Chapter Thirty-One:

We Lose Our Faith for Good

“Thunder only happens when it’s raining.

Players only love you when they’re playing.

When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know ...

oh, you’ll know.”

–Fleetwood Mac

    

    If there is one date that Daniel and I can honestly say that we lost 100 percent of our faith in Denise Hubbard, Building Blocks and its representatives, it would have to be Monday, Jan. 24, 2000.

    Even with the back and forth about Cyril’s autopsy and the refund mess, we had kept a modicum of faith in Denise and her ability to help us with Anguel’s adoption.

    But that all changed in one day, when we were finally pushed to the brink for the first time. And it was because of an innocuously titled email: I Thought I Sent This Last Week?

 

Bulgaria Adoption Time Line

 

Below is an estimated timeline for the documentation process once your documents are in the hands of the representatives overseas.  Please note this is approximate.  The time indicated below is the maximum time we have been advised it can take for the adoption process.  The Average adoption is approximately 20-24 weeks.

 

Translation and Authenciation of Documents 2 Weeks

Ministry of Health 8 Weeks

Ministry of Justice 4 Weeks

Documents Await Court Date 2 Weeks

Court Date – Judge Has 30 Days to Write Decree 4 Weeks

Validity of Adoption Decree 2 Weeks

Issuance of Birth Certificate 2 Weeks

Police Clear Adoption Documents 2 Weeks

Passport Issuance 3 Weeks

Parents Travel  1 Week

30 weeks

 

The above time line is provided to give one the idea of what to expect when waiting to return to pick up your child(ren) from Bulgaria.  As you can see the sooner your documents are in Bulgaria, the better.

Your INS approval does not need to be in Bulgaria until they get to the Ministry of Justice.

    Daniel saw this first and hoped that I wouldn’t see it before he got back from running some errands. He knew I would not take it well, and he wanted to be there with me when I read it.

    Unfortunately, I came home that day from work before he returned and logged on to check email.  

    To say that I was devastated was an understatement.  

    I was smashed and beaten. I looked at the calendar that hung on our wall above the computer, grabbed it and began to count the days.  

    July. JULY!  WE HAD BEEN LED TO BELIEVE WE’D HAVE HIM HOME BY MARCH or thereabouts! 

    And that was if things went as she said they would, which we already knew wasn’t likely.

     Denise did a good job at keeping this from us for as long as she did. Why the delay in sending us this information?  

    Was this just a way to keep us as paying clients by sending this in an offhanded manner like this? Is this how she treated paying customers who were adopting the children she cared so much about?

    This was enough to make me seriously reconsider Anguel’s adoption. We did not sign up to adopt a child who would be two and a half at homecoming; we had already lost so much of his babyhood – to have to wait so much longer seemed like a sick and inhuman joke being played on us.

    I had also been reading. One book, Becoming Attached by Robert Karen, had left a deep impression on me.

    It wasn’t about adoption at all, but about how people develop the ability to bond to other people.

    And according to Karen, it became much more difficult after a child reached the age of two.

    I also had to wonder after reading Dr. Ronald Federici’s Help for the Hopeless Child, a manual for adoptive parents based on his own experience as a psychiatrist and father of half a dozen Eastern European adoptees. 

    He recommended many drastic measures to take as the only way to heal children with attachment problems, and the implication was to expect them. Were the stories in his book a glimpse of our future with Anguel?

    (By the way, it’s worth clicking on the link. Many of the same themes we have been touching on on this website — the lies and denial within the adoption community in particular — repeat in the stories told in the customer reviews ... and it’s interesting that none of those people leave their names).

    What kind of child would we be bringing home from Bulgaria after all this time? A bitter malcontent prematurely destined for the New York State correctional system? The thought made me so sick one shift at work that I had to go home early.

    And what about the developmental delays Anguel would be suffering from? A 2.5 year old boy isn’t the same as a 1.5 year old boy. And I didn’t care how “great, loving and caring” the orphanages were in Bulgaria.  

    An orphanage is an institution. Institutions are not families. Institutions can only give so much, and once time is lost in a person’s development, a person can’t get that back easily.  

    Not that it was a death sentence, but we might never have agreed to his adoption if they had TOLD US THE TRUTH before we signed up to adopt him. Yet another lie that was going to bite Denise Hubbard in her big fat ass.

    Finally, after much gnashing of our teeth over what to do at this point, we got on the EEAC Bulgaria list and posted our concerns. Publicly.

    Denise hates her clients to post anything on the Internet anywhere.  She was so afraid of us “revealing” things that shouldn’t be “revealed” like her LIES, agency MALFEASANCE and INCORRECT timelines. And especially fees.

    We didn’t mention our agency for months on the list. Our first post had to do with adopting two-year olds and the issues they faced —  delays, health, anger, despondency.  In the post we said that we may reconsider Anguel’s adoption if the issues were too much to over come — or they were issues we could not handle.

    I am happy to say that the responses, both public and private, were positive. Parents who had adopted toddlers responded honestly about their children.

    Not all the stories were happy sunshine; they did say that it was hectic the first weeks their children were home — screaming, throwing things, anger issues, but after the first few months, things calmed down.  

    Not one person who responded said their child was having attachment issues, and when we heard that, it alleviated our fears. We stuck with Anguel through that hurdle.

    And one very nice woman even gave us Dr. Federici’s email address so we could ask him ourselves, which we did.

    He said that his book was mainly meant for parents who had tried everything else and were at the end of their ropes, which in fact a good deal of his clients were. His answer was very reassuring, and probably did the most to convince us to continue.

