Adoption • Other members found fault with president’s tactics.
The president of the Utah Adoption
Council resigned his post Tuesday — and launched his own competing
organization — amid claims the group ignores unethical practices of some
adoption agencies and has failed to treat birth fathers fairly.
Salt Lake attorney Wes Hutchins, whose
one-year term was set to end in July, said he could no longer support
what he described as a “systematically dysfunctional organization.”
“Too many members, but admittedly not all, do
not wish to truly comply with UAC’s professed mission [of promoting] ‘a
positive adoption experience for all involved, through education related
to quality adoption,’ ” Hutchins said in his resignation letter.
“Whether you like it or not, birth fathers are
part of that equation,” he said in his letter. “Whether you admit it or
not, many agencies continue to engage in unethical and unlawful
practices including post-placement cash bonuses paid directly to birth
moms, and coaching birth moms to lie and even defraud birth fathers
regarding the birth mother’s true intentions.”
Kevin Broderick, president-elect, will step in
early to replace Hutchins, said attorney David Hardy, past president of
the organization. The council was founded in 1981 and its 50 or so
members include adoption agency representatives, attorneys, state
officials, birth and adoptive parents, and adoptees.
“Wes has pushed for some things that he hasn’t been able to persuade others to go along with and gotten frustrated,” Hardy said.
Hardy said some members were upset about
surreptitious recordings Hutchins made of adoption agency workers, as
well as the public stance he took during the last legislative session on
a bill — opposed by the council — that would have required that birth
fathers receive notice of pending adoptions.
“Wes was out on an island on that one,” Hardy said.
While the council is concerned about any
allegations of baby selling, “his methods got in the way of the message
he would like to share,” Hardy said.
Hardy acknowledged one UAC member has proposed
an amendment to the group’s bylaws, that was in “some ways” directed at
Hutchins, that would allow it to terminate a member for “failure to act
in a civil fashion” at its meetings and public criticism of UAC, among
other things.
“UAC is designed to be an adoption education
and advocacy group and there was some feeling we could not function if
we had to spend all our time dealing with infighting,” Hardy said.
Hutchins said what the group failed to do, however, was apply best practices and ethical standards to its members.
“Agencies should be 100 percent truthful and
ethical all the time, and it should not matter if it is a ‘secret
shopper’ calling or a birth mother,” he said. “The secret shopper is a
well-known standard among business industries to check on customer
service practices and whether employees are following procedures.”
Last summer, Hutchins had his wife pose as the
sister of an expectant woman who was considering placing her baby for
adoption. She taped interviews with several Utah adoption agencies that
revealed some workers were coaching birth moms on how to keep birth
fathers out of the process, discussing post-placement cash payment, and
how laws favored them in Utah.
Hutchins repeated the exercise this spring, in
some cases using actual expectant mothers, and said he found little had
changed, with workers at some agencies promising cash and urging birth
mothers to “tell the birth father anything after you give birth ... it
might be easier to tell birth father that you were in an accident, and
the baby died.”
Hardy said UAC has had some discussion on the
allegations brought forth by Hutchins, but said “most of what he came
forward with initially” involved entry-level personnel and their
responses to hypothetical situations versus “anything actually going
on.”
But in at least one case, a birth father received some types of misinformation Hutchins claims to have recorded recently.
Christopher Carlton’s girlfriend was expecting
their child when the couple broke up at the end of 2009. According to
court documents and interviews, he continued to support her and her two
children despite the collapse of their relationship, expecting to be
involved with the baby due in June 2010. But the woman disappeared when
she was seven months pregnant, and despite his best efforts, Carlton, a
Pennsylvania resident, was unable to locate her.
In late June 2010, Carlton, an Iraq war
veteran, learned from a mutual friend that his girlfriend had given
birth. He was told the baby was a boy. Carlton frantically tried to
reach the mother on her cell phone and finally heard from her a day
later. She said the baby had respiratory problems. When he asked where
she was, the woman said she was “too far away” and hung up. He then
received three photos of the baby in text messages sent to his
telephone.
Three days later, the woman showed up at
Carlton’s door, raging that he’d killed her baby. According to court
documents, when he asked where the baby was, the woman said the infant
had died — though it is unknown whether she was coached to do so.
Carlton, who was devastated by the news, continued to press for
information about the baby and where it had been buried, which led his
former girlfriend to file a protective order against him.
But in court, a judge sided with Carlton and
told the woman he had a right to know what had happened to his child and
where it was buried. To avoid being questioned about the infant, the
woman dropped her allegations against Carlton. And four months later,
she asked him to meet her at a grief counselor’s office.
There, she dropped an even bigger bombshell.
The baby wasn’t dead. The woman had placed the infant, still identified
as a boy, for adoption. It took another court hearing and a judge’s
directive before the woman let Carlton know the baby had been placed
through the Adoption Center of Utah. At that point, just before being
deployed to Iraq, Carlton hired Hutchins. And there was another
revelation months later: the baby wasn’t a boy, it was girl.
Carlton has waged a so-far unsuccessful fight in Utah to get his child back.
“I want my child more than anything,” he said.
“I’ve walked places in this world where angels fear to tread, seen
things no human should have to see. Who are they to take my freedoms
away?”
brooke@sltrib.com
—
New advocacy group forms
Salt Lake attorney Wes Hutchins, himself
an adoptive father, argues the Utah Adoption Council has tilted too far
against birth fathers and their rights and has allowed unethical
practices to go unchecked.
With that in mind, he has launched a
new organization — the Utah Council for Ethical Adoption Practices — to
promote higher standards and better practices in Utah’s adoption
industry. The group now has its own Facebook page and is working on a
website.
© 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune
