Imagine this: You’re adopted and you’ve never had any contact with your biological family, and you don’t know why. When you get old enough, you search for your birth mother, only to find out: you’re in witness protection because of what your mother did to you. TikTok user HistoricalBuffy (mortisuxorembackup) went through this very thing, and it’s a quite the tale.
Let’s start from the beginning. Buffy dropped a TikTok showing herself on the phone learning some troubling news. The video’s caption says, “Adoptees do not have the rights to access our files and i feel like if i had, this whole situation could have been avoided.”
The situation? Here’s what it says in the video:
“Finding out via phone call that I wasn’t just adopted… but placