It broke their hearts to see that he too was pulling for N and
waiting with bated breath for her homecoming.
In January, more distress was triggered by a warm and caring certified letter
that they received from BBAS stating that it was time to pay up for N’s adoption. If the fees weren’t paid, then BBAS couldn’t complete the
adoption (sound familiar)?
They were stunned and wanted answers. They attempted emails, but all they
received was a message from an “autoreply” noting the user (Denise) had
chosen to leave all emails on server to answer any and all emails.
They
attempted telephone calls, but all to no avail. They too were starting to
receive the “burn” from Denise.
Sue sent the following to Denise’s bbadoption@msn.com
email address:
Denise,
we are most disappointed that you did not return our calls as we did
indicate to the person who answers the phone that it was a pressing matter.
She said you were in and out of the office and had gotten our message.
We routinely get the message that you are out of the office. When
would be the best time to call you that you would be available?
We
are under the impression from the last letter that was sent to us that you
are not planning to give us a travel date until you get money from us.
We are not deadbeats. You have had considerable fees from us on an
adoption that was supposed to take 4 months and now it is taking over a
year. To send a letter that has a threatening tone is uncalled for and
cruel.
Your
promises have not been kept but we have tried not to give up hope on the
completion of this adoption. On numerous occasions over the past 4
months, we have requested an updated medical report on the little girl and
we have not heard any sort of information. In light of the lengthy
time in between visits, it is imperative that we get this information.
We
are still in need of a return phone call. The decision to work with
Building Blocks was made on the person attention you seemed to give to your
clients. I feel because of no fault of ours, we have fallen into
disfavor and you do not return calls.
Please
let us know when you will call us and discuss this and another matter.
Also,
it would be best not to send anymore certified mail unless you notify Sue
ahead of time. She waited 30 minutes at the post office today, only to get
this hurtful letter. We were hoping for travel documents. Again,
you have broken our hearts.
Please
do not have Debbie call or send us any more information. When your
other staff member spoke poorly to Sue in an email early on, you told us you
would attend to our documents and we would not have these problems. We
are requesting that this still be in place. Sue and Rob Corrigan
They were able to email Vladimir and Valeri Kamenov directly about the
situation. They asked the Kamenovs, who were taking a fellow BBAS client
to Burgas for a first visit later that month, to provide this family with an
updated medical report on N.
Once again, Sue placed a public post to the EEAC Bulgaria list regarding
Traveling and Gatwick and Heathrow airports. Immediately Denise responded
to them personally:
That
is great. You will be staying at the Hotel Rotasar. It is a nice
place. They have Internet access so you can communicate with your
family if you wish. Typically, Valeri sets up an apartment for
traveling families. It contains a large bed (like a kingsize) a couch,
small refrig, bathroom and you can order breakfast…
FYI
like I told Rob, I have no problem setting your trip to go take N from
the orphanage and waiting for the passport to be completed. She is
your daughter legally and if you want to go and get her you can.
You just cannot take her from Bulgaria. Have a blessed day.
Denise
Gee. The Corrigans got the offer to take N early, but not Daniel
and I. Yet another slam at us — and favorable and kinder treatment given
to another client, even one not as gaga over Denise and her agency as she would
like. This still galls us.
And don’t you like the “you can communicate with your family if you wish?”
Of course they’d want to communicate with their relatives back in the
U.S. That says a lot about Denise’s view of relationships not mediated by
money.
The Corrigans were happy for this email, but the money issue of payments due
still lingered, much like it had with Daniel and I.
It still feels more like a “shakedown” than an adoption.
Note the fee
discrepancy again — BBAS told them too that they had paid Valeri $7,000 on
their first trip to Bulgaria in January 2000, yet they had kept the receipt
showing the amount paid was $7,500.
Why that $500 discrepancy?
Was somebody skimming somewhere?
On the evening of Jan. 15 the Corrigans sent the following to Denise, who still avoided responding to either their questions or concerns in writing:
Denise:
We
paid the Bulgarian rep (not $7000.00). We will pay the money due.
Our
complaint is that this has taken three times the amount of time you quoted
us when we signed up with you. We would have never agreed to
this adoption if we knew or had any idea it would take this long or the
child would come to us as a toddler. We were very clear of our
adoption wishes and that we were not planning on an older child. We
feel we have made a commitment to N so we will complete this adoption.
You
also know that we had wanted 2 children and we know now that this is not
possible in Bulgaria. We are very nervous about the health of the
child. Since September, we have requested this information both
by email and by phone. We have gotten absolutely no response. Is
something wrong with N?
