Chapter 3:
Lured in by the Expert
Denise finally broke the news to Janet about Azerbaijan six months later, in January 2004. She told Janet there were no babies available in Azerbaijan anymore. She didn’t say the country had been shut down indefinitely. Her excuse was a dearth of young babies.
The other program where Janet could adopt a young infant was the Republic of Georgia. The babies there were allegedly available when they were six to twelve weeks old. Just barely out of the womb. The people in the Republic of Georgia were Caucasian looking and lighter skinned than the people in Guatemala.
Hubbard knew Georgia had shut down four months previously, yet told Janet the program would be re-opening very soon. Newborn babies would be available, and then placed into foster care for 8 weeks before they could be adopted.
Denise told Janet her 171H did not need to be changed. Moscow could be kept as the place where the baby would be issued a visa. Therefore, her confusion remained about Georgia and its relationship to Russia. Again, she thought the Republic of Georgia, like Azerbaijan, was a region of Russia, instead of a separate country with separate rules and regulations.
Denise Lynn Harding-Hubbard knew better than to have recommended the costly Georgian program. She knew it was closing in September 2003. We have gone over this before.
We ourselves saw the posts from the hapless BBAS client on the Georgian Yahoo! Group proclaiming they were BBAS clients, asking for timelines and info on Georgian adoption. We again saw the same client post to the Russian Yahoo! Group stating they were changing from Georgia to Russia in September 2003. They were later to receive a referral of a child from Russia.
Why were the Yahoo! Group clients informed they needed to change, yet Janet was kept in the dark?
Denise, always pumping her Guatemalan program to the max (more money to siphon per family, per child), had no time to worry about her Georgian client. She knew the infant program was closed, so she did what she always does. She fobbed her money-losing client on to her subordinate family members.
Since Janet wasn’t a high-margin Guatemalan client, she decided to transfer Janet’s case to her under-qualified sister-in-law Kelly Carter. Denise had handled Janet’s case until then. It was left to Kelly to keep Janet focused on Georgia and she was going to do a dismal job of it.
Therefore, at the time Janet was convinced to make the switch from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Kelly Carter was proclaimed her new “Facilitator” and “Coordinator” in January 2004. Kelly did not tell Janet her family connection to Denise. She did not tell Janet her real last name was Hubbard and not Carter. Throughout her conversations and emails with Kelly, Kelly never told Janet her name was Kelly Hubbard and not Carter. There is nothing illegal about Kelly doing this, but of course, it is not aboveboard.
That must have been a slight oversight on Kelly’s part.
Kelly’s email address is kcarter@bbas.org kcarter and not khubbard.
Janet thought Kelly was an educated and qualified Facilitator and Coordinator. She worked at an adoption agency, after all. Surely everybody working at an adoption agency was qualified and knowledgeable about countries where the agency placed children. Kelly talked a good talk, and had Janet believing she really knew what she was doing.
The truth was different. It never crossed Janet’s mind Denise Hubbard’s sister-in-law had no other skills but typing, using a telephone and following a diagram.
This qualified individual was to pass along useless, uninformed and unimaginative information to keep Janet in the pipeline.
Later that month, after Janet made the switch, she received fantastic news. Kelly informed her there was a pregnant woman in Georgia, ready to give birth. An ultrasound had been taken. The baby she carried was a girl due in February. Along with this alleged woman’s baby, three other women were due at the same time. It was as if Kelly were telling Janet that she could just take her pick of those precious babies.
Kelly forwarded on the following email to Janet describing one of the unborn infants as female. But note the signature.
Subj: FW: Georgia – infant girl
Date: 1/20/2004 9:59:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: kcarter@bbas.org
To: Janet Ostrander
Kelly we just found out that one of the infants is a girl! She will be referred within a month (as soon as
the mother signs the release papers). If Janet’s paperwork does not get to Georgia within that time, of course,
the child will be assigned to a family whose paperwork is there. However, there are 3 other infants that we
are tracking and I am sure we will be able to find another girl. But I strongly suggest Janet move asap to get
her needed paperwork to us.
You may not want to tell Janet about the baby girl as I do not want to set her up her up for disappointment but
I am telling you so you can urge her on.
Please let me know how Janet wishes to proceed as we have a good working relationship with our in-country
representative and she is more than willing to accommodate us.
With aloha
Lee
Best Regards
Kelly Carter
Building Blocks Adoption Service, Inc…
-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Slater [mailto: lee@adoptwithlee.org]
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 1:34 PM
To: Kelly Carter
Subject: Georgia – infant girl
This email reads as a given that the woman carrying the female baby would relinquish. And if Janet didn’t have her paperwork, well, tough luck. They had another family all paid up, paper ready and willing to snatch the baby away.
Yet we ask who were these women taking sonograms? Were they being coerced even before they gave birth to relinquish their babies?
