July 15, 2011

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

The headline makes you believe you are about to read a moving story of an adopted child reunited with her biological mother 40 years after being kidnapped. After reading the short article (found at www.ktla.com) and related comments on this story, I had to read more. It seems this woman was kidnapped from her biological mother as a baby, legally adopted by a family other than her abductor and then kidnapped again from her adoptive family by that same abductor. This story is baffling. The first question that comes to mind is how could a kidnapped child come to be legally adopted? The second question is where are the adoptive parents that this girl knew as her family until age 4 when she was taken? Lastly, what kind of search effort was made to find this girl because it seems pretty minimal? After processing all of that, you may be able to get to the heart warming part where child is reunited with parent. Then it gets confusing again. A related article on www.dailymail.com reports a reunion between this woman and her adoptive or “real” family; it says nothing about the biological mother adopting her. Put all of this together and this strange story is mostly bitter, but ends with a sprinkle of sweet; girl gets kidnapped, girl gets placed for adoption by abductor, girl gets kidnapped from adoptive family and then is reunited after 40 years with not only her adoptive family, but her biological mother too.
You just can’t make this stuff up. What happened to this woman is tragic and the lack of justice for these people throughout this ordeal is unnerving. As with many stories of this nature, you never feel like you get the full story. I guess we will just have to wait for the book.