“Hicks Babies” Black Market Adoption Scandal Comes to Light This Week on TLC
Gary Rivers spoke to the woman who broke open the story in 1997 about a Dr. in rural Georgia, who, in the 50’s and 60’s, sold or gave away babies to couples in Northeast Ohio.
JANE BLASIO was five when her parents were forced into telling her that she and her older sister Michelle had been adopted, after the girls overheard family members using the word to describe them. When Jane’s adoptive father realized that she was serious about her search, he told her everything he could. His wife couldn’t have children of her own, and the adoption agencies would not deal with her because she had been married before.
They heard about Dr. Hicks from a local woman who acted as a go-between for numerous childless couples in the area.
Blasio’s story, the the story over over 200 other “Hicks Children”, will be told on TLC beginning Wednesday night. It’s a 6 hour special event that will feature new secrets and bittersweet reunions.
Jane, who is the youngest known Hicks baby, made three trips to McCaysville between 1988 and 1993. She searched records and talked to people who knew Dr. Hicks. But tracing her history was not straight-forward. She’d almost given up when she came across birth certificates of babies born at the Georgia clinic to parents who lived suspiciously far away – Arizona and New Mexico. This was the key. Jane knew then that what had begun as a personal odyssey would affect as many as 250 other Hicks babies, some of whom still probably do not know they are adopted. In 1997, she went public and set up the Hicks registry, which tries to reunite blood mothers with the babies Dr. Hicks sold.
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Hear the Interview with Jane Blasio