adopted. My mother told me I came from her belly, and loving stories of me as a baby, and I believed them with my whole heart. As the years went by there came a day when I was 6 years old that my parents sat me down and said they were going to adopt me. I knew what adoption was but mistook them as saying they were giving me up for adoption and started crying and asking what I had done wrong. Why didn’t they want me anymore. I thought they were my parents so if they were adopting that meant they didn’t want me. Well my mom would say later they should have started that conversation out a bit better.

When they calmed me down they explained to me that they had gotten me when I was a baby and that they had been trying to adopt me ever since then, but things had taken so long, that is was just getting to the time for them to make it final, but that I had to go to court with them. I asked my parents why they had lied to me about me coming from her belly. My mom began to cry and told me it wasn’t suppose to be this way and she had wished that it really could have been her that had given birth to me, and that I would always be THEIR child, and that they loved me even before I was born which I wouldn’t find out about until many years later.

We left for court to me it seemed like the same day and I was put in a room with other children. At one point the judge came in talked to me, then a lady took me into another room where there were two adults who I knew as my Aunt and Uncle, and was asked if I wanted to live with them. I said NO I want to live with my parents and they said these are your parents and the kids you have been playing with are your younger siblings. I said No they are my Aunt and Uncle and I haven’t seen the kids before. They took me back into the judge and he asked me more questions, like did I know what adoption meant which I did ( I had been reading and writing since I was 3 years old). He asked if I wanted to try to live with my real parents or continue to live with the people who wanted to adopt me. I said right away without blinking an eye I want to go home with who I have been living with. The judge then said “then you wish to be adopted?” and I said yes. He had me returned to a new room that had a lady in it that watched over me, I was not returned to the room with the other children in it.

Soon my parents, my forever parents came and picked me up and we went home. Later on that day a lady I had seen countless times before (a social worker to find out), dropped off a huge Velvet Valentine’s day Heart filled with chocolates, 20.00, and a Richard Scary book with well wishes from her. I still have that book.

 

This is the book tattered from years of use and the story of my adoption.

 

 

The inscription inside.

 

 

 

 

On January 17th, 1979 I was officially adopted.

 

 

 

 

 

You may ask why I never caught on that I was not my parent’s child. Well they had told everyone that since they got me when I was a baby, I should never know the horrors or my situation before they got me. My name never changed because I was adopted by my Aunt and Uncle. I was born a Graham, and stayed a Graham after the adoption. In a few years I would find out more than I ever bargained for, because people couldn’t be quite. Once I knew I was adopted it opened everyone up to thinking they could just talk openly about it with little regards to what my parents wishes were or what it would do to me.  

 

 

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When kids are taken away from a family for whatever reason, you expect them to be put in a more safe environment  then  what they were in before, but so many times this is not the case.  Sometimes they are put into families who abuse and neglect them even more than what they were going through in the first place. They could also be placed with families where the rest of the family just doesn’t see them as part of the unit. Kids can feel these things and often overhear adult conversations. Whoever thinks that whispering about them while they are playing isn’t overheard by a child you are sadly mistaken.

When a child is thrown into another family it can have an effect on children who are already apart of the family unit. Did anyone ask their input on taking in new kids?  There are many checks and balances that have been implemented over the years, with still many loopholes, and what ifs. What about the information that is not given to the new caretakers. Like diseases (although once you take them to the Dr’s you will know soon enough what you have to deal with), but what about other things like maybe the child was abused ( well you know that ) but they don’t have to tell you how they were abused, or if maybe that child had been abusing others.

Behaviors are usually found out after the fact, then it comes down to finding out if the behaviors are new, or have been present for quite some time. Are the behaviors from abuse or is there a further underlying problem? I personally believe if someone has done drugs, smoked cigarettes, or drank alcohol during pregnancy they have already abused that child. I know many people who think differently, my parents smoked and drank while pregnant with me, I mean chain smoked and were drunk almost everyday. Can someone do those things and have a healthy baby? They sure can. Can a healthy person give birth to a sick child? Yes they can. A whole host goes into how a child grows, learns, and lives their lives.

So getting back to when we were taken away I left you with my family not wanting to take in the kids to keep them together. My father begged, and pleaded and no one would bite on the subject of each taking a few of the kids so we could stay together. My father even tried to keep more than just me. He was told he was lucky he had held onto the papers for so long and that they got me, that he should leave it alone. He didn’t want to lose me so he backed down. He thought really what could he do he was just a farm hand. He let it go. My mother while this was all going on was at my bedside in the hospital never leaving making sure they were doing all they could for me.

Years later I would find out that my siblings were almost all separated soon after we were taken away and sent to different areas of the country, state, and county. Yes two were placed right inside our own county but we never knew it. So sad really. I had two sisters who were placed together for a few years before one was adopted out to a nice family. Before this happened though the place where they were, beat them, didn’t feed them well, and really were just in it for what ever money they were given. Which leads me to the fact that while all of these other people were getting money, my parents got none to raise me. My adoption took over 7 years before it was over and done with.

