Playing My Greek Adoption

from: nytimes.com

April 13, 1996
RAYMOND BONNER
The baby girl, swaddled in rags, was abandoned on the steps of an orphanage in Patras, Greece, with a simple note giving her name (Maria Ioannou), date of birth (Aug. 15, 1955) and a plea that she be fed.

At least that is what official papers say, papers that allowed her to be adopted by a family in Holliswood, Queens. She arrived at Idlewild Airport aboard Swissair Flight 850 at 9:15 A.M. on Dec. 28, 1955.

Forty years later, Maxine Deller -- she has used that name since her adoption -- says she believes that much of her official past is a lie. Ms. Deller, a car saleswoman in Queens, is convinced that her natural mother is still alive, that she has brothers and sisters in Greece, and that she was not abandoned at all but was illegally adopted as part of a large-scale baby-selling scheme at several municipal orphanages in Greece.

To adopt Maria Ioannou, George and Joanna Deller paid $1,000 to a prominent New York magistrate, who was later indicted on charges of conspiracy.

Last year, a national scandal erupted in Greece after several people told their stories of illegal adoption on a popular television show there. Since then, hundreds of adopted children, their siblings and parents who put their children in orphanages have been poring over records in Athens, Thessaloniki in northern Greece and Patras, a sprawling port on the Peloponnesus.

And while the institutions in those cities are considered well-run today, suspicions run high that they operated a baby-selling racket from the 1930's to the 1970's.

In Greece, those who think they are victims of a scheme have formed a group, the Association for the Search for Children Adopted Without the Consent of Their Natural Parents, to unite adopted children and their natural families. And from New York to California, Greek-Americans like Ms. Deller have formed an Internet support group as they search for their pasts.

In the 1950's, Greece was impoverished in the wake of World War II and a bitter civil war. Many families who could not afford to keep their children put them in the orphanages, some with the intent of eventually reclaiming them.

Child advocates say the illegal adoption schemes relied on a winding trail of false documents. In some cases, parents who had put a child in an orphanage would be told that the child had died, and be given fake death certificates. Other times, adoptive parents would be given a false document saying that a child's natural mother had died, paving the way for an adoption. While no one knows how many children may have been adopted through falsified records, hundreds, if not thousands, are thought to have come to the United States.

Greek officials have promised investigations, and in February, the Mayor of Patras announced that all files in that city would be opened. But association leaders complained that their efforts to obtain files were meeting resistance. Their search has been complicated by the fact that most of those thought to have been involved, from doctors and nurses to priests and orphanage officials, are now dead.

In her search for the truth about her natural parents, Amalia Balch of Phoenix, who helped found the Patras arm of the Search for Children group, said she had faced "lies, secrecy, denial, smoke screens, threats and much anger."

Ms. Balch, 45, who has been to Greece four times in the last 10 years, has put together a list of 35 children from the municipal nursery in Patras who were adopted by American families and whose suspiciously identical files, she said, reported that the children were illegitimate and had been abandoned. That is what her papers said when she was adopted by a Los Angeles family in the 1950's.

A hint of irregularity reached New York in 1959 when Stephen S. Scopas, a magistrate who had been appointed by Mayor Robert F. Wagner and who was active in Greek-American civic, political and religious circles, was indicted on charges of selling 30 Greek children to New York couples. In a scandal that captured front-page headlines, Mr. Scopas was charged with accepting payment for placing the children and for doing so without authorization.

It was to Mr. Scopas that Maxine Deller's adoptive parents paid $1,000, according to a letter from him that her parents, now deceased, left in her possession.

Though forced to resign, Mr. Scopas was acquitted. A judge ruled that because the adoptions had been legal in Greece -- as it was believed at the time -- Mr. Scopas could not be convicted in New York.

Mr. Scopas, now 85, is still living in Queens. His wife, Cleoniko, said that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and could not comment, but added that the charges against him were false.

In Athens, Christo Pantelidis, who runs a photography studio, has been on a crusade of sorts, reviewing records at nurseries, compiling related documents and talking with those involved. He estimates that at least 2,000 Greek children were adopted by American families in the 1950's without their natural parents' permission. In 1954, he points out, 1,400 adoptees sailed to the United States aboard one ship alone, the Greek liner Queen Frederika.

Mr. Pantelidis's mission began last year after watching a television program on which a Thessaloniki lawyer revealed her suspicions of having been illegally adopted. In 1949, Mr. Pantelidis's mother had checked into a clinic with complications after the birth of her son Yannis. She took Yannis with her to the clinic, where she died. When Mr. Pantelidis's father went to fetch Yannis, he was told the child had died, too.

His own suspicions newly aroused, Mr. Pantelidis, 46, began searching records for his brother. Last year, he found a document in the Thessaloniki nursery saying that Yannis had been taken there by an unknown person; other papers said he had been brought by his father. One document said he had been rebaptized as Paul; another said he had died. Finally, he found a document saying that his brother had been adopted, and he tracked him down.

"He's a real copy of my father," Mr. Pantelidis said with a big grin, recalling his reaction when he first saw his brother.

