Frequently Asked Questions
Why didn’t you guys just sue Building Blocks?
The facts are willing, but the law is weak. We talked to three lawyers, and most of them said that, given BBAS’s contract and the lack of any other applicable laws or regulations, we either didn’t have a workable case or could have only if other ex-clients joined in. We have a longer discussion of this issue here.
The lack of any legal responsibility, however, does not preclude moral responsibility.
So what is it, exactly, you’re trying to accomplish here?
In the absence of justice, we’re looking for accountability. Denise Hubbard continues to lie to clients, to make promises she can’t realistically keep, to claim all children she refers are totally healthy if they aren’t obviously special needs, and to shut people out and leave them emotionally hanging when they start to wise up.
The only legal action anyone dared bring against her failed. The Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau are a joke. ODJFS can only do so much given the regulations they have to work with. Bulgaria may have been able to take more action, but that’s only part of her operation (and they couldn’t officially exclude her from the country either ... already there is evidence that she is working there again). And the full implementation of the Hague Convention regulations, the much-needed transnational legal framework which would make it possible to force Denise Hubbard to try to run her agency in an ethical fashion, is still a year or so off.
So, we are left with market discipline. Free markets work best when consumers are as fully informed as possible.
Until recently this has rarely been the case with adoption agencies. But now parents are increasingly using the Internet to compare notes, and as John McLean noted, they have the advantage there.
So we offer this site as a way of helping parents who may be considering Building Blocks Adoption Service a true measure of past performance and what they can reasonably expect if they sign on. Denise, it seems, will eventually either have to reform or get out of the business when she realizes that less and less people are signing on with her.
She can run all she wants, but she can’t hide.
She says you’re just after money, that you didn’t get the refund you wanted after Cyril died and that’s what you really care about.
She would, wouldn’t she?
It is true that that was an issue at first. We allow that the $9,500 we were offered was pretty generous, relatively speaking. We still wouldn’t mind having it back.
But it was the confidentiality clause that we could not sign. And the more we learned the more we realized that it was about a lot more than money. It was about accountability. To take that sum of money and let Denise Hubbard go on without having learned her lesson would be negligent to our fellow adoptive parents.
But it does seem like you’ve gone a little overboard.
Yes, we could have just done our story, and perhaps shorter. But we had the time and the knowledge, and most importantly a dead child to do it for.
We had also made contact with many of the other dispirited BBAS clients even before we brought Anguel home. We knew their stories, and felt they needed to be told because they showed a pattern of wrongdoing.
We also knew that state information on Building Blocks was a matter of public record, and were curious as to what those files might hold. As we learned, there was quite a bit of interesting information to be had there.
We told all because we began to see this not just as a personal remembrance but as journalism, and journalism demands that you give the reader as much of the story, as much of the underlying information as you can, as the story requires.
OK. But you’re still pretty harsh on Denise Hubbard. Was it really necessary to dig up as much dirt on her as you did?
As Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once said, a little sunshine is the best disinfectant.
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