We
will gladly send our fees. We need confirmation on the health of the
child. Much can happen in such a long time. I know Valeri is
going to Bourgas this week. Can he obtain this physical and updated
history? When do you project the travel documents (passport) to be
completed? Will you send us the court decree and birth certificate
prior to travel?…
The
process has been difficult, stressful and draining. We hope to end on
a positive note. We do not understand why it has taken so long and why
we cannot seem to get a statement of her medical status. Please let us
know any information you can. Sue and Rob Corrigan
Denise forwarded this response from Valeri to the Corrigans the next day:
Corigan
– date for the passport – Dobrev call them to ask about it every 2 hour.
Thay tell him every other moment thay are expecting it. Tomorrow thay
will tell him the date for sure. I made pictures of N, and also I got
measurements. [Other BBAS family who were traveling] also made her
pictures and were playing with her. And thay will tell Corigan that
she is healthy and happy…[measurements of the child were included]
Corrigan – may be thay will be traveling around 18 February.
This medical update was far from adequate.
The BBAS clients who had traveled for
their first visit sent word back to Sue that N was a shy little girl, firmly
attached to her caregivers.
The client also informed Sue that Valeri didn’t
know why the Corrigans were so upset and attempted to tell him that a year was a
long time to wait for a child.
What was interesting about this “update” from the fellow Burgas adoptive
parent and BBAS client was that Valeri was blaming the delays on BBAS
clients who were having the files investigated.
This got Daniel and I thinking. Had the information that we had
translated and sent to the Minstries of Health and Justice had an impact after
all?
Was this what Valeri was hinting at — that Daniel and Elizabeth tattling on
his little adoption business was the reason for an investigation?
We didn’t let on to Sue and Rob at that time that we had done that — we
didn’t tell anybody.
But, Sue and Rob fought on, requesting more information than they were
receiving. They were much more demanding about N’s medical status than
we had been about Anguel — it was wonderful to watch them stand up to Denise
and her lies.
After receiving Valeri’s email and another one from Denise saying that she had
thought Valerie’s email explained things well (there’s that pesky $7,500
amount again), the Corrigans countered:
We
need confirmation that Valeri did get $7,500.00 – we do have a receipt but
does he have his numbers correct?
Again,
we need more than measurements and photos. It is a doctor statement
signed by the doctor of current health status – with statements of
illnesses that have occurred in the time from last visit in Jan 2000 until
present. Any hospitalizations, transfusions, lab work, ear infections,
mental disorders, broken bones…
Rob
and I have been examined by a MD every 3 months for this adoption –we are
only asking for one.
Denise,
I am sure you understand why we request it. It is over one year
since we have had any documentation of health on N. Again,
this information is critical. Is this child ill?
When
do you think this information will be available so that we can make travel
arrangements? …
Sue
and Rob
The travel arrangements and payments were somewhat worked out. They were
told to pay up by Jan. 15, and this threat didn’t sit too well with the
Corrigans. Various travel dates were offered and they felt that those
offered in early March would be the best.
On Thursday, Jan. 18, the Corrigans posted their joy to the EEAC Bulgaria list
and asked for public assistance for those on the list about travel times. The
Corrigans also gave their timeline and mentioned Building Blocks by name as
their agency.
Rob and Denise, however, did get into it on the telephone. Denise was in her
“push the wives away and deal with directly with the husbands” mode.
She has a way of doing that when communication breaks down with the women she
has hurt.
Rob, as you can understand, was very upset about the wait for N and the toll the
wait had taken in their lives. Forever waiting and waiting and waiting — after
they had been told 4-6 months in the beginning to complete the adoption.
They had also traveled “paper-ready” and the dishonesty over the summer
about where their documents were in what Ministry and what date they had been entered
had eroded their trust in Denise and the Bulgarian adoption process.
One thing of note: when the conversation occurred, Denise was on to us.
She had found out that the Corrigans had been in contact with us and had been
providing us the “classified” BBAS information during the summer months when
we had been shut out.
Rob described his conversation with Denise in a Jan. 18 email to us:
I
was motivated to find this today [we had requested a BBAS newsletter from
October 2000 that had been eaten by the MTX.A virus] because I got in a big
fight with [Denise] … After I called her a liar for the third time (because she
said something that was factually incorrect [actually, it would have been
unusual if she hadn’t done this]) she told me how upset she was
getting. The final untruth was when she tried to tell me that our
adoption took so long because of our friendship with “one of her clients
(unnamed)” and Dr. S doesn’t like us.
I
had to remind her that our adoption has been held up for the past 7 months due
to government officials that don’t know any of us. Her brilliant
response was that she has no control over what happens in Bulgaria, which is the
best justification yet for why we are all paying her thousands of dollars to
forward emails back and forth to Valeri…
We
no longer get agency news updates anymore.
He
agreed to send the money when they had a travel date for N. On the day
this conversation took place, Rob Corrigan was in no mood to be jerked
around anymore by the likes of Denise Hubbard.
Denise’s ploy of separating the Cases from the rest of her clients had not
worked. To blame the Corrigans’ association with us, however, for their
paperwork delays is vindictive in the extreme.
