Chapter 48 The Connection of the Family
Sarah Westbrook explained that she was Richard's younger sister, a woman who had deliberately kept her distance from her brother for most of her life because of his criminal activity.
"I grew up watching what Richard became," Sarah said. "I grew up watching him justify his crimes, watching him pursue revenge against people who he believed had wronged him. And I made a decision never to become like him."
"What are you doing now?" Molly asked.
"I work as a social worker," Sarah said. "I work with people who have been victimized by crime and abuse. And I have spent my career trying to help people heal from the kinds of damage that my brother caused."
Sarah explained that she had recently discovered something in family records that connected the Westbrook family to the adoption agency.
"Our father was one of the early investors in the adoption agency," Sarah said. "He provided capital that allowed the agency to expand its operations. And in exchange, he was promised that they would facilitate adoptions that would be profitable for him. He was profiting from the trafficking of babies."
Molly felt a chill run through her.
"Do you understand what this means?" Molly asked. "Do you understand that Richard Westbrook's father was involved in the same criminal network that separated me from my biological parents?"
"Yes," Sarah said. "And I believe that understanding this connection is important for understanding why Richard became the person he became. He was raised by a man who was involved in organized crime, a man who saw people as commodities to be exploited for profit. Richard inherited that worldview, and he expressed it through fraud and revenge."
Molly realized that the conspiracy was even deeper than she had understood. The adoption agency, the organized crime networks, the fraud that had destroyed Rebecca Crawford—all of it was connected. All of it was part of a larger system of exploitation and corruption.
"Why are you telling me this?" Molly asked Sarah.
"Because I believe in what you are doing," Sarah said. "I believe in the criminal justice reform movement. I believe in the possibility of transformation and accountability. And I believe that understanding the full history of how these systems developed is important for building better systems in the future."
Sarah provided Molly with documents, family records, and information that helped her understand the depth of the Westbrook family's involvement in crime and corruption.
Over the following weeks, Molly expanded her research. She investigated the connection between Richard Westbrook's father and the adoption agency. She traced the money and the corruption. She identified people who had been involved in the conspiracy and were still alive.
What emerged was a picture of a criminal network that had operated for decades, that had involved multiple families, that had caused immeasurable harm to thousands of people.
And at the center of this network was a simple truth: people who profited from crime and exploitation had every incentive to continue those activities and to protect their interests through corruption and violence.
Molly decided that her next book would be about this network, about the connections between organized crime, adoption trafficking, and corruption in institutions that were supposed to protect people.
She spent several months writing the book, working closely with federal authorities to ensure accuracy while protecting ongoing investigations. She worked with survivors of the adoption agency's crimes to tell their stories.
The book, when it was published, was explosive. It revealed corruption that extended far beyond what had been previously disclosed. It revealed connections between the adoption agency, organized crime, and government officials who had been complicit in the crimes.
The book sparked renewed investigations. New arrests were made. People who thought they had escaped accountability were prosecuted.
But it also revealed something troubling about Molly's own position.
As she had been researching the book, she had discovered that her own adoptive parents, the Mays, had been complicit in the corruption of the adoption agency. They had known, when they adopted Molly, that she was part of the illegal trafficking operation. They had paid a premium price to the agency, knowing that the money was facilitating the kidnapping of babies from their mothers.
When Molly confronted Dorothy with this discovery, Dorothy was devastated.
"I did not know," Dorothy said. "I did not know that the people who adopted you were part of the corruption. I thought I was giving you to a family that would be good to you, that would love you."
"But they did love me," Molly said. "The Mays were good people. They raised me well. They gave me a loving home."
"So how do you understand their involvement in the trafficking?" Dorothy asked.
"I understand it as a complicated situation," Molly said. "They were part of a corrupt system. They benefited from that system. But they also provided me with a genuine home, with genuine love. Both of those things can be true at the same time."
This was the most difficult aspect of the research for Molly: understanding that people could do good and bad simultaneously, that love and complicity could exist in the same relationship, that transformation was not something that happened once but something that required constant awareness and commitment.
As the controversy around the book grew, Molly received a call from a man she did not know. He introduced himself as James Hartley and said that he had information about the adoption agency that he needed to share with her.
They arranged to meet, and when James arrived at Molly's office, he brought with him a stack of documents.
"I was a lawyer for the adoption agency for fifteen years," he said. "I helped facilitate many of their criminal activities. I am now dying of cancer, and I want to provide you with these documents before I die. I want to make sure that the complete truth is exposed."
James provided documents that revealed the full scope of the adoption agency's operation, names of people who had been involved, details about specific trafficking operations and the families that had been affected.
With James's cooperation, federal authorities were able to build cases against additional people involved in the conspiracy. But more importantly, James provided closure and information to families who had been separated by the agency's activities.
Over the next year, as the cases worked their way through the criminal justice system, Molly found herself in a position of relative peace. The conspiracies that had shaped her life had been exposed. The people involved were being held accountable. And the systems that had protected them were being reformed.
But late one night, as she was reading documents related to the final prosecutions, she noticed something odd.
One of the names on a list of people who had received bribes from the adoption agency was familiar. It was a name from her childhood, a name from her past that she had not thought about in years.
It was the name of the man who had raised her, who had told her that he loved her, who had been her father.
Molly realized that she had not truly understood the extent of her own father's involvement in the corruption. She had known that he had participated in an illegal adoption, but she had not known the depth of his complicity.
And as she sat with that realization, she understood something profound about transformation and accountability.
The man who had raised her, the man who had loved her, the man who had been a good father to her in many ways, had also been complicit in a system of exploitation and abuse.
She would have to come to terms with that reality.
She would have to find a way to hold both truths: that he had been a good father and that he had been complicit in harm.
And she would have to do so without allowing either truth to completely overshadow the other.
That evening, she called her siblings and asked them to meet with her. She told them what she had discovered about their adoptive father's complicity in the adoption agency's corruption.
Ben had the same reaction that Molly had: shock and a sense of betrayal.
But Claudia and Alex, having grown up watching their mother deal with the complexities of human behavior and transformation, had a different perspective.
"Our father made choices," Alex said. "Some of those choices were good and some were harmful. That is true of all of us. The question is not whether he was good or bad, but whether he was willing to acknowledge his bad choices and attempt to change."
"He never really did," Ben said. "He never publicly acknowledged his involvement in the agency's corruption."
"No," Molly said quietly. "He did not. And that is something we have to accept about him. He was capable of love and capable of complicity. And he died without fully resolving that contradiction in himself.”