Chapter Sixty-Four

Denise Feels Our Pain

“So how does it feel?

To be on your own?

With no direction home?”

–Bob Dylan

    A few weeks after Maria Blevins came home, Denise emailed Dorothy in her “caring agency director” mode, asking after Maria, if they could be of help to Maria in any way.

    Dorothy, going on the assumption that Denise actually did care about Maria, thanked her for her concern, but also added that it would be nice if all agencies would help waiting families of special needs children obtain information about their children as they waited and waited and waited.  

    Families adopting special-needs children like Maria needed better medical updates so their pediatricians could prepare for their medical issues. They had spent the entire waiting process for Maria focusing on her physical problems and were totally blindsided by some of the behavioral issues that Maria was displaying (issues that they have sought professional help for).

    But Denise was pissed off at those VENGEFUL, HATEFUL, SPITEFUL and CRAZY CASES and slipped back into EVIL ADOPTION AGENCY DIRECTOR mode. 

    Sometime around the end of 2001, this is the response that Denise L. Hubbard sent the Blevins family about helping families with special needs kids (“and this my friends, is the crux of the apostrophe” with regards to BBAS). Pertinent, paranoid silliness is highlighted:

Dorothy

I want to start fresh with you and Gary if you do not mind? I want to help you with Maria.  This is up to you. We can go on and on with who said and did what but it will NOT hello Maria. I have all taped calls, email correspondence etc.. from all communication we have. But throwing that in each others faces will not help.  We need to move on, if you choose. I have chosen to. What are your thoughts?

So on that note, I will express exactly what happened from the time Maria was referred to you picking her up on the Bulgaria home front and leave it at that.

We were getting lots of updates, photos, reports etc... from Bulgaria with no problems.  We had high hopes of many things. We started programs to assist the children left behind and we are still doing this, but have to do it secretly due to various issues.

I will not mention any names but I am going to say this:  We had a good control on the orphanages, humanitarian aide etc.... Including updates until a certain family wrote the BG gov't about Valeri and BBAS and wrote bogus wrongful allegations. These allegations caused an investigation, the removal of orphanage directors and a halt on our agency and another agency from getting vital information to assist the families.  The funny thing is these updates we were getting were helping this family as well. This family accused Valeri of buying and selling children, giving children for body parts, and disrupting the secrecy of adoption. What a hoot. You get referred a child and we want to give updates and do until this family says no one should get updates of any child because it is really not their child yet. Secrecy! . In addition they stated that the work we did in the orphanage's like buying medicines, developing caretaker programs and funding doctors in Buzovgrad to help the special needs children was all money that was used wrongfully.  This is not true.

I will lay it on the table. Since this happened, this family feels they have accomplished killing the BG program for BBAS and the humanitarian aide for the children. It is sick, just sick. These people befriended other BBAS clients to locate what orphanage their children are from and how their process was going and used this information to provide lies to the BG police etc.... This in turn caused directors to be removed, no funding or care to the children, and most sadly we were unable to get updates. Who suffered at the hands of spiteful uncaring people? The children!  I couldn't care less about myself or BBAS, but dangit, the kids have suffered dramatically.

The work we have done in BG in one year is 5 times the work that any other agency has done in 5 years. This is not adoptions, this is starting programs, building playgrounds, opening clinics, developing large and small muscle rooms, putting heat in orphanages, removing lead paint, repainting, buying bedding, beds, cribs, sinks, washers, dryers etc......  Why? Because believe it or not we care! I am so angry about this. This has caused grief for the parents, directors and the children. And why should the children suffer?

OK I vented. Sorry you did not get the updates you wanted, but this was NOT at the hand of Valeri or myself. We had a very nice system worked out where the children would really benefit and this family, lied, manipulated and just crushed the system.

Oh yes I have proof and the feds are involved now.

OK do we move on? Please check with Gary
I would like to move on and help you and Maria
The ball is in your court.

I know that you do not need me, you can get all info you need yourself through a specific family and the escort, So again it is up to you.

Now you know why I was so angry

In 2002 I will still fund programs through donations from businesses, familles and my husband working many hours of overtime. Even my kids have donated each $100 to the orphanages in BG.

I cannot name where we are working or who we are helping, because I know if it gets back to this family, they will ruin this as well. 

I will await your response

God Bless

Best Regards,
Denise Hubbard
Executive Director
Building Blocks Adoption
P.O. Box 1028
Medina,Ohio 44258
330-725-5521
denise@bbas.org
www.bbas.org


   Actually, this is worse than psycho agency director mode. This is Nixon mode.

    Damn, we were good. We felt we’d hurt her, but hadn’t realized how bad that was.  

    This email proved it.  But why let the Gary and Dorothy have the brunt of her anger towards us?  Why not just slam us privately?

    We actually had a giggle or two reading it out loud and imagining what sort of state of mind Denise was in when she wrote it.

    So that was her version of events, eh? How more wildly inaccurate could she have been?

    She blamed us for everything that had happened or been published in Bulgaria. Everything.

    Never mind that we were as surprised as everyone else (except, maybe, Denise herself?) about the disclosures from Bulgaria in 2001. Most of the material she alluded to came from either the investigation or other sources in Bulgaria who are still unknown to us.

    And then she had the nerve to say the updates had been helpful to us, too, despite our attitude? What updates? What help? HAH!

    Actually, listing the fabrications in this email is beside the point ... the alert reader should be able to figure out for himself or herself by this point in the story what those are.

    (However, we may, in the future, have more on this “we did more in one year [through our charity] than all the other agencies did in five” bit.)

    And the “feds,” whichever ones she’s referring to, have never knocked on our door.

    We shared this with quite a few of our fellow strugglers, against BBAS and others. They all found it as amusing and astounding as we.

    One of them even took note of Denise’s claim that her husband had to pull overtime to make it all work out. “Maybe,” he suggested to us, “he works all that overtime to get away from his psycho wife.”

    That is all of the exchange, but judging from the email that Denise sent the Blevinses, she received our rebuttal. We truly hope she shared in the experience of having her heart ripped out.  Does that mean she ached right then as we had at one time? If so, good.

    We had come full circle.

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