In the last year in the United States, an informal network has slowly sprouted among Greek-American children of the 1950's to help one another find their natural parents.

Constantina Altobello was adopted by a Westchester County family that was told that her natural parents had died in an earthquake on the island of Zante in 1954. Now living in California, she is communicating on the Internet with 15 other Greek-Americans searching for their parents.

Ms. Deller, who says her adopted parents gave her a "wonderful life," is nonetheless eager to know her past. She put a notice on the Internet and has been contacted by four people who believe they may also have been illegally adopted.

Sitting around a dining room table on a recent Sunday afternoon in Queens, a friend of Ms. Deller's, Lori Weinstein, talked of the tragic past that drives her search.

According to adoption papers signed by an official at the American Embassy in Greece, Ms. Weinstein was born on April 15, 1958, and was named Maria at birth -- "That's Jane Doe in Greece," she said.

Last year, after publicity in Greece over the adoptions, Ms. Weinstein gave a Greek-American friend the power of attorney to look at her documents in Greece and to talk with people who might know about her past.

"I don't know how to tell you this, but I believe that you were stolen from the hospital," she says her friend told her. "I also believe you have a twin."

It was often the case, Mr. Pantelidis said, that a twin was taken so that the mother would be left with a child.

Ms. Weinstein's adoptive parents paid $4,000 for her -- a large amount at the time. The going rate was $1,000 to $2,000. Her adoptive parents paid more, she said, because her mother had a history of mental illness that rendered the couple unable to adopt in the United States.

Her adoptive mother, a paranoid schizophrenic, died of hepatitis two years ago. Her father and stepmother died a year ago.

"This year has probably been the worst year of my life," said Ms. Weinstein, a counselor for homeless children who lives in Brooklyn. "I need to find my family. It's more than want, it's need, in order for me to go on with the next part of my life. I need to know somebody looks like me. I want to know if somebody has my sense of humor, my knees, my smile.

"I would like to be able to say the word 'mother' and really feel it in my heart."

from: people.com

October 28, 1996 Vol. 46 No. 18
Thomas Fields-Meyer

Separated from Their Mothers Four Decades Ago in What May Have Been a Widespread, Illegal Adoption Scheme, Three American Women Make An Emotional Journey to Greece in Search of the Families. They Never Knew

JAYNE BERNSTEIN'S CHILDHOOD—complete with piano lessons, school plays and time as a junior high cheerleader—was just about perfect. Except for one gnawing issue. "I felt like I never really belonged," she says. "I was somehow different from everyone in my family." Her feeling was more than just intuition. Born in Greece, Bernstein had been adopted as a toddler by a Teaneck, N.J., couple, who told her lovingly from the time she was small where she had come from and how they had chosen her to be their cherished daughter. "I did feel special," says Bernstein, now 40. "But I always wondered about the mysterious woman who had me."

Then last fall, Bernstein's husband, Eric, told her of a TV news report revealing that thousands of Greek children may have been illegally sold to U.S. families in the 1950s—without their parents' permission. Recognizing the name of the lawyer mentioned in the report from her own adoption records, Bernstein says, "I started to cry." She was even more anguished when she learned the full story. In the '50s, still recovering from the dislocations of World War II and the Greek Civil War that followed, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of poverty-stricken couples and unwed mothers left their infants in children's shelters or hospitals for safekeeping. Later, when they tried to reclaim their babies, many were told the children were gone or had died. Unaccustomed to questioning authority, most believed the stories. In fact, many of the children had been sold—shipped to America and other countries, where unwitting couples paid steep black-market fees to adopt them.

Bernstein, now a singer and the mother of three daughters, wasn't the only adoptee riveted by news of the scandal, which involved doctors, lawyers and hospital officials. When a Greek TV program broke the story in May 1995—after a Greek lawyer raised questions about her own adoption records—it caused a furor. The Greek government stepped in, ordering the release of thousands of files from hospitals and orphanages. "It was on the news every day, on talk shows, everywhere," says Fanis Papathanasio of the Greek state TV network. In the U.S., hundreds of the adoptees—now men and women near middle age—sought each other out, formed support groups and contacted Greek organizations working to reunite families. Bernstein reached one such Greek group last June. Three weeks later she was told the identity of her birth mother—Sophia Kefalou, now 63 and living in a small town in southern Greece. "It's like a raging storm has subsided," says Bernstein. "I know where I came from."

In September, with two other adoptees who had become friends—Andrea Friedman, 40, of Queens, N.Y., and Maxine Deller, 41, of Elmont, N.Y.—Bernstein traveled to Greece in search of her roots. At the Athens airport, Kefalou greeted her long-lost daughter. "My happiness is indescribable," Kefalou says. "God does make miracles happen." She was 23 when she gave birth to Bernstein—born Christina—on April 4, 1956, in Corinthos. The girl's father had promised to marry Kefalou, but then refused after learning her family couldn't afford a dowry. Forsaken by disapproving friends and relatives, the young mother ventured to Athens, where she placed the baby in a children's home. Told to leave when the girl reached 4 months, Kefalou returned to her village to reconcile with her family; when she came back a few months later to retrieve the baby, "I was told she was not there," she recalls. "I had not signed any documents. I was illiterate. I had no support, no money. What could I do?"

