... From comparing Ancestry DNA the connection was made. The infant girl was taken away from her mother at birth, and placed for adoption. While the mother was told her daughter died in childbirth. The little girl's adopted mother died when she was five years old. Her stepmother the father married was abusive to her for the remainder of her childhood. She used to dream about finding her birth mother, a birth mother who had no idea she was alive ... until recently when they found each other.

"Genevieve Purinton says she was told that her daughter died shortly after birth in 1949.

"I asked to see the baby and they said she died, that’s all I remember," said Purinton, now 88.

But it turned out that daughter, Connie Moultroup, 69, was adopted and lived most of her life not knowing her biological mother.

On Dec. 3, the two reunited after a journey that began with an "Ancestry" DNA testing kit, a gift Moultroup received from her own daughter last Christmas.

Now a great-grandmother, Purinton and Moultroup finally locked eyes at the elder's home in the Haley Park Apartments retirement community in Tampa, Florida.

When her daughter was born in Gary, Indiana nearly 70 years ago, Purinton said, "I asked to see the baby, and they said she died — that's all I remember."

The little girl grew up in Southern California, and her adoptive mother died when she was 5, daughter Bonnie Chase said. Moultroup's new stepmother was abusive, the daughter said.

"She would fantasize about her mother rescuing her since she was 5-years-old," Chase, 50, said. "It's truly her life-long dream."

So happy that worked out for them after all those years!

When my birth son was a young child, who'd been placed in a closed adoption through LDS Social Services (LDSSS,) all ties were cut off, and the Mormon church went to great lengths to erase any vestiges of his birth family. I wasn't aware of how draconian their practices are toward adoption until long after I tried finding him years later.

If not for my finding him when I did in 2005 he still wouldn't know anything about his birth family.

But when he was a young child, and I was an undergrad student in college, I moved across the state in Idaho to attend university. Apparently the LDSSS didn't think that our paths would ever cross by placing him across the same state from where I gave birth to him.

Was able to hold him in my arms for a few moments when he was a newborn. He opened his eyes momentarily and looked into mine, before the nurses took him away from me never to be held again.

While visiting a girlfriend who worked for the Deseret Industries in Boise, Idaho as an undergrad I was saying goodbye to her as she helped customers at the DI. When I went to the door to exit there, in walked a gangly little boy with the lightest amber brown eyes I'd ever seen, a curly mop of wavy black hair, and the most inquisitive expression on his face staring up at mine. In that instant I sensed he was my birthson staring up at me. In fact he would've been about the same age as my birthson was at that time.

He had a lost, searching look on his face. As if asking, was I the "one?" He was surrounded by some little blonde children he'd come into the store with, and I shook that feeling as I walked toward my car. Something wanted me to go back and talk to him. I even had an urge to snatch him, believe it or not because of the strong impression he was my birthson and seemed to be looking for me.

Of course, being the rational undergrad college student and active TBM that I was, I went to my car and had to shake that feeling off that how could that be possible?

Years later after I located him with the assistance of an Idaho social worker through matching our vital records, his adoptive grandmother sent me a photo of him when he was the same age as the little boy who stared up at me in the doorway of the Deseret Industries all those years ago.

It was him. Same face. Same light amber brown eyes. Same inquisitive look on his little boy face. We share some similarities. Add to that he grew up near where I went to university. The children he was with that day at the DI were his adoptive cousins. He always felt like a fish out of water because he didn't blend in with his adoptive family's looks (or proclivities.)

In a way it was a small miracle we met that day at the DI. Since my finding him in 2005, his adoptive mother became furious at my locating him, and has forbade him to have any contact with me at all even though he's a grown man. If not for his adoptive dad he'd have never been told he was adopted. She wasn't going to tell him, but his adoptive dad did because he didn't want him not to know. Then his dad died 20 years ago, she remarried and now has a bunch of grown stepkids. She still adamantly refuses to let him have any contact with me out of who knows what? That was the mantra she adopted when she adopted my birth son. The social worker who helped to facilitate our reunion told me most of her referrals were from LDS birth families and adoptees, because the Mormon church goes to such great lengths to obliterate the birth families.

At least he and my other son have met and corresponded. They both worked in the movie industry in Hollywood during the same time. My mother was an actress, he is an actor. I sing and write poetry. So does he. No one in his adoptive family shares his talents. His girlfriend is Jewish, even before his learning HE too is Jewish.

