Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #779425 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. An episode in American adoption history little remembered by the public at large, the crimes of nationally-lauded Memphis orphanage director Georgia Tann are skillfully and passionately recounted by freelance writer Raymond, herself an adoptive mom. The portrait of Tann that emerges is a domineering, indefatigable figure with an insane commitment to ends-justify-the-means logic, who oversaw three decades of baby-stealing, baby-selling and unprecedented neglect. Meanwhile, she did more to popularize, commercialize and influence adoption in America than anyone before her. Tann operated carte blanche under corrupt Mayor Edward Hull Crump from the 1920s to the '50s, employing a nefarious network of judges, attorneys, social workers and politicos, whom she sometimes bribed with "free" babies; her clients included the rich, the famous and the entirely unfit (who more than occasionally returned their disappointing children for a refund). "Spotters" located babies and young children ripe for abduction-from women too uneducated or exhausted to fight back-and Tann made standard practice of altering birth certificates and secreting away adoption records to attract buyers and cover her tracks-self-serving moves that have become standard practice in modern adoption. A riveting array of interviews with Tann's former charges reveals adults still struggling with their adoption ordeal, childhood memories stacked with sexual abuse, torture and confusion. Raymond's dogged investigation makes a strong case for "ridding adoptions of lies and secrets," warning that "until we do, Tann and her imitators will continue to corrupt adoption." A rigorous, fascinating, page-turning tale, this important book is not for the timorous.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Greed, corruption, and the sealed adoption records system
The Baby Thief : the Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisanz Raymond will hit the stands soon. And oh what a book it is!

I've known about this book and its various incarnations for a long time. In 2001 Barbara sent me an early draft. Unfortunately, I didn't follow up on it like I should have. I am happy to say, though, that Barbara did, and the result is a fascinating but sickening account of how adoption got to where it is today.

For those of you who aren't familiar to Georgia Tann, she was a baby thief who worked her evil with the full knowledge of courts, social workers, and politicians. Between 1924 and 1950 she arranged 5000 "adoptions"--many of them of children she'd kidnapped or obtained by other illegal or unethical means. Tann stole from the poor to sell to the rich. Sometimes she just gave babies away to the child-hungry denizens of Tennessee's power structure, all too happy to turn their backs on justice in order to fill their nurseries with undocumented children to call their own. As part of Boss Crump's Memphis machine Tann's political influence in Tennessee was immense and unheard of for a woman, even now.

Raymond argues that Georgia Tann invented, popularized and commercialized adoption as we know it today with its secret closed and codified system of identity erasure and falsified birth certificates.

Tann's influence did not end with her death in 1950. It is carried today by the approximate 6 million adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families in the US (and more in Canada) whose records remain sealed by the state.

The Baby Thief an important book that every adoptee rights activist, every first mother activist, and anybody who wants to clean up adoption should read and carry with them to the statehouse. Interest, however, should move beyond AdoptionLand and into the areas of women's studies, GLBT studies, child welfare, true crime, and Southern and localized history.

I urge anyone who believes in identity and adoptee rights, and about ethical adoption to read this book. You won't regret it!

Baby Thief Stole Identities of Many Not Yet Born
The Baby Thief is both a mystery novel and a historical chronicle of 5000 wrongful adoptions. It is more than an exposé of bygone crimes committed by the notorious Georgia Tann. Throughout the book, the author weaves the stories of those who lost one another; children who remembered being wrenched from their mothers; siblings separated and meted out like puppies; mothers and fathers who searched until their deaths for the children they had lost. In order to cover her heinous crimes, Tann issued false certificates portraying adoptive parents as having given birth to the child they adopted. The practice caught on so that in almost all states today, adoptees even as adults cannot get their original birth certificates. Tann's legacy of introducing sealed birth certificates has resulted in generational harm for countless adopted adults who will never know who they are.

And you thought that the only people who were bought, sold, and discarded like garbage were imported...
and you thought that people who did these kinds of things in the 20th Century were prosecuted by the law. Wrong!
From 1924 through 1950 babies and children were kidnapped, taken by coercion and lies, and sold on to farms and in to homes across America. They weren't the children of slaves - though they were treated like they were, nor were they low life trash - though they were treated like they were... they were born to single mothers, poor parents, and into families that were promised a better life for the child. Some of them did have better lives, new parents that loved them and took care of them. Some were killed, some died, and some wished that they would die. For those that survived - loving parents or not - they found that they had been robbed.
Though this book is about only one person's complete disregard and disdain for those they viewed as lesser creatures - akin to stray dogs, beasts of burden, or producing livestock. What this person did and the way they viewed "adoption" influenced adoption practices all the way into the present day.
"The Baby Thief" is a hard read, but it is worth the effort. To read this book and not know without a doubt that the adoption laws need to be changed and that adoption practices need to be regulated with attention to ethics and compassion is to have a heart and soul as dead and black as Georgia Tann's.