The Siegal Lifelong Learning Program will host a lecture presented by Barbara Raymond, author of The Baby Thief, and Betsie Norris, founder and director of Adoption Network Cleveland, Oct. 16 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Landmark Centre Building (25700 Science Park Dr.), Suite 100.
This lecture, titled “The Baby Thief: The Influence of a Criminal on American Adoption,” is offered in partnership with Adoption Network Cleveland.
The event is free for members of Siegal Lifelong Learning and $5 for nonmembers.
About the talk
For 26 years, Georgia Tann was nationally lauded for her work at her orphanage beginning in 1924 in Memphis, Tennessee. In reality, she was stealing children from poor parents and placing them with wealthy adoptive parents all across the country.
To cover up her kidnapping crimes, she falsified adoptees’ birth certificates, sealing their true ones and issuing false ones portraying their adoptive parents as their birth parents. Eventually, every state in the nation began falsifying adoptee birth certificates, making it impossible for many to find their birth families or learn their health histories.
About the speakers
Barbara Raymond, author of The Baby Thief and an adoptive mother, will discuss Tann’s influence on American adoption. Betsie Norris, an adoptee and founder and director of Adoption Network Cleveland, will recount her 25-year successful campaign to open original birth certificates to people adopted in Ohio, freeing them from one of Tann’s influences.