Despite all that, his adoptive mother would be furious if he and I meet. His adoptive grandmother has told me the same if the adoptive mother knew she was talking to me. She must be a very insecure person not to want him and I to meet.

My mother, rest her soul, counted him as one of her grandsons til the day she died. The Mormon Wrecking Ball of a Cult divides and tears families apart. Not restore. In some ways I feel like my birthson was stolen from me by TSCC. I still have hope that perhaps someday he and I will meet in this lifetime again. So that our last meeting standing in the doorway of the Deseret Industries in 1984 won't be the last one.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woman-reunites-daughter-she-thought-had-died-birth-nearly-70-n944556



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2018 12:17PM by Amyjo.

Amyjo, I’m so sorry that you have gone through such horrible heartache. Remember, there’s a lot of time in front of you and your son to reconnect.

(((Hugs)))



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2018 10:54AM by kathleen.

How does that happen that a hospital tells a mother that her baby died, when in fact that was not the case? I sincerely hope that the mother and daughter sue the hospital. This is an appalling abuse of power.

being stolen.

My ex's worker found out that the father he was raised with isn't really his father. His father was extremely abusive to him. He found out through Ancestry that this man was not his father. His mother had had several affairs. He met his biological father a year ago. This worker of my ex's is in his 50s. It has been extremely healing for him to find his father. His father is thrilled to have him in his life.

In our family, as I've stated before, this wasn't mormonism, but it was the birth mother. My brother's son, who he never met, but he paid child support for for 18 years, was killed in a motor vehicle accident 7 years ago and we just found out in September. We were told he had a son, so my son has a grandson. I found his grandson by doing some spy work on fb, but the mother and grandmother (mother of his son) are doing everything they can to keep my brother from ever meeting his 10-year-old grandson.

I cannot imagine what you went through giving your son up for adoption. My daughter has a friend who went through LDSSS and she had a horrible experience. She has left the church over the experience.

That it was. We were lied to and duped by the people supposed to protect us from abuse of church authority.

And the babies. Oh, our children who suffered the most. It was a grievous deception they ployed to gain our confidence to get what they wanted from us; our children for childless couples.

It was a baby factory for TSCC to cull from its own members our infant sons and daughters.

My son was lied to as well by his adoptive family. And still is to this day.

through LDSSS. My niece refused. She was 19. I can't imagine what my sister would have done without her oldest granddaughter who is now 21.

Her 2 sons also had kids when they were 19 and not married. They also kept those kids.

My sister's kids are all out of the church and have been since teenagers.

The 3 kids that were born "out of wedlock" are the light of my sister's life.

It is horrible what they have done and what the adoptive mother of your son continues to do.

Amyjo, so sorry for what you've been through. As an adoptee and also and adoptive parent I cannot fathom how a parent would deny their child the knowledge of where they came from. Would love to chat with you some time about our respective stories and experiences.

Thanks, Ron.

Mucho appreciate.

I lived in Memphis for a few years before I heard the story of the notorious Memphian, Georgia Tann. I wonder if this is one of her children. They've had stories on the news occasionally that are just like this one, where someone was told their baby had died and then DNA made the connection many many years later.

https://wreg.com/2017/10/30/stolen-babies-how-a-memphis-womans-adoption-scheme-took-from-the-poor-for-decades/

I know that LDS Social Services was very abusive in their practices too, but of course, nothing like this. At least, even though LDSSS really pressured unwed mothers to give up their babies, they didn't steal them.

A girl I worked with many years ago who had placed her baby with LDS said their M.O. was to make you feel like you were the world's biggest sinner and the only way God would forgive you was for you to give your baby to a good LDS couple who couldn't have any of their own. Her parents were all about what the church said so she didn't have any support and no inkling that she could keep her baby and get help from the government. What high school kid would know that or have the strength to go against their parents and the church. I've always wondered if she ever connected with the baby. She registered with every adoption search group and was so sure that the girl would come looking for her when she turned 18. Of course, that was well before DNA kits.

I hope you get the chance to have some kind of relationship with your birth son. I know for a fact that there can be some amazingly wonderful open adoption situations. It's the only way to go for people who really care about the mental health of both birth mother and child. But I'm sure there are still many sad stories out there, especially of kids who were adopted in our day.