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Woman
suing the detective who linked her to offspring / Mother had
given child up for adoption in 1963
Byline: Karen Testa; The Associated Press WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.
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The
telephone roused Patricia Austin from sleep at 6:30 one morning.
The stranger's voice on the line asked if the date April 22,
1963, rang a bell. Before Austin could form a groggy answer,
the caller continued: The daughter you gave up for adoption
has been looking for you, and now you're found.
That
call four years ago might have led to a mother-and-daughter
reunion. But in this case, that seems unlikely. Austin has filed
a lawsuit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court against the private
investigator hired by her daughter, alleging invasion of privacy
and infliction of emotional distress.
For
three decades, she had kept the secret of the child she gave
up when she was an unwed student, she says. Yet the person on
the phone knew details of her life she believed were sealed
in a court file. The guilt was immediate and overwhelming, Austin
says. If Florida's court records had been open to Austin's daughter,
this lawsuit would have no basis. But only Alaska and Kansas
have open adoption records; Oregon voters will decide Tuesday
whether to open theirs.
Austin's
lawsuit, filed Oct. 20, claims Virginia Snyder, a 77-year-old
investigator from Delray Beach, located her by using information
she knew or should have known was illegally obtained from the
court file. It also alleges Snyder "coerced and psychologically
terrorized" Austin, a psychologist, into talking to her daughter
by telephone.
The
lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages for Austin, who
claims she has not been able to work and has suffered emotional
and physical damage since being contacted. "It just pushed her
over the edge," says her lawyer, William Graessle.
Austin
now lives in Scarborough, Maine, and declined to be interviewed.
Snyder calls the lawsuit a pack of lies. She provided a copy
of a marriage license that shows Austin was married in September
1962 - seven months before her daughter was born. Austin said
in her lawsuit she chose adoption because unwed pregnant women
were "subject to scorn." Austin's attorney refuses to comment
on whether his client married Lisa's birth father or whether
they had other children.
"She's
either a very sick woman or a very vicious woman," Snyder says.
While the case focuses on Snyder's use of alleged illegally
obtained information, it raises a broader question in the debate
over open adoptions: What is more important - a right to privacy
or a right to ancestry? Madelyn Freundlich, executive director
of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York, says
she knows of no other case in which a birth mother's discovery
escalated into litigation. "Most birth mothers welcome the contact
and are able to handle the issues that arise through contact,
and are not emotionally devastated," says Freundlich, whose
institute studies issues related to adoption.
The
35-year-old woman at the center of the case says she never meant
to cause pain for her birth mother. She has known since she
was 6 that she was born in Gainesville and adopted, but that
was all. "I just wanted to know something about my history,"
says Lisa, of Palm Beach County, who asked that her last name
not be used. "I feel like I have an emptiness inside of me.
When I had my own children, that's the first time I got to touch
my own blood." In 1994, she hired Snyder and gave the investigator
all the information she had: names from a form her adoptive
mother had given her. She says she doesn't know where her mother
got the information and she no longer has a copy of the form.
Snyder says the information on the form enabled her to locate
Austin in a matter of days.
She
and Lisa maintain Austin was shocked but pleased when contacted.
Lisa says she kept up a telephone relationship for several months
with her birth mother and two younger biological brothers. She
says her brothers knew they had a sister and had been looking
for her. "I was the older sister," she says. "At first they
were real excited." But that deteriorated. Snyder said Lisa's
"overbearing" husband began calling Austin and Austin's mother
without her knowledge. Exactly what transpired in those conversations
Lisa doesn't know or won't say. They clearly angered Austin,
who asked Lisa not to contact her again. Lisa says she respected
Austin's request for no contact. She was shocked to learn about
the lawsuit. "It's so crazy after all this time," she said.
"I've totally left her alone. It's too painful for me."
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