Once my one sister was adopted out, it left my older sister by herself. The one who saved me probably went through the worst of it. She had already been through years of abuse, got thrown into a family where she was abused, and later would end up being a prostitute as she just didn’t know what else to do with her body. It was really all that she knew and was all she knew as love. 

A side note on my older sister. Years later when she was clean she found my parents, and since they had always cared for her when they could, she had looked them up and found out they had me. She would come and visit as often as she could. In a sense I was her baby. I remember going to the toy  store  and wanting to go down the baby aisle and was told we couldn’t do that. Well we couldn’t go down those isles because she would have flash backs and just start to rip the dolls out of packages, thinking they were me when I was a baby. Sometimes even though she was a grown up you would see her holding a doll and taking care of it. Those would be the dolls that she rescued out of the boxes. Sad really. Can you imagine how she felt every time she went through this? Then the relief after, that you had saved that child? Her mind was broke, so drinking, drugs, and sex were a way for her to leave it all behind.

Years later we lost contact with her which I will get into in a later post. I miss her, and worry each and every day about her. If you ever get a chance to read this you know who you are and my heart has had a hole in ever since you have been gone. I love you.

 

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You hear in the news every now and again about siblings being separated. There are many reasons why these things happen. Years ago if you didn’t want a child you could just hand them over to a nurse and she would take care of the baby, or if you were in one of those homes for pregnant teens you might have had to give up your child so you could return to society. Some have been abducted, abandoned, or worse killed in the act of hiding the birth of a baby. Sometimes Dr.’s for the right price would even tell mother’s their child had died so they could make money off the sale of the child. During times of war children have been separated, along with death of parents and being put in the care of Child Protective services.

I have been wanting for years to sit down and write about my story, and how I have come through all of this. I will be doing weekly sections on this until either I am done or you all have had enough of it. This is a real story, not made up and could be heart wrenching at times. I will not mention exact names of my siblings to give them a bit of protection.

My story is about when I was taken away. It all started way before I was even born. My bio parents decided to give my parents a child. They signed the papers, and did everything they were suppose to do. Well just before I was due to be born, my bio mother decided she didn’t want to go through with it. Mind you she already had 7 children and rumored to even had more but gave away one of each twin she had to someone in the hospital. My parents were crushed.

Oh she had a plan set in her mind. As soon as I was born she would show me off to my would be parents and parade me around. Like teasing them with me, until one day her mind snapped and she decided to place me at two weeks old in a plastic garbage bag and place me in a cardboard box, then placing me in the dumpster. My then 8-year-old sister who had been abused many times saw this and as soon as she could she took me to the woods where she tore me out of the box and left me overnight.

Morning came and went and my mother called the police saying I had been kidnapped. Boy was she in for a surprise when the police got there and my sister lead them to the woods, telling them what she had done to me. Child Protective Services was called, then someone in the family called my would be parents. They rushed down to where ever I was at the time, and I was released to them because they had never gotten rid of the papers to get me when I was born. I was sent right to the hospital because I had pneumonia, and something was wrong with my heart.

That was the day that CPS took all of us kids away. My would be father was by blood my Uncle, my father’s brother. I was able to keep my name but the happy ending really never came for us. My father pleaded with CPS and the courts to keep all the kids together, but they told him more or less no. You should be lucky to have one, we are separating all of them and sending them to different areas. My father even tried to get the rest of his family to each take a few of the kids so we could all grow up together. They wouldn’t bite. They like my parents had all been through so much with my bio parents they just didn’t want to get involved.

 

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For anyone who would like to read as I put my book together you are in the right place. I have been working on my book on several sites to not only get people’s reactions but to also gain some input on what I could add, explain more, or even change. I would appreciate any help to get my story up and going. Some of the parts are very emotional, keeping tissues nearby would be a good thing to do. I write my column for one of my other sites weekly and try to stay on that schedule as much as I can. Depending on time restraints I will eventually get it copied over here for you to read as well.

Let me tell you a little about my book. My story called Siblings Separated a True Story is a book about how the system not only split our family up when we could have been kept together but about how they failed us many times along the path to our adult hoods, and even into the next generation of children to be born from us. I can’t say you will enjoy my book, but I have been told it is much like “A Child Called It” by David Pelzer. I remember reading that book and not being able to put it down. If this could gain that much popularity that would be great, but that is not the main idea behind all of this.

I believe the more people who know about how the system has not only ruined lives, but continues to do so may open eyes that need to be, so that changes can be made to make life safer for all children. I am sure there are more stories similar to ours, or even cases that are far worse, but this is my story, I hope you will join me on my journey, taking a moment or so to jump into the world of Siblings Separated a True Story.