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Gilbert and Caryle Alexander, now 70 and 67, who had a 6-year-old son but had lost two babies—a girl just 24 hours old and a 22-month-old son stricken with cancer—wanted desperately to adopt a child. After seeing a news story about Greek adoptions, they contacted a Greek lawyer, who soon sent news of an 18-month-old girl. "We were elated; we were walking on the clouds," Gilbert recalls. The elation ended when the child arrived three months later, in February 1958, so ill from malnutrition and pneumonia that the Alexanders drove from the airport to a pediatrician's office. At first unable even to chew, with time she grew healthy. "She was a beautiful child," says Caryle.

The Alexanders never suspected the adoption might have been illegal and were shocked by recent news of the scandal. After four decades, "we never thought of her as adopted," says Gilbert. "We were extremely frightened of losing her." Ultimately they came around, realizing, says Caryle, that Jayne wouldn't "give up 40 years of love because she found her natural mother. There's enough to go around for everyone." For her part, Bernstein felt relief at reuniting with her birth mother. "Finally the pieces of the puzzle are in place," she says.

Andrea Friedman's life, too, has fallen into place. Her adoptive parents, Henry Friedman, now 74, and his wife Pearl, who died in 1978, tried to conceive a child for a decade. A friend led them to a Greek lawyer who was arranging adoptions for $2,000. "We were told the children were from an orphanage," says Friedman, a retired jewelry manufacturer.

What they didn't know was the true history of the girl they adopted, whose Greek name was Maria. Her mother, Katerina, now 57, had given birth out of wedlock in a small village outside Epirus. Like Kefalou, she had fled to Athens, living with an aunt until a welfare agency advised her to place the infant in a children's home until Katerina could support her. "I never imagined they'd give her away," says Katerina, who, forbidden direct contact, visited daily to watch her daughter through a window. "One day I went there and I didn't see her anymore," she recalls. "A nurse took pity on me and said, 'Don't wait. They gave the children to Americans.' Losing her pained me tremendously." Yet, feeling powerless and despondent, she could do nothing.

Andrea, who oversees group homes for mentally disabled youths, had never sought her birth parents. But hearing last April of the scandal, she contacted a Greek organization, which found her mother in just two weeks. Soon she was communicating with Katerina—now married with two grown daughters. Though she was initially anxious about visiting, says Friedman, "as soon as I saw her eyes, I knew it was right." The feeling was mutual, says Katerina: "My happiness reaches the sky."

That sort of joy continues to elude Maxine Deller, who returned home from Greece with her origins still a mystery. She grew up in Elmont, just east of New York City, the only child of George Deller, an insurance broker, and Jeanne, a homemaker. Though it was a loving home, she always felt out of place. "I always felt Greek," she says. "I love Greek music. I love Greek foods, the smells, the noises."

As a girl she also adored her parents' story of her arrival from Greece on an airplane—but didn't know that to get her they had paid $1,000 to a Greek-American lawyer, Stephen Scopas, who was later indicted on baby-selling charges. (Though forced to resign his post as New York City magistrate in 1959, he was acquitted since it was believed that the adoptions were legal in Greece.) Both adoptive parents died by the time she was 26, and she floundered, quitting college and taking various jobs. Since 1986 she has sold cars for Conway Motors in Baldwin, N.Y.

Though Greek groups were unable to secure information about her birth parents, Deller was determined to try. Two days after arriving in Athens, she drove with Friedman and Bernstein to her birthplace, the port city of Patras. Remarkably, in a record book still at the orphanage—now a school—she found the note that accompanied her on Oct. 4, 1955, when she was left there. "Her name is Maria," it read. "Please feed her lest she will die." Says Deller: "I was in shock." Yet the book yielded no other leads, and a week later she returned home, where she continues her search.

Before the trip, Deller had bought a golden heart, broken in two, hoping to wear one half and give the other to her birth mother. "I thought that would be very special," she says. "I didn't want to have to bring it home." Now all she wants are some answers. "The other kids, they heard from their mothers, 'I tried to get you back.' I want to hear that.... Just tell me something."

THOMAS FIELDS-MEYER
TOULA VLAHOU in Athens MARIA EFTIMIADES in New York and MARISA SALCINES in Miami

It's not so easy. I have in my hands all the papers from his adoption, the addresses and names from his foster parents. He has been adopted with a girl too, from the orphanage of Patras and propably the foster parents didn't say the truth to the children! We have been in contact with the foster mother and she didn't accept the adoption of her son and she close the case and the right to comunicate with him. I'm trying to find him for 15 years now by phone or with internet and I can't broke this wall between his foster parents and us! In our first communication in the past she said that if we didn't stop this case she will do a diplomatic episode. And the story goes on... If I had the power to travel through there ... but isn't so easy. Thats why I'm trying to find other persons to help me with this story...