Tuesday, January 4, 2000

Section: Local

Edition: State

Page: 5B

Story by: Associated Press

A Florida native whose adoptive parents paid $200 for him through a baby broker has had his adoption annulled, and his birth certificate will be amended to add his birth mother's name.

``I am very elated,'' said Michael Chalek, who received the court order Monday. ``The albatross on my head for the past 38 years is gone. Justice has been done.'' Chalek, 47, a former Boca Raton resident now living in Estes Park, Colo., argued for the annulment Dec. 13 before Alachua Circuit Judge Maurice Giunta.

Chalek said he wanted his adoption annulled, citing sexual and physical abuse by his adoptive parents, both of whom are dead.

``I had a mother who fondled me until I was 11,'' Chalek said.

Giunta determined a termination of parental rights from Chalek's adoptive parents was moot.

Chalek's attorney, Mallory Horne, a former Florida Senate president and House speaker, presented evidence from a divorce record that Chalek's adoptive mother had a violent temper and was promiscuous. The details of that divorce had been withheld from adoption officials.

At age 11, Chalek found out he had been adopted and became obsessed with wanting to know about his birth family.

In 1981, Chalek found a document showing he was born in St. Luke's Hospital in Jacksonville.

Seventeen years later, a judge granted Chalek access to his confidential records - something rarely done in Florida without a compelling medical need, said Josette P. Marquess, coordinator of the Florida Adoption Reunion Record.

Amid the 100 pages were notes from state case workers showing that a baby broker, Lenora Fielding, coerced Chalek's birth mother, Winnie Faye Higginbotham Yarber, into using a false name on adoption documents.

Chalek was born Jan. 25, 1952, in Jacksonville to Yarber, a barroom waitress who had separated from her husband and became pregnant by another man.

Eight days after the birth, records show the child known as Baby Barnwell went home with Alex and Adela Chalek, who had contacted Fielding when they were not successful at having their own child.

Although private adoptions such as those set up by Fielding were not legal, laws were not so strict then, and such arrangements were largely ignored, Marquess said.

Chalek hopes his fight will pave the way for adoptees in similar situations. He has set up a Web site (www.adoption-fraud.com), is writing a book and has been approached about having a movie made about his life.