Baby Selling 1988 United States Black Market Adoption Obgyn

Blackness Market Babies Seeking Answers Through Facebook

Attorney and rabbi sold babies to the highest bidder, intimidated nascence moms.

Feb. fifteen, 2011 — -- Lori Appleton was eighteen, unwed and significant in 1985. Unprepared to tackle motherhood, Appleton chose to give her baby up for adoption, not knowing the adoption agency she chose was an illegal infant-selling ring.

"There was an advertizement in the paper that said, 'Are you a immature, meaning mother? Do yous need help? Please call this number,'" Appleton said.

Appleton, who was living in Jacksonville, Fla., at the time, said the number continued her to a Brooklyn, Due north.Y., couple running a private adoption agency called Childhaven of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The couple, Harriet and Lawrence Lauer, never registered to operate their agency in New York. Past the fourth dimension they were defenseless by New York government in 1988, their license in Pennsylvania had expired besides.

The Lauers and a lawyer for the agency, Seymour Fenichel, would ultimately face a 144 count indictment that alleged they illegally sold babies to the highest applicant and intimidated nascency mothers to falsify birth certificates and go through with adoptions even when they had second thoughts. Also indicted was Fenichel's daughter, chaser Deborah Greenspan.

All avoided trial by pleading guilty to the felony charges that included grand larceny, conspiracy, fraud and filing false documents. The plea deal allowed them to avert jail time.

Fenichel's crude tactics included briskly handing off babies in parking lots or in quick exchanges in the doorway of a hospital elevator. Some birth mothers walked with their babies to what they thought were neutral tertiary parties, simply were actually family members of the adoptive parents. Other nativity moms weren't immune to look at or hold their babies afterward birthing them. Some families seeking to prefer spent thousands on what they thought were agency fees and never received a child.

The children adopted through Fenichel are now grown upward and banding together through Facebook to notice their birth families. Rachel Bernstein formed the group "Seymour Fenichel Adoptees" on Facebook about a year ago.

"The group is a kinship. We are all connected, we speak the same language and we know what it feels similar to live life starting at chapter two instead of one…I started this group to encourage others to not surrender on their searches because of the bad things they read near Fenichel online," Bernstein said.

While the Fenichel adoptees ABC News talked to said that they ended up in expert homes and are thankful for their adoptive families, the search for their biological families and their origins is muddied by Fenichel's illegal adoption scam.

"It makes you wonder, was I kidnapped?" Sonya, a Fenichel adoptee who did not want her final proper noun published, said. "You lot had this daydream that your mother was in this room and in that location were x babies and she chose you. Then yous remember, no, my mother just had more coin."

Bernstein, the founder of the Facebook group, is still searching for her biological mom. She and her three siblings were all adopted through Fenichel. All she knows about her nativity mother is that she is 5-foot-four, came from the S to requite nativity in New York and her ancestry is French, Italian and Native American.

"My grandmother picked me upwards from the hospital and she was probably the just one to meet my birth mother," Bernstein said. "My birth mother had said I call up my daughter is going to a very nice domicile because that's a very nice blanket."

Forth with kinship, members of the Facebook grouping trade tips on how to search for their biological families.

"I believe my natural mother would exist frightened to contact me for fear of persecution," Bernstein said. "In any closed adoption, not having a birth proper name to start with is an obstruction in itself. It [being a Fenichel adoptee] adds more barriers because different an agency adoption, should whatsoever of my birth family seek to contact me, at that place is no ane for them to tell that to and relay that message to me."

For Resources and More than Information About Searching for Birth Families or Adoptees,Click Here.

Seymour Fenichel "Ringleader" of Adoption Scam

Fenichel, who was likewise a rabbi, worked with Childhaven to facilitate private adoptions for often wealthy, Jewish New York couples.

The band encompassed at least 21 states and Canada. In the last four years of its operation, upwards to 160 nascency mothers were involved. They would travel from across the country to stay in homes in New York, Pennsylvania and Florida. The women were paid at least $two,000. Appleton said that she was paid $8,000.

Couples who were adopting would pay up to $36,000 for a child.

At the time of his arrest in 1989, Fenichel was described by then-New York Attorney General Robert Abrams as the ringleader of an performance that "preyed on the emotions" of childless couples.

"I saw grown men and women cry… individuals not able to have a kid spent a lot of time and money to have a kid and when they got close, the rug was pulled from under them and the baby was sold to the highest applicant," Alfredo Mendez, a former assistant attorney general who helped prosecute the case, told ABCNews.com.

"And so y'all accept birth mothers and the atmospheric condition they were under, the threats, allegations, being forced to surrender the baby," Mendez said.

Fenichel would arrange for the babies to exist picked up in sometimes bizarre places, like parking lots.

Lois Kaufman and her husband at the time, Steve Gralla, were one of the couples who enlisted Fenichel'south help. They adopted 2 babies in the 1970s.

Kaufman, at present 63, met Fenichel through her male parent in 1972.

"They were both religious men and and so maybe they knew each other from the Jewish community as well as them both existence lawyers," she said.

Desperate to have a child, Kaufman, her husband, her parents and in-laws met with Fenichel.

"He said it could have upwardly to 18 months," Kaufman said. "He said he volition only give a baby to us if the baby is formally converted and then that information technology will be Jewish."

While she plant that request odd, she agreed. Kaufman'due south father and mother left for a prowl the day after the meeting. Sadly, her father died on that cruise.

