Seymour Kurtz - An Update
While Baby Broker Watch already has a great page on Seymour Kurtz and I don't want to rehash too much of what is already written there, I still had the urge to find more about the current state of his activities. While being already on the website of the Georgia State Department to look up information about another agency, I accidentally stumbled upon his Golden Link Foundation and decided to look into the published documents.
The most interesting document was also the most recent. a certificate of merger, issued on 13 May 2007, which deals with the merger of Adoption World (Illinois) and Golden Link Foundation (Georgia), into a new Adoption World (Georgia). More specifically, the old Adoption World (Illinois) ceased to exist after the merger; and Golden Link Foundation as the surviving entity was subsequently renamed into Adoption World, head quartered in Illinois, but registered in Georgia. All signed sealed and delivered by Seymour Kurtz himself.
Looking through all the documents I found out there is another important figure in the Kurtz network, not mentioned on the Baby Broker Watch website, by the name of Mary Ann Mijajlovic, executive director of Adoption World as indicated by the license of the Department of Children and Family Services of Illinois. She was also the one who, in 1999, authorized the name change of Adoption Care Inc, into Golden Link Foundation, as is indicated in one of the appendices of the certificate of merger.
Adoption Care Inc. at the time had Diane Newton as its executive director, who held the same position with the now defunct Kurtz organization Friends of Children Inc., whose secretary was Margot Hamilton who at the time was executive director of Easter House, the agency with which Seymour Kurtz' adventures in baby selling all started in the early 1960's.
But let's get back to Mary Ann Mijajlovic, she is not only executive director of Adoption World, but holds that same position with another of Kurtz agencies, Birth Hope Adoption Agency, of which she is also the vice president. as can be learned from the annual report of 2007. In a report of 2002 of Birth Hope Adoption Agency we can also find the name of Howard Korengold, together with his fellow layer buddy Norman Hanfling, the person in whose name the Easter House is registered,
Are you still with me?
Seymour Kurtz, the sly fox that he is, certainly knows how to spin a web of deceit and despite actions of several states, many lawsuits later, he is still in business, albeit now with only three companies remaining: Adoption World, Easter House and Birth Hope. Or is there still more? Well, though it doesn't look active, there still seems to be a Friends of Children in Arkansas and according to the State Department its status is good standing. While the activity of that organization is not at all clear, it is certain Birth Promise Adoption Agency (Connecticut) is closed and so is Pregnancy Guidance Center (DC).
With those three organizations still in place and Seymour Kurtz having been investigated since 1976, when the Chicago Sun-Times first started a series of articles on him, it seems we will have to wait until the man's death before we are finally rid of him. He and his Easter House survived two congressional hearings, dozens of lawsuits, which not only proves the shrewdness of the man but also the weakness of the American legislative system.
For those interested, I made a couple of articles from the 1980's, about or mentioning Seymour Kurtz and only available in photocopy format, available as text: