Amy’s Story: Why I Think Closed Adoption Should Be Illegal

I was put up for adoption at birth and was adopted at the age of six months by a church-going couple who had adopted a boy three years earlier. Apparently the state thought things were safe in this household, but they were anything but. My earliest memories are of being afraid of my dad while I was still in my crib — age 2 1/2? My dad was often out of work and when we lost our house he would do odd jobs like painting houses, taking me and my brother with him. On numerous occasions we would be taken to a one-room place where my dad and a number of his many brothers and their friends would meet and my brother and I would be “bought and sold” so my dad would have money to show my Mother when he returned from his “painting” jobs. This went on from the time I was four until my brother went away to a boarding high school when I was ten. My dad also would climb into my bed at night and tell me he was preparing me for what men would want later — he was being a good father. Everyone at the church loved this guy as he helped paint church houses, joined all the men’s clubs and was an all-around great guy, except when he came home. Then he would rage and beat the crap out of me, my brother and my Mother, mostly out of the clear blue sky. Often after watching Billy Graham on TV. He tried to strangle me once and broke my nose on numerous occasions. I never got medical attention as that would have brought outside attention and my Mother feared losing my brother and me as we were adopted. I walked around thinking I had diseases and thinking I was going to die of something every minute (no biological history to say otherwise) and the kids at school razzed me about that, and my red hair that didn’t match ANYONE’S, so I fought with everyone, even though it turns out later that I have a fairly high IQ. I guess that’s why I’m still here to write this. My brother survived by hiding inside the church, essentially moving away from home at the age of 13 and going on to become a teacher and moving all over the US until our father passed away 30 years ago. I had a nightmare about that monster last night because of all the stuff on TV right now about the Judge Kavenaugh stuff. I married such a person. Of course. I’ve been divorced for 25 years, but I did manage to raise a son who is nothing like his father, even if I did have to trade most of my life to do so. The world is an ugly unfair place that wastes 51 percent of its talent to appease the 49 percent who physically and in every other way threaten the rest of us. And I didn’t report any of this for decades out of shame, but out of fear of retaliation against my Mother, my brother and myself, and at its core, the idea that I had a disease that if anyone got near me they would get, too. I felt like Typhoid Mary. Thus it was my duty to protect others by not letting them near me — or HIM.