"Mr. Fenichel constitute out that my male parent passed away and he called me and he said to me that because my father died, he'due south going to move me up on the list and I would get the very next boy and he wanted it to be a male child and so I would name him later on my father," the woman said.

Within v weeks, Kaufman and her husband were flying to Miami to pick up their baby boy. They paid Fenichel $8,000 and named him Saul after Kaufman's father, like Fenichel had requested.

When they returned to New York, they went to court to sign the necessary paperwork for the adoption.

"We were escorted into a room...and they were all Fenichel babies, ten families with little babies. The babies were nevertheless historic period and they all looked exactly like my son, blonde and blue-eyed. I thought it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen," she said. "My God, any of these niggling babies could have been given to me."

Two years subsequently, Kaufman got a telephone phone call and instantly recognized the person calling.

"I knew who it was immediately and I hadn't spoken to him or heard his voice in 2 years," she said.

It was Fenichel asking if the couple wanted another baby.

"I was shocked. I didn't know they came to you. I thought you had to go to them when you want i...I said this is too good to refuse, maybe it was meant to be," she said.

Kaufman and her hubby agreed to pay Fenichel and the adoption agency $10,000 for a baby girl that they named Beni.

"I didn't think babe manufacturing plant. I merely knew it was weird and then who cares, I was and so happy. I got the babe," she said.

Kaufman and her married man picked up the baby in the parking lot of a hospital in Utica, Due north.Y. While the couple waited in their car with their attorney, two attorneys who were associates of Fenichel came out of the hospital door with a woman.

"The adult female was property the baby and she handed the baby to my lawyer...I didn't encounter her confront, simply I saw that she was petite with blonde hair. She got into a cab with no family and I plant that very sad because in that location was no i there for her," Kaufman said.

Happy to have a daughter, Kaufman idea cypher more most it. Kaufman even referred Fenichel to a friend who was looking to adopt a kid.

Scott Tovin is the adopted son of the couple Kaufman referred to Fenichel.

"My dad had to run into the hospital to take hold of me and run back into the car," Scott Tovin said.

Tovin's nativity mother was moved to Pennsylvania by her family for the last vi months of her pregnancy, he said.

"I take a feeling that I might take been built-in at one of those houses and brought down to the infirmary for my parents to pick upwards," he said.

Adoptees Confront Uphill Boxing to Unseal Birth Certificates

Tovin is still searching for his biological mom merely is lucky in that his family knows her proper name.

"My [birth] mother was 15 years old. Her name is Rhonda Moore. They had none of my begetter'due south data at all. They think he was a mechanic," Tovin said.

Fenichel sometimes encouraged nativity mothers to exit out the names of the babies' fathers on nascency certificates which has fabricated it difficult for Tovin and other adoptees to find their nascency families.

Tovin now lives in Florida and is searching for his birth family unit so that he can laissez passer down his medical history to his 2 sons. His 6-yr-one-time son is autistic.

Tovin joined Seymour Fenichel Adoptees subsequently reconnecting with babyhood friend Beni Cunningham, Lois Kaufman's daughter.

Bernstein's grouping has already led to ane reunion between Lori Appleton, the Jacksonville, Fla., teen who gave her baby up for adoption in 1985, and the woman she thinks is her girl. Appleton's other daughter, Amanda Overdorf, saw a posting on the grouping's wall by a woman whose description of her birth mom seemed to match Appleton.

"I was in shock…I come across a lot of resemblance…We even so accept to practice Dna testing to get it finalized," Appleton said. "Subsequently finding out about the baby-selling, I idea I'd never notice her."

Two months before Appleton was to give birth, the Lauers and Fenichel paid for her to fly from Florida to New York. Appleton stayed with the Lauers at their dwelling house along with another pregnant woman named Kim, she said.

Appleton said she was treated well, but that Kim was not.

"I definitely wanted to requite the baby to a wonderful home, that was the only intention that I had," Appleton said. "I didn't actually realize at the fourth dimension that he [Fenichel] was shady and the practices that were going on."

Now 43, she still remembers the Oct day she gave birth.

"When I was done and set to leave the hospital, they told me there would be a 3rd political party that would come into the main foyer. I went to sign the nascency certificate," she said. "They placed the baby in my arms. I walked to the elevator, the elevator doors opened....[The third party] looked at me hateful and took the baby... I turned around the corner and started bawling."

Fenichel had a car option upward Appleton and an envelope with $eight,000 was there for her to have. She returned to Florida. Though she would ally and get divorced, Appleton kept her maiden name hoping that she might discover her daughter.

Other birth moms and adoptees hope to have the same luck as Appleton.

"It'due south kind of similar a Pandora'due south box. Every time you find one piece of information, it can exist overwhelming to put that all together. It can exist frightening sometimes…like frighteningly exciting. You experience and so close, but even so and then far," Teri Beeler, a birth mother, said.

Beeler'southward only glimpse of her daughter was at a Miami hospital in 1975 as she gave birth at xvi years old.

"The lights were so bright in the OR, I could run into her reflection in the doctor'south glasses," Beeler said. "It's a cede…what better gift to requite somebody than to give them life and to give them love, fifty-fifty if it ways to give them away."

Beeler's maiden name was Hays.

"In my heart, I've always thought of her as Baby Girl Hays," she said.

For Resources and More Data Nearly Searching for Birth Families or Adoptees, Click Here.

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Baby Selling 1988 United States Black Market Adoption Obgyn

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/adoptees-illegal-baby-selling-ring-led-seymour-fenichel/story?id=12886993

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