Hollywood Baby Snatcher

[Nik Taylor]

Starting in 1924 Georgia Tann stole children from their real families and sold them for her own profit. It is alleged that Hollywood stars, including Lana Turner and Joan Crawford got their children through Tann.

This story is pretty chilling. Has anybody ever heard of this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...er-story-woman-stole-children-sold-stars.html

Sold: Joan Crawford with her adopted daughters Cathy and Cynthia. Many other victims of Georgia were not so lucky

Lana Turner, pictured in the film Another Time, Another Place, was another Hollywood actress to adopt a child through Georgia Tann

 

[bunnyb.gal]

There was a TV movie made about it which I saw, called "Stolen Babies". It didn't really go into anything about specific individuals who may have adopted the babies; it was more about the fight of the young lady who found out about the dirty deeds to stop the whole business.

 

[Nik Taylor]

June Allyson and husband Dick Powell also used Tann the Memphis-based home for adopting a their two children. New York Governor Herbert Lehman also used Tann and signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935.

June Allyson and Dick Powell with Ricky and Pamela

 

[Tomasso]

It's a shame that she escaped justice with her timely demise. Truly evil that one.

 

[Puzzicato]

This story is pretty chilling. Has anybody ever heard of this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...er-story-woman-stole-children-sold-stars.html

I read that article when it was in the paper last year, but I haven't seen anything else about her.

 

[Chas]

Sufferin' catfish. I've never heard that story; chilling stuff. She must have been quite the conwoman to pull such heinous stuff for so long. Even had the First Lady swallowing her line.

Yikes.

Now, THAT is a story worthy of a good scriptwriter. What a tale.

 

[tammylynn70]

I read an excellent book a few years ago about her, she was from my hometown (Memphis) and so many of the local politicos went to great lengths to protect her, because she started a very lucrative cottage industry. I'm sure if you looked thru Amazon you could find books on her. It's a shame she never had to answer for what she did. A great many rich and powerful people across the country adopted her "orphans". Some of the kids were indeed without family, but the vast majority were taken from their families after a local judge (which she may have been having an affair with) would declare them unfit due to their financial circumstances. More troubling was that it was true that many of the states where her kids were farmed out to subsequently passed laws sealing birth records for adopted kids. Ms. Tann was convinced till the end that she was doing the best thing for these kids. She genuinely thought that they, being poor and without social support, would never live good lives without her having "helped" them along.

 

[Foofoogal]

Oh, what a wicked web we weave when we practice to deceive.

This saying must of been invented for this thing.

IMHO. God sees everything.

 

[Heather]

Wow, that's messed up...and truly sad.

 

[Red Diabla]

As horrible as she may have been, to me this says a lot about how society views adoption and adoptees more than what Tann did herself.

Because adoptees are expected to be "grateful" for being adopted, they're not supposed to ask for pesky little things like their medical records or family tree. You don't know how entrenched things like that are in society until you're faced with denial of access to those things. Granted, Once Upon a Time many women were forced to give up unplanned babies to strangers or family members to save face, and those kids grew up to be adults who may or may not have known the circumstances surrounding their birth.

In the end, this says to me that the "good old days" weren't that for those women and their children who were taken away from them. I can say some politically-charged bon mots about where I think the USA is headed now with some of its fringe elements, but let's just say that women have never had an easy burden when it comes to less-than-perfect family structures.

RD

PS: I say all of this as an adopted person myself, with no legal access to my birth records in this alleged "free" society. Yeah, I'm not enthralled with the prevailing attitude about adoption.

 

[Nik Taylor]

As horrible as she may have been, to me this says a lot about how society views adoption and adoptees more than what Tann did herself.

Because adoptees are expected to be "grateful" for being adopted, they're not supposed to ask for pesky little things like their medical records or family tree. You don't know how entrenched things like that are in society until you're faced with denial of access to those things. Granted, Once Upon a Time many women were forced to give up unplanned babies to strangers or family members to save face, and those kids grew up to be adults who may or may not have known the circumstances surrounding their birth.

In the end, this says to me that the "good old days" weren't that for those women and their children who were taken away from them. I can say some politically-charged bon mots about where I think the USA is headed now with some of its fringe elements, but let's just say that women have never had an easy burden when it comes to less-than-perfect family structures.

