The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption

by Barbara Bisantz Raymond

Book Overview

The story, first told by Barbara Raymond in a magazine article that inspired a 60 Minutes feature, was shocking. Georgia Tann, nationally lauded for arranging adoptions out of her children's home in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402758634
• ISBN13: 9781402758638
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Union Square Press
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

I Didn't Believe All She Did Until I Read This Book

My wife was put up for adoption throught Georgia Tann's Children's Home. She has told me some of her experiences from being in the home in the 1940's but I just didn't believe all that I heard from her and others until I read the book. I could not read but just a few pages at a time due to the impact this book made on me. I bought my wife another book for her to read while I read this one. We both would go to bed very disturbed each night after reading the books. I would never have believed anyone could do such things to children such as Ms. Tann did and get away with it. What is amazing is all the other people in high positions in government who also got away with helping her with her twisted ideas. One of my surprises was the participation by Evangelist Pat Robertson with his misguided ideas toward adopted children. Fortunately he and his team of lawyers didn't prevail and adoption laws were changed for the good in Tennessee. It's about time that someone exposed what adopted children go through at no fault of their own. I hope this book gets great exposure all over the world because this kind of thing is still going on today in other countries. I only wish this book was written 50 years ago.

A shadow history

As an adoptee and 30-year resident of Memphis, I thought I knew all there was to know about adoption and about Georgia Tann. I was wrong. This book is nothing less than a shadow history of adoption in the US, and those (like me) who think it has nothing new to tell them are especially encouraged to read it. Ms. Tann made adoption acceptable in an age of eugenics. She also sexually abused children, invented sealed records, and let many babies die under her care. She will never be understood, but this book does a brave, unflinching, compassionate job of uncovering what can be known about who Georgia was, what she did, and how her actions influence adoption policy to this day. The author, an adoptive mother, shares the fact that it was difficult for her to come to grips with what she found, and I respect her all the more for that. Adoption owes all it is today (good and bad) to Ms. Tann, and it's time for our society to somehow come to grips with that.

And you thought that the only people who were bought, sold, and discarded like garbage were imported

and you thought that people who did these kinds of things in the 20th Century were prosecuted by the law. Wrong! From 1924 through 1950 babies and children were kidnapped, taken by coercion and lies, and sold on to farms and in to homes across America. They weren't the children of slaves - though they were treated like they were, nor were they low life trash - though they were treated like they were... they were born to single mothers, poor parents, and into families that were promised a better life for the child. Some of them did have better lives, new parents that loved them and took care of them. Some were killed, some died, and some wished that they would die. For those that survived - loving parents or not - they found that they had been robbed. Though this book is about only one person's complete disregard and disdain for those they viewed as lesser creatures - akin to stray dogs, beasts of burden, or producing livestock. What this person did and the way they viewed "adoption" influenced adoption practices all the way into the present day. "The Baby Thief" is a hard read, but it is worth the effort. To read this book and not know without a doubt that the adoption laws need to be changed and that adoption practices need to be regulated with attention to ethics and compassion is to have a heart and soul as dead and black as Georgia Tann's.

Greed, corruption, and the sealed adoption records system

The Baby Thief : the Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisanz Raymond will hit the stands soon. And oh what a book it is! I've known about this book and its various incarnations for a long time. In 2001 Barbara sent me an early draft. Unfortunately, I didn't follow up on it like I should have. I am happy to say, though, that Barbara did, and the result is a fascinating but sickening account of how adoption got to where it is today. For those of you who aren't familiar to Georgia Tann, she was a baby thief who worked her evil with the full knowledge of courts, social workers, and politicians. Between 1924 and 1950 she arranged 5000 "adoptions"--many of them of children she'd kidnapped or obtained by other illegal or unethical means. Tann stole from the poor to sell to the rich. Sometimes she just gave babies away to the child-hungry denizens of Tennessee's power structure, all too happy to turn their backs on justice in order to fill their nurseries with undocumented children to call their own. As part of Boss Crump's Memphis machine Tann's political influence in Tennessee was immense and unheard of for a woman, even now. Raymond argues that Georgia Tann invented, popularized and commercialized adoption as we know it today with its secret closed and codified system of identity erasure and falsified birth certificates. Tann's influence did not end with her death in 1950. It is carried today by the approximate 6 million adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families in the US (and more in Canada) whose records remain sealed by the state. The Baby Thief an important book that every adoptee rights activist, every first mother activist, and anybody who wants to clean up adoption should read and carry with them to the statehouse. Interest, however, should move beyond AdoptionLand and into the areas of women's studies, GLBT studies, child welfare, true crime, and Southern and localized history. I urge anyone who believes in identity and adoptee rights, and about ethical adoption to read this book. You won't regret it!

Baby Thief Stole Identities of Many Not Yet Born

The Baby Thief is both a mystery novel and a historical chronicle of 5000 wrongful adoptions. It is more than an exposé of bygone crimes committed by the notorious Georgia Tann. Throughout the book, the author weaves the stories of those who lost one another; children who remembered being wrenched from their mothers; siblings separated and meted out like puppies; mothers and fathers who searched until their deaths for the children they had lost. In order to cover her heinous crimes, Tann issued false certificates portraying adoptive parents as having given birth to the child they adopted. The practice caught on so that in almost all states today, adoptees even as adults cannot get their original birth certificates. Tann's legacy of introducing sealed birth certificates has resulted in generational harm for countless adopted adults who will never know who they are.