Christian US sect pushed women into giving up babies for adoption

Women who were once members of a secretive Christian sect in the United States have told the BBC they were coerced by the church into giving up their children for adoption.

Hundreds of adoptions could have taken place between the 1950s and 1990s, say former members.

Some of the children who were adopted within the church have told us they were then subjected to abuse and neglect in their adoptive families.

The claims follow a BBC investigation last year into allegations of child sexual abuse spanning decades within the church, which is believed to have up to 100,000 members worldwide and is often referred to as The Truth or the Two by Twos. The FBI has since launched an investigation.

Warning: this story contains details some may find distressing.

Four women – who were all unmarried at the time – have told us they were given no option but to give up their babies. Three of them feared being cast out of the church and sent to hell if they refused.

One says she was pressured into giving her baby to a married couple in the church after she was raped in 1988, age 17.

“My fear of going to hell was so great that it forced me to make up my mind to give up the baby to this couple in the church,” she told the BBC.

Another says she wasn’t allowed to see her baby daughter before the child was taken away forever.

The BBC has also spoken to six people given up for adoption as babies between the 1960s and 1980s. One woman says she was physically and emotionally abused in her first adoptive family in the church, and sexually abused in the second.

The adopted children – born all over the US – are referred to within the church as “Baldwin Babies” because the adoptions were overseen by Wally Baldwin, a doctor from the sect who died in 2004.

Some of the women would stay at his home in Oregon during pregnancy, according to a minister who used to work with Dr Baldwin.

The exact number of Baldwin Babies is unclear. The BBC has spoken to the late doctor’s adopted son, Gary Baldwin, who said the original records were no longer available but he believed the number to be “less than 200”.

He said that “inevitably” mistakes were made by his father’s vetting system but that his intentions were good. Others we spoke to also said they remembered Dr Baldwin fondly.

Because The Truth has no official leader, the BBC instead contacted six of its most senior current officials – known as “overseers” – for comment. We received one response. The overseer told us any adoptions he was aware of had been done “through legal channels” and he had “heard some beautiful stories”.

One woman who was adopted recalled seeing hundreds of photos in an album Dr Baldwin would keep of the children whose adoptions he had organised in The Truth.

Another man who was adopted told us he had personally connected with more than 100 Baldwin babies and mothers.

The church, founded in Ireland by a Scottish evangelist in 1897, is built around ministers – known as workers – spreading New Testament teachings through word-of-mouth.

Most of the mothers the BBC spoke to believe the workers – and The Truth as an institution – should shoulder most of the responsibility for the trauma caused by the adoptions.

“Somewhere the church got off track and it became a fear-based cult and I was forced to make a choice,” says Melanie Williams, 62, who gave up her baby for adoption in January 1981.

At 18, Melanie became pregnant after falling “madly in love” with a boy from her school.

Not only were the pair unmarried, but the father was not a member of The Truth and refused to become one. This meant Melanie had committed a “terrible sin” in the eyes of local workers.

The workers and her family decided that she could only continue to attend church meetings if she gave her baby to another family in the sect.

“If I keep this baby, I’m going to go to hell. If I keep the baby, I can’t go home,” Melanie recalls thinking.

She gave birth in a Catholic hospital in Oklahoma, where she was discreetly put in a room on her own.

She remembers being shouted at by a doctor when she began to cry during labour.

Melanie’s baby was whisked away before it made a sound and she says she didn’t know whether she’d had a girl or a boy.

The new mother was left wondering if her child might be dead.

When she eventually found out the baby was alive, she told a nurse she was wavering on whether to go through with the adoption and wanted to hold her baby.

“You can’t ever hold your baby,” came the reply.

Years later, Melanie managed to track her daughter down – but she didn’t want to meet.

Deb Adadjo, 54, was also unsure about giving up her baby, but felt too much pressure at the time to refuse the workers, who threatened to ban her from church meetings – which in The Truth meant you not only got thrown out of the church, but also ended up in hell.

She became pregnant after being raped in 1988.

Recalling holding her newborn, she says – “I can still feel her against my chest right now.”

“In our last moments together, I remember just cuddling with her and telling her that I loved her and that I was sorry, over and over again,” she adds.

“I had to let her go, I had no options.”

Deb later met her daughter, but they are no longer in regular contact.

Sherlene Eicher, 63, from Iowa, says she never stopped thinking about the daughter she felt her parents pressured her to give up in 1982.

She briefly got to hold and feed her newborn before they were separated.

Sherlene would hold a private birthday celebration for her daughter every year.

“When her birthday would come around I would get her a birthday card and a couple times I made a cake,” she says.

“I would journal a lot too – wondering where she was, what she was like, what she might be going through at the age she was.”

Then in 2004, Sherlene’s daughter got in touch by email and they met. They are close to this day.

“When we finally met, we just hugged and hugged and hugged,” says Sherlene.

“We talk for like two or three hours on the phone – she’s a pretty incredible woman.”

Those interviewed said the adoption system involved very little vetting and this set-up the potential for abusive situations. They said when a baby was on the way, Dr Baldwin would contact workers for referrals, and they would recommend a family in the sect to place the child with.

Of the six Baldwin Babies who spoke to the BBC, two faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse in their adoptive families, while one said she had been subjected to emotional abuse by her adoptive father.

One woman said she was removed from her first adoptive home by social services because of extreme physical abuse and was placed in the home of a church “elder” – a person of seniority who holds meetings in their own home – and his wife. She said the couple started sexually abusing her within weeks, when she was 15.

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Another woman said she was beaten by her adoptive parents on a daily basis and sexually abused by an uncle in her adoptive family when she was five.

Since reports of widespread child sexual abuse started spreading within the church two years ago, former and current members have started connecting in Facebook groups, including Baldwin mothers and babies.

“The moms – I know how they feel and I have so much empathy for them. I cry for their stories when they write them. But for myself I have cried all the tears I can cry,” says Deb.

“It has been like finding my tribe,” says Melanie. “I’m not alone any more.”

“Our moms were afraid to hug us, our dads were ashamed of us, and the church would only accept us if we made the ultimate sacrifice.”

“And all these years later, we are all going to be OK.”