   Yet Daniel and I were still not happy about this timeline. It meant readjusting our already-difficult emotional states of mind.

    It was time to play good little adoptive parents once again and ask Denise about it.  Denise replied again with her usual LIES about the Bulgarian process on Jan. 31:

            Elizabeth:

I understand your frustration but we did advise you that the time frame did not start until ALL the documents were in Bulgaria.  The time does not start at the time you see the child.  The time frame is still 4-6 months once the documents are in Bulgaria and submitted to the Min of Health.  I also know that Valeri explained this to you.  Thank you for updating us on the documents.  Hopefully you will not need any other documentation.  God Bless  Denise

    We couldn’t believe this. Of course we knew that the clock didn’t start until our documents were in the system ... what had we been racing around in October and November for?

    And to the best of my recollection, Valeri’s talk to me before I returned to the US focused mainly on the importance of getting our dossier together as soon as we could. I think he knew that I understood that this didn’t happen by magic.

    Denise would continued to LIE about the timeframe for the documents making their way through the ministries for months! Anguel’s adoption process took nine months; other clients took as many as 14 months. 

    BBAS’s first Bulgarian adoption was completed in early February of that year. And that family had started it with an attorney had encountered legal trouble and had been unable to complete the adoption.

    Daniel responded back to her. He was much calmer than I was, but he was still angry. 

OK, but still, why did it take so long (to us anyway) for our documents to be filed at the MOH?  We had them (before the update request) ready before we went to Russia…in fact I (Dan) hurried around New York City getting them certified and authenticated the day before we left just so it wouldn’t be hanging over our heads in Perm.  Then after we returned your accountant billed us for the courier costs to Washington (I am sure you remember that).  Shortly thereafter you told us in e-mail that our documents were in Bulgaria being translated.

So why, then, were they only entered there Jan. 17?  Even factoring in Y2K closures and the holidays, and Bulgaria’s bureaucratic shakeups, that still seems like an awful long time to translate them.

In short, then, we feel like we lost a month we thought we had.  I realize a lot of what goes on in BG is beyond BBAS control, but as long as I have some explanations, I can live a little bit more easily.  

Dan Case

    Denise responded in her usual ignorant way. I don’t know if she knew that she had lost us then, but her explanation wasn’t cutting it. 

    She threw the returned courier check back at us — which I did send in after all was said and done — and then blamed her foreign reps, something she always does when the heat comes down on her.

The last document that we billed you for (which we returned the check, and did not intend for it to come like it did, like we explain) was your 171H.

Your documents then went into translation, certification and then into the Min of Health.  Their was a two week delay due to the holidays, which we have no control over the Bulgarians taking holiday break.

We do not request the documents unless they are requested by the Bulgarian Gov’t.  We give you the time frames that we are given.  Valeri and the Attorney submit the documents, we do not.  If it was up to us, Anguel and all the other children would have been home the day they were born.  Have a good day.

    We did not have a good day, we did not have a good week. As a matter of fact, we were going to have the worst winter, spring and summer of our lives.

    Since it was going to be such a long time for us to see Anguel again, I did requested to take a trip to visit him in March, during my two-week vacation. Quickly Daniel shot off the following email to her about a visit and a gift for Anguel’s 2nd birthday:

Oh…another thing just occurred to me.  Since Anguel’s birthday is a little over a month away, we wondered if it might not be too late to arrange for some gifts from us to go over for his birthday (March 4)?  Can something similar be done like what was done at Christmas?  Maybe we could get yet another video and some pictures?  It would really make us feel better while we wait.

Actually, the ideal gift would be for E to use some of her vacation time that month and go there and spend some more time with him.  But I don’t know how that is.   Dan

    Denise’s response (and I want the reader to note she hints it is possible here, but when the same request is made in February, it’s a snotty retort):

If she wants to go back and see Anguel we can make arrangements for her to go.  But I know that it would be the same trip as before.  She would arrive one day, see him the next and come home the following day.  Denise

    On Jan. 27 Lori Homeyer gave us this response to an email about my shock at this timeline.

I totally understand how you feel about this time line business.  I must say I am for obvious reasons not very happy about it either.  According to Denise, that is the longest it could possibly take, I asked.  I am now hoping to travel March or April, we were originally told end-Dec, and so on.  The last we heard from Valeri (that’s what Denise says) we should be traveling early-Feb at the latest – don’t think so.  I just pray every day and hope God let’s M come home soon.

    Bottom line: everybody who had signed on with BBAS by this time to do an adoption from the country of Bulgaria had been lied to on the timeline.

    The dossier had only hit the first stage of its journey through the Bulgarian legal system, the Ministry of Health on Jan. 17. 

    I did forward to Sue and Rob the real timeline for the Bulgarian adoptions. Denise had, for some reason or other, failed to send that one to the Corrigans.

    Something wasn’t right about all of this. 

    Why all the lies? Why all the secrecy? Were we the only ones to have been treated so badly? 

    We decided to find out using various methods if there were others of us out there, the slowly growing number of BBAS detractors. If Denise was treating us this strangely, what had she done to others?  

    Surely somebody who lied so callously must have screwed up with somebody else.  We were right.

    We can’t go into details about how we found Mary and Matt Hutchison, other than to say they placed their names on the EEAC’s Agency Registry site as “Contract Terminated – contact for details” in December 1999.  

    Pay dirt.  So we emailed Mary Hutchison and her husband and called her one night in January.

    She had quite a tale to tell.

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