“Baby” and “girl” is was all Janet needed to read in this email from Kelly. A new baby. She’d be a mom in two months at the most. Exactly what she wanted to hear instead of the truth.
Is it any wonder Kelly was able to urge Janet on and get moving on more useless paperwork? Dangle the unborn baby still in her mother’s body to keep the client hoping and believing. She was then to make up any darned story she could to keep Janet reeled in.
Kelly Carter-Hubbard made a mistake. She neglected to delete the original heading of the email she had received. She left in the name Lee Slater and Slater’s email address. Nor did she take this Lee Slater’s advice and change any text in the original email. This being Building Blocks Adoption Service, Inc. she ignored Slater’s advice and forwarded it to Janet as was.
Janet was not as out of it as BBAS believed she was. When she read the email, she noticed Lee Slater’s email address. Who, she wondered, was Lee Slater? Neither Kelly nor Denise had mentioned her. When Janet asked Kelly about her, Kelly stated she was a “Facilitator” which BBAS “utilized” for some of their foreign adoption programs.
Janet printed it out and saved it. It proved useful in the next few months.
During February 2004 Janet called Kelly daily. Janet was impressed that as soon as she answered the telephone, Carter-Hubbard would say “Hello Janet!”. Janet didn’t know BBAS has caller identification to screen their calls. How else to screen troublesome clients and prospect for new ones?
Every time Janet called (she called BBAS – BBAS never called her) Carter-Hubbard had nothing new to report on the unborn baby. She never gave Janet any information on the pregnant women. The only information she gave Janet was haphazard paperwork. One document here, another document there and another trip to the state capital.
February came to a close with no word on the baby’s birth. Janet had had enough. She let Kelly have it over the telephone.
Kelly, nailed to the wall, stammered and sputtered. She couldn’t come up with any excuses, any of the pat reasons Sister-In-Law Denise created so well. Where was the baby? Janet demanded. Kelly, weak from her exertions, lamely said, “There isn’t one.”
What else could Kelly have said? The truth was awful enough.
Janet was crushed by this revelation. On March 27, she received confirmation from Denise Hubbard herself that the dossier was “in the Georgia translation office.” Whatever the “translation office” was.
By May the agency’s lack of information, and more importantly, lack of any concrete referrals weighed on Janet. Her hope was fading that there would be a baby arriving from Georgia for her. What was going on in Medina? How come all she got from them was confirmation her documents were in an undisclosed “translation office”? Why wasn’t she getting any referrals for a child?
Janet acted and emailed the woman whose name she had seen at the bottom of Kelly’s email to her in January. If Lee Slater was the person supplying the information, why not contact her directly? BBAS lack of information was annoying. Something wasn’t right. Janet wrote the following to Lee Slater on May 18, carbon copying it to Denise Hubbard and Kelly Carter-Hubbard.
Subj: To: Lee Slater
Date: 5/18/2004
To: lee@adoptwithlee.org, denise@bbadoption.org, kcarter@bbas.org
Hi Lee…This is Janet Ostrander. You’ll know my name through Denise Hubbard (BBAS, Inc.).
I am one of the prospective moms with Building Blocks Adoption in Medina, Ohio. Kelly and
Denise have told me that you have been instrumental in assisting with my adoption process.
As you know, I have been waiting for a long time and am anxious to adopt. Can you assist
me in telling me where I am at in terms of the adoption process and when you think I will
receive a referral? I have been told that adoptions are soon to re-open in the Republic of Georgia.
Is there an infant waiting for me? Even though I have been told adoptions have been closed,
I have heard through friends that people have been adopting through Russia over these past
few months. Since this has been occurring, do you know why there has been no word regarding
an adoption for my region/for myself?
Thank you for your assistance in answering my questions. I hope you don’t mind the email – just
wanting to know how much longer you think it will be.
Janet’s confusion about Georgia and its relationship to Russia are present in the email. She continually thought Georgia was a region in Russia, not a separate country.
It was had been up to Denise Hubbard and Lee Slater to correct her, but neither woman did so at any time. Janet’s confusion remained.
Lee Slater responded on May 22. She tried to cover her butt by carbon copying the email to Carter-Hubbard and Denise Hubbard:
Subj: Re: To: Lee Slater
Date: 5/22/2004 6:35:34 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: lee@adoptwithlee.org
CC: kcarter@bbas.org, denise@bbas.org
Dear Janet:
My agreement with BBAS is that I must not contact families directly. I will e-mail whatever
information I have about Georgia to them and they in turn will share it with you.
Thank you for your understanding. I know it is very difficult to wait.
Lee Slater.
One wonders what “Agreement” Slater signed with BBAS. Was it similar to the one BBAS signed with Amrex?
Janet was still at square one, out money, time, no information and still no child. Yet she continued to hang on, believing….