RD

PS: I say all of this as an adopted person myself, with no legal access to my birth records in this alleged "free" society. Yeah, I'm not enthralled with the prevailing attitude about adoption.

I think there were two motivators regarding societal views and rights of adoptees. One is that adoptees generally cannot fend for themselves and two: greed whether it be for money, prestige or influence over the lives of others.

"... But criticizing her was almost impossible when, as she threatened, it would result in her reclaiming their adoptive child. Or in letting 'his mother know where he is' - since any adoptive parents who read newspaper accounts of local habeas corpus suits had to have been aware that their children they'd adopted through Georgia might have been stolen.

Georgia lured people into impossible situations, victimizing, occasionally, even those who profited from her. Among this otherwise-privileged group were physicians, attorneys, judges and university professors. Such early, strategic placements provided her with names for what Candy Debs, who'd been adopted by a California legislator, described to me as 'a hit list, a sales tool!'. The list would eventually include Joan Crawford, June Allyson and Dick Powell, Pearl Buck, Lana Turner, and New York governor Herbert Lehman"

The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond, pages 107-108

 

[LittleMissPussyCat]

I'll have to have a look for that book.

 

[Puzzicato]

PS: I say all of this as an adopted person myself, with no legal access to my birth records in this alleged "free" society. Yeah, I'm not enthralled with the prevailing attitude about adoption.

Three of my step-siblings are adopted. It's amazing - all three of them, when they have tried to access their birth records, have been told "they were destroyed in a fire". Really? I am amazed it is possible to insure adoption agencies when they have so many fires!

 

[LittleMissPussyCat]

That's awful, I know several adopted families, both adopters, birth parents and adoptees of all ages, some who have traced family some who haven't or are to young still.

 

[Nik Taylor]

I look at the adoption system from beginning early 's 1900's; I am taken aback by the perspectives held and the prejudices espoused.

Child welfare organizations like the New England Home for Little Wanderers and the New York State Charities Aid Association were in the vanguard on this issue. Their staff psychologists mounted testing programs, beginning in the 1910s and 1920s, to help determine which children were qualified for which family placements. Elaborate classification schemes for mental deviation were created—separating idiots from imbeciles and morons from dullards—in hopes that they would improve selection and placement techniques. Mental evaluation was considered so important to making adoption work that W.H. Slingerland, author of one of the first professional texts on family placement, issued the following warning in 1919. “To put a low grade mental defective in a family home where a normal child was expected is a social crime, once to be condoned because of ignorance, but now inexcusable in a well-ordered and progressive child-placing agency.”

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/topics/feeblemindedchildren.htm

I have been called an imbecile, an idiot and a moron more times than I can tell anyone. I am lucky that it is with a more tolerant society and more understanding than back in the nascent days of psychology.

 

[pvandever53]

My double first cousin was a "stolen baby" of Georgia Tann. We found her when she was 55 years old, she now is a Big part of family and lives in her birth mother's house.

 

[Dixie_Amazon]

As horrible as she may have been, to me this says a lot about how society views adoption and adoptees more than what Tann did herself.

Because adoptees are expected to be "grateful" for being adopted, they're not supposed to ask for pesky little things like their medical records or family tree. You don't know how entrenched things like that are in society until you're faced with denial of access to those things. Granted, Once Upon a Time many women were forced to give up unplanned babies to strangers or family members to save face, and those kids grew up to be adults who may or may not have known the circumstances surrounding their birth.

In the end, this says to me that the "good old days" weren't that for those women and their children who were taken away from them. I can say some politically-charged bon mots about where I think the USA is headed now with some of its fringe elements, but let's just say that women have never had an easy burden when it comes to less-than-perfect family structures.

RD

PS: I say all of this as an adopted person myself, with no legal access to my birth records in this alleged "free" society. Yeah, I'm not enthralled with the prevailing attitude about adoption.

Well said.

I was adopted in Virgina in 1960. All I know is that my birth mother was an unwed teen with the last name Stewart. I don't even fully trust that information considering how adoptions were viewed then. I tried to get more information and ran into a legal stone wall.