It is untrue, as Rob pointed out. Denise made it so personal, yet the process
was an impersonal one.
Like Dr. Sabrutova knew the Corrigans from Adam and Eve.
She had at least a hundred families going through Burgas in a year to adopt from
her orphanage.
If she took that stand, she wouldn’t be placing any more children. Each child
placed with a foreign family was more money in her pocket and another child with
a home.
Now that the Corrigans had been “found out,” they too were frozen out. They
did not deserve this treatment.
Again, Rob is 100 percent correct — all Denise did was forward emails back and
forth for Valeri.
She had absolutely no control over any part of the
process and had been consistently unwilling to provide information to her
clients (not just us and the Corrigans as you shall see) on the health status of
the waiting children. A year is a terribly long time to wait, and God Himself
only knows how those children are being treated inside the walls of an
institution.
Denise and Dr. Sabrutova also gave them factually incorrect information on N’s
ethnicity.
When she presented N’s video and medicals to the Corrigans, she
told them that N was a native Bulgarian. During their first visit to see N in
January, both Dr. Sabrutova and Valeri assured the Corrigans that N was a
“Native Bulgarian.”
But on her documents, it stated that N was given up because she was of
“Roma” heritage!
Why Denise chose to lie about the child’s ethnicity
was beyond Sue. Did it really make a difference if the child was “native
Bulgarian” or “Roma?”
Daniel and I have our theory about how Denise discovered that Sue and Rob had
forwarded the classified BBAS information on to us. When we were in Sofia at the Hotel Rotasar, Daniel was able to use
the computer in the Hotel Rotasar’s lobby to send out email, as were all
guests.
So naturally, since intercontinental phone service from Bulgaria was so costly and unreliable,
we sent and received emails from our families, Sue and Rob Corrigan and a few
other adoptive Burgas parents we knew, via the hotel’s computer and email
address. We were hardly the only guests, adoption-related or not, to do this.
However, the hotel staff never bothered to delete anything in the “Inbox” or
the “Sent Items” file folders. All one had to do was surf through
these folders and see the email traffic that had gone on the past few months.
Daniel did this and took note of the BBAS families who had come before us and
the information they had sent back to the agency on their trips, wondering if
perhaps Denise had been here and mentioned us and what her real feelings or
plans were regarding the Cases. Not that any of
it was of any interest, and most of it was rather banal.
We think that Denise — or a client — had seen these same email transmissions
and took note of our exchanges with the Corrigans, especially the email Sue had
forwarded on from “Mrs. Wahl” from the Bulgaria list.
I can easily imagine that upon seeing this, Denise went straight up.
Darn. That must have been a shock to Our
Imperious Leader. That’s what she got when she attempt to isolate and silence
clients. Some of us actually united and fought back to obtain our information.
On Jan. 22, the Corrigans posted their joyous news to the EEAC Bulgaria
list, along with questions.
They were confused about what paperwork to bring
with them when they traveled. They felt the information about what documents to
bring along, as sent to them by BBAS, was confusing.
Hello
to everyone – good news – finally we can pick up N!! After months
(really a year and 2 months) we have been granted a time to travel. I
think our post court date work is mostly completed. I guess this means
birth certificate and passport. Because of a promised weekend event
made to our older son (he is 7), we could not travel the first week offered
to us on 2/17. The next date available was not until the week of 3/5.
So we pick up N (who will be 2.1 years old) on 3/7. We are very happy
but know the real challenge begins when she comes home.
The
American Embassy is open and Wed and Fri for adoption paperwork.
Aside
from the required INS paperwork, are we to have anything else (paperwork) or
will our representative in Bulgaria have it? Those of you who have
picked up your children – did you notice the orphanage staff say goodbye
to the child? Did the child seem fearful or sad? Any suggestions
are welcome.
We
will be traveling thru England, but we must change airports and overnight
upon our return. Did anyone have any difficulties with British
Immigration?
And
– is anyone in Sofia during that time? It would be great to connect.
Finally
– good news to share! Sue Corrigan.
Again, an immediate response from Denise regarding the questions Sue posed to
the list. Make special note of the b.s. she says about the directors and how the
children are treated when they leave.
Upon reading this, I wonder why Anguel had been treated so indifferently by the
staff in Burgas when we picked him up. This email is actually a forward
from the Bulgaria list:
Sue and Rob:
FYI look at your travel documents Wendy sent you. Other than the
documents listed, you do not need to take anything else.
Valeri will assist will combining your docs with his to submit to the Embassy.
Usually the directors say good bye to the children and the caretakers do also.
Sometimes if a caretaker is
really attached to a child she will be upset and cry. It all depends. The directors usually speak to the children and explain where they are going and why in your
presence.
So
far like I told Rob, no family that we know of has had any problems with staying
in London at the airport hotel. God Bless and Good Day. Best
Regards, Denise Hubbard