From: an466459@anon.penet.fi
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 18:22:08 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: can we trust the government as custodians of private info?
Message-ID: <9601090852.AA22761@anon.penet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



   DOYLESTOWN,  Pa.  (ITN) * Carol Sandusky didn't  want  to  hear  how  her 
biological  father  supposedly stabbed her mother with an ice pick and threw 
her out a window while pregnant with Carol.  
   She  didn't  want  to know she was beaten in the face with a saucepan and 
burned with cigarettes as a toddler.  She  didn't  want  to  hear  that  her 
biological  family members accuse each other of rape,  murder,  beatings and 
infidelity.  
   Sandusky,  26,  learned  the  details  because  a  government  caseworker 
violated  her  wishes  -- and the law -- by helping a sister track her down. 
What's worse,  she said,  the same  agency  might  have  saved  her  from  a 
tormented  adolescence  had  it  disclosed  the  abuse  to Jeanne and Thomas 
Sandusky when they adopted Carol in 1973 at the age of 3 1/2.  
   "The state made a decision to take me out of this environment,  then they 
decided 20 years later to bring it back to me," Sandusky said.  "My file was 
supposed to be really private." 
   In telling her story and advocating privacy laws,  Sandusky stands  among 
the  few  trying to counter a movement promoting vigorous searches for birth 
families.  She rejects the arguments  of  those,  including  her  biological 
sister,  who  believe  she's not dealing with her adoption and must hear the 
grisly details to heal emotionally.  
   "They thought this information was going to help me.  I wasn't even  born 
yet.  What's this information going to do for me?" Sandusky said.  
   Sandusky,  her  parents  and her husband recently filed a federal lawsuit 
against the Cumberland County Children  and  Youth  Services,  administrator 
Gary  I.  Shuey  and  the  person she blames for improperly revealing sealed 
information, former agency caseworker Marlene Bohr.  They contend the agency 
violated Sandusky's privacy and fraudulently withheld information that would 
have led her adoptive parents to seek therapy for her years earlier.  
   In  Pennsylvania,  adoptees  may  obtain  information  about  their birth 
parents with the consent of a court and the parents,  but  the  law  forbids 
agencies from opening records to siblings.  Most states have restrictions on 
adoption records.  
   Bohr did not return messages left on her home answering machine and Shuey 
didn't return calls to his office.  Ruby D.  Weeks,  attorney for the  youth 
agency, referred calls to county solicitor Hank Johnson, who said he had not 
seen the lawsuit and could not comment.  
   Sandusky's ordeal started in February 1992, two months after her wedding.  
   At 22, Sandusky had achieved stability after an adolescence marked by 
bulimia,  suicide attempts and hospital stays for emotional problems.  Along 
with a new marriage, she had a good job as a nanny.  
   Her parents then got a call from Bohr saying the eldest  of  Carol's  two 
older  biological  sisters was looking for her.  The Sanduskys,  who live in 
Newtown, Bucks County,  refused to divulge their daughter's phone number but 
passed the message to her, along with Bohr's number.  
   "I  said,  'Throw the number out,' " Sandusky recalled.  But her parents, 
   who also have a biological son, 17-year-old Brad, 
encouraged her to call as a matter of courtesy.  Talking on the  phone  with 
   Bohr, Sandusky said, she learned that her sister 
"had  a  great  need  to  see  me  because she protected me during infancy." 
Sandusky was put off by that great need and mortified when she  learned  the 
sister had located her biological parents and grandparents.  
   "I didn't want to be involved with any of that," said Sandusky.  "I said, 
'No way.' " 
   Sandusky did, however,  agree to hear medical background information from 
Bohr.  Instead, Sandusky said, she ended up with disturbing information from 
the caseworker and two years' worth of bizarre,  harassing letters from  the 
sister.  First came the medical information from Bohr.  
   "She  said,  'It looks as if you were beaten in the face with a saucepan. 
It looks as if you have cigarette burns.  It looks like you were tied  to  a 
chair  and shot up with Thorazine.  I have a picture right in front of me of 
your face with a huge hand print on it,' " Sandusky recalled.  
   The abuse reportedly came at the hands of her birth parents  and,  later, 
her foster parents.  
   "That wasn't what I expected to hear.  That's not what I consider medical 
information, and I hung up the phone," Sandusky said.  
   Two days later,  she got the first letter from her  sister,  who  is  two 
years older. Many others followed, detailing not only family medical history 
but also family brutality.  
   "It's  unbelievable  what  this  family  life  was  like," said Sandusky.  
   Sandusky and her husband eventually moved to a new home in Bucks County, 
fearful  of  visits  from  blood  relatives.  In  the  letters,  the  sister 
   indicated Bohr had given her extensive details 
about  Sandusky and other biological relatives.  Sandusky's anger focuses on 
   Bohr. In a thick file, she has letters from 
state lawmakers who agree that,  by law,  Bohr had no  business  calling  on 
behalf of the sister.  
   But District Attorney Michael Eakin, in a statement issued at year's end, 
said the two-year statute of limitation in the case had expired,  giving him 
no legal avenue to press charges. He declined to comment further.  
   Florence Anna Fisher,  who helped found the adoptee  search  movement  25 
years  ago  by  launching Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association,  advocates 
breaking laws that keep information from  adoptees.  She  said  she  doesn't 
understand Sandusky's complaint.  
   "Nobody can pressure you into staying on the phone and seeing someone you 
don't want to see if you're an adult," Fisher said.  
   She agrees adoptees should be left alone if they want no contact, but she 
believes  that  all adoptees really do want to know about their past and owe 
it to their children and grandchildren to find out.  
   "If they told me I had been burned,  if they told me I had been abused as 
a  child,  I  would rather know that than walk around a blank slate all (my) 
life," she said.  
   Joanne W.  Small,  executive director of Adoptees in Search in  Bethesda, 
Md.,  said  the Sandusky case should not be used as a reason to keep records 
closed.  "It must be considered atypical and aberrant," she said.  
   But Mary Beth Style,  vice president of the National Council for Adoption 
in  Washington,  D.C.,  the  prime  organization  lobbying  to keep adoption 
records closed, said she receives calls from people hysterical over unwanted 
contacts.  One woman in Washington state reported that an  intermediary  had 
violated  her  wishes  and  revealed her identity to her birth daughter.  It 
turned out the daughter worked for the mother's husband.  
   "You're assuming that these adults cannot make decisions  on  their  own, 
that  they're in denial and you're going to help them," she said.  "There is 
no way to protect the quality of the searches and I'm very  concerned  about 
that." 
   Even  initial  contacts  can be traumatic for people who thought they had 
put adoptions behind them, according to Style, who added that opening closed 
records also erodes trust among those considering adoption.  
   For her part,  Sandusky,  who hopes to adopt someday,  can do without the 
biological family reunion.  
   "They  almost  killed  me,"  she  said.  "I  don't  need to confront that 
situation." 
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