Caring
Choices
Over time, we came
to wonder who the Hubbards had used to adopt Emily. Denise had never revealed
who the agency was to us or any of the BBAS clients we were in contact with.
She falsely claimed she had lost money to EAC, but never revealed which
agency she used to bring Emily home.
At other times she
was just vague about it, when we or others asked. And, as we later learned,
information she volunteered about it either contradicted itself or did not check
out?
If there was
nothing unseemly about it, why did Denise have to lie or otherwise avoid the
issue? Given her record on the issue, we quite naturally began to suspect there
was something she didn’t want people to know.
Denise seemed to
have set up BBAS right after Emily’s adoption. Wasn’t it strange that
Building Blocks had been incorporated so soon after Emily’s arrival? One just doesn’t
go and set up an adoption agency to handle foreign placements without contacts
in said country … especially Russia where contacts are everything.
BBAS’s original facilitators for their Russian program had been Dennis Gornostaev and Dennis Kaselak.
The question then became: how had Denise become acquainted with Dennis and Dennis in order obtain referrals from Russia? Had there been some massive evil or incompetence associated with that?
After we had reviewed the ODJFS files on the complaints that we and the Hutchisons had made against BBAS, Dan got the bright idea that we could, and should, ask for BBAS’s original license application from ODJFS and its May 2000 recertification, which might answer these and some other questions.
In the wake of the disclosures in Bulgaria, we had begun to wonder whether Denise wasn’t just massively incompetent at doing adoptions. If “the reps” over there had supposedly been charging way more than it cost them, was there something going on financially? We were not the only ones to question the Hubbards’ lifestyle, after all.
In applying for BBAS’s
license, Denise would have had to submit things like her articles of
incorporation (which would have told us who was on her board) a business plan
and at least some financial data, we believed.
Although we were already well underway with this website, we sent an email request to ODJFS.
It took some time, and they nearly forgot about it in Columbus (where the records were now kept), but in March they were able to fulfill it.
ODJFS had told us to expect a small amount of paperwork, some that could perhaps even be faxed to us. Although they were entitled to charge us 25 cents per copy, they said they usually waived it unless there was more than 20 pages, or $5 worth.
They seemed as surprised as we did when they told us that there were several hundred pages, and that they would have to mail it.
Once again Daniel was the one to come home alone after taking Anguel to preschool and find this on our doorstep.
These documents, which have informed a great deal of this website, also pointed us toward a past that we had not been aware of in the matter of how Denise had adopted Emily. That led us to Mary Mooney and then to newspaper and court archives, most of which we were once again able to search online.
In November 2003, we were able to expand our knowledge of this period even further when Simona Wirtz, the woman who had, as we guessed from most of the documents we reviewed, done Denise's adoption of Emily, spoke with Daniel on the phone after I found where she was working and emailed her. She filled in a lot of the blanks we had at the time.
When all was done, an entire secret history of Building Blocks Adoption Service came to light. One that even most of her dissatisfied clients could not have guessed.
It begins in 1995, before Denise ever came on the scene, with another adoption
agency called Caring Choices.
Caring Choices was local, with offices in downtown Cleveland.
It was run by a businessman named Ted Boehm, apparently as a side thing
from his major concern, Food Concepts Marketing. He had incorporated it in
1995 along with — hold your breath — Attorney Dennis J. Kaselak, who had
represented him in one of the suits brought against FCM.
Primarily, Caring Choices was, or held itself out to be, a domestic adoption agency with
an unproven, small foreign program. Mr.
Boehm required a $5,200 non-refundable down payment and signed contract from
interested clients who wished to start a domestic adoption for an eligible
infant. Additional adoption costs were
$12,000.
Unfortunately, Caring Choices made more promises to their clients than they
intended to fulfill (like, all of them). By December 1996 nearly $50,000 had
been collected from clients, and not one successful adoption had been
completed.
At least six clients became concerned when, after signing the contract,
questions were not being answered about their cases. Often their questions, telephone calls and letters were unanswered
by Ted Boehm and his assistant.
When they finally got sick of this treatment and requested their money back, Mr. Boehm reminded them that the fees were non-refundable, as per the contract they signed and hence, they were not entitled to any refunds.
Again, this was after not one child had been placed with any of
the waiting families. The clients became antsy and angry.
So, inevitably, some of them turned to the local media. In March, Cleveland’s major metropolitan newspaper, The Plain Dealer, ran a pair of stories on the angry clients and their treatment by Caring Choices.
Some of the clients had decided to sue Mr. Boehm and Caring Choices for a
refund, while a few opted to wait it out in hopes of actually receiving a child
from the agency. (Ironically enough, we ourselves were living in the Cleveland
area at this time, yet missed this story when it happened).
Dennis J. Kaselak, billed as Ted Boehm’s attorney, was described in the March 18, 1997, Plain Dealer article as having “recently left the agency in a dispute with Boehm.” (The agency’s executive director had also quit on March 3, claiming Boehm had threatened her physical safety).
We think we can see one thing Boehm was angry about. The previous July one of Caring Choices’s clients, a couple from the Cleveland suburb of Peninsula, named Moledor, had brought suit. Kaselak was one of the attorneys for Caring Choices.
As of the time the Plain Dealer stories ran, they were preparing for an April 15 trial date, but in late February the presiding judge noted that neither party was responding to his requests to show up or otherwise let him know how the case was going, so on April 24 he dismissed it with prejudice.
We’d be pretty upset with a business partner too if he tanked a lawsuit on us (As well as something else you’ll learn about in the next chapter). Even if it resulted in no harm to the agency.
At bottom, though, it was mainly a demonstration of Kaselak’s skill at leaving the vessel as it sank and taking the
stragglers with him. He was one of
the “behind the scenes” people who would later be (unbeknownst to us) involved in our own failed
Russian adoption and was pushed out by BBAS sometime in late 1999.
***
The Plain Dealer articles went on to describe how
Caring Choices received an inspection from ODHS and on Feb 18, 1997, a
licensing specialist had issued a stinging report on the agency, citing them for lax
recordkeeping, failure to comply with the rules and requests for
documentation and an unqualified staff (sound a little familiar?).
She noted that ODHS had received a rash of complaints
from couples who had signed on to adopt children — but that no children had
been placed. ODHS informed Mr. Boehm that the couples should
either receive assurances that they could remain as clients, or to give the
couples a financial settlement. If
he failed to comply, the Licensing Specialist told him that Caring Choices
license renewal would be at risk.
For those who opted out of the agency’s domestic adoption program, Mr.
Boehm’s attorney offered them partial refunds of $5,000 to $7,000. One of the provisions of the families receiving their partial refunds was
that they would agree not to speak to the news media.
Two clients declined this offer and waited it out for a child.
Caring Choices had an “International Branch,” run by
Wirtz, at the time like Boehm a resident of the Cleveland suburb of Fairview
Park. For another $3,000,
interested couples could switch from the domestic program to the international
program.
Two clients interviewed for the story had agreed to pay Caring Choices another $3,000 for an international adoption. They would still have to pay another $15,000 if they indeed received a referral for a foreign child.
But
Caring Choices’ international program fell through when Ted Boehm fired her.