Teri responded no more. 

    But, I forwarded this exchange on to Sue Corrigan and the other EEAC list client.  They in turn forwarded on the exchanges they were having with Mrs. Atkinson at the same time!  Sue received the following from Mrs. Atkinson from her email at work:  

Sue -

I don't know that our experience was that much different than yours.  I believe our response to that experience is greatly different.  We have our child home safe and sound and choose to move forward. I fear that dwelling on the past will only bring you more pain.  

Also, you left out a great portion of your experience which I only recently discovered.  You were in the process of adopting another child at the same time as Nina.  I'm sure this added to your stress greatly. Others on the Bulgarian list are not aware of this, but this is a significant factor.  

I wish you and your family the best and hope that now that you have your two adopted children home you can move forward and enjoy them.

Take care,
Teri  

    Sue had told very few people about her family’s Ukrainian adoption, even when the Atkinsons had been crying to them about their travel delay. It wasn’t anybody’s business, so the email from Mrs. Atkinson really aggravated Sue. 

    How had Teri gotten this information? Notice the highlighted passages ... Sue had mentioned it in the post which triggered Teri’s response, but Teri’s response seems to suggest she got the information from somewhere else.

    Who could that be? Well, by this time, Denise knew about the Corrigans’ Ukrainian adoption.

    Sue’s reply (which we have decided not to reprint here, since it goes into some private family detail about her children) asked, as you the reader well also might, just what her other adoption had had to do with her difficulties with Building Blocks. 

    What had so incensed her, as was clear from her public post, was the runaround she got from Denise late in the previous summer, when she could never get a straight answer as to what was going on, what had or hadn’t happened, and what documents were where in the process ... and that had occurred before the Corrigan family had even begun to consider Ukrainian adoption.

     In any event, she continued, her experience with adopting independently from Ukraine had been much more streamlined and less stressful than with Denise and Bulgaria. She questioned, in fact, what Denise had really done to justify being paid all that money other than hook her up with Valeri Kamenov, who had done all the work as far as she could see.

    Her email was quite civil and polite in tone, almost conciliatory, and you would be hard-pressed to have read anything malicious or insulting into it.

    So what did it earn her from Teri?

Sue -
 
I find it appalling that you still do not reveal that you were adopting another toddler at the same time!!!!!!!!!
 
You also don't  state the terrible time you had with your son when you brought him home.  

    From this the Corrigans reached the same conclusion that we already had: that Teri could not and did not care to engage in rational, civilized discussion about the facts of the matter; she just wanted to inflict as much emotional pain and suffering as she could on anyone who dared challenge her mistress.

    Sue said it best, about the two of them, in a later email to us summing the whole exchange up:

THESE two are kooks.  Do the EE LIST SERV people think BBAS are a troubled organization? I never told you how she told me to omit part of my past ON MY HOMESTUDY  so that I would look better "on paper." I did not do this but I am sure I was not the first divorced person she has worked with.


She may have bought her dedicated stooges - Sue

    On top of battling it out with Daniel, Elizabeth and Sue Corrigan, the following is the exchange between Mrs. Atkinson and the other EEAC Bulgaria list poster. This poster had adopted a boy using Wasatch; she asked, “How Did I Get Into This Anyway?”  

    Who knows? Perhaps delusions of Denise Hubbard’s goodness and innocence were propelling Mrs. Atkinson along.

Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 9:12 AM

Subject: [EEAC-BL] waiting for child/feeling after the wait

Re the frustrating experiences of the Corrigans, I would add that other members on this list had horrific experiences with the same agency; prospective parents new to this list shouldn't base their entire impression of Bulgarian adoption on how badly used these families were.
 
Based on your comment (above), you obviously do not know the whole story.  You did not work with this agency, as we did.  So, until you have first hand knowledge of what these "TWO" families alledge, please refrain from commenting on things you do not know.  I believe "slander" would describe what you are doing.  There are many  significant factors that were left out by both the Corrigans and the Cases. 

    Such as??????? Our fellow EEAC Bulgaria List poster wanted to know.

From: ATKINSON

To:

Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 10:25 AM

Subject: RE: [EEAC-BL] waiting for child/feeling after the wait 

Then why are you bad mouthing BBAS? 
 
The Cases and the Corrigans are really hurting those in the process of adopting children from Bulgaria. We have no doubt that the Cases had a hand in our last delay. 

From:

To: ATKINSON
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: [EEAC-BL] waiting for child/feeling after the wait
 
My only concern, after the Corrigan's post, was that people not generalize from that experience and retreat from the Bulgarian children altogether.  If  you find BBAS and their Bulgarian faciliators to be truthful,  straightforward, honest, efficient, involved with nurturing orphanages and  with uncorrupt, compassoinate orphanage directors who are not currently under criminal investigation, I think that's terrific.    

 

To:

From: Atkinson

Duh, you didn't mention the name, the Corrigans and Cases already did!
 
Like I said, if you don't have first hand knowledge, as we do, please refrain.  You need to  look up slander in the dictionary
 

From:  

To: ATKINSON

Sent: 7/2/01 10:43:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Re: [EEAC-BL] waiting for child/feeling after the wait
 
well, I didn't mention BBAS by name, first of all, but thanks for threatening the charge of slander anyway.

And, secondly, I've seen the Cases's photos, of their RUSSIAN adoption, so any PR work on BBAS's behalf is lost on me.

    She went on to ask us if Mrs. Atkinson was on BBAS’s payroll. Me too.  Denise obviously needed more stable advocates and soldiers to support her claims.

    After reading this and responding, my anger was through the roof. Daniel and Anguel were somewhere out walking and I was inside roasting mad at this idiotic exchange.

    Well, guess what! I don’t take this lying down! I picked up the telephone and dialed BBAS’s number in Ohio. Debbie Bollinger answered the telephone. 

    This time, I got to actually use every “A”, “B”, “C”, “F” and “S” word directly into her ear.  

    I screamed “I HAVE SOME C--- calling me a baby murder on e-mail!  I’ve lost over $40,000 you F---- agency.  You people are pathetic!  I’m going to sue your F---- A----, C----!”

    She told me she didn’t like my language. I asked her if she had a set of virgin ears and told her to sell some more babies. Then I hung up.

    Elizabeth Case goes KA-BOOM!!!!! Real mature, I know, earning me the title of “That Crazy Elizabeth Case” from our good, honest agency director, Denise Hubbard.

    Daniel had by then arrived home with Anguel. They came upstairs and saw me on the computer shaking and livid.  

    He said “I thought we would have been home before you could see all that. It’s been going on all day.”

    I told Daniel what I had done and then wondered if they could sue me for harassment.  We’re still waiting. 

    But we were still angry. Mrs. Atkinson was a fool. Did she really think she could get away with that from her job? Is this what she was paid for? Have private, hateful and wrong email exchanges about Bulgarian adoption and her adoption agency?  

    Wouldn’t her employer like to know about this — and put a stop to this waste of time? (Especially since it was the federal government, paid for by your tax dollars and mine)

    It wasn’t that hard locating her ISP. It was in her email. 

    We merely typed in a “www” before the rest of her email address. A website came up. We scrolled down the website and found an email contact.  

    We then collected various posts that Mrs. Atkinson had posted from her work email and our entire email exchange we had carried on with her that day. This is what we sent:

To Whom It May Concern:

 We have had some problems with an individual sending us private e-mail from your agency.  Private e-mails of a troubling and potentially slanderous sort.

 This is of great concern, seeing as this appears to be this individual’s WORK e-mail address, and we have exchanged in some very heated and private discussions.

 We truly hope that the person sending us this e-mail will cease and desist.  As far as we are concerned, the discussion is at an end, owing to the fact the individual is slandering us over the death of our son in Russia.

 This is what has been sent so far (and as far as we are concerned, is at an end).  These has to do with a foreign adoption and a public post to an adoption e-mail list serve for those adopting from Bulgaria.

We are on our home computer, so we are spending our own time not any company time.

Here are some samples of what was sent to us ON YOUR COMPANY’S TIME:

    We never heard back directly from the ISP or the ISP administrator (or Mrs. Atkinson’s supervisor), but we did hear indirectly that it got back to her.  

    Oh well.  Stinks when you do this at your job and get tattled on.

    We also forwarded the entire exchange — including Sue Corrigan’s and the other client’s — to the EEAC Bulgaria list administrator Ms. Beth Waggenspack. Ms. Waggenspack was not amused, but could do not more than merely suggest we block Mrs. Atkinson’s email addresses.  

    She did express some concern over our agency, however, but did not reveal any details (those we would find out later).  

    Daniel and I have continued to post on the EEAC Bulgaria list, and as for the Atkinsons, it appears that they are still attempting to slander us publicly, with Denise Hubbard’s backing, on the Internet.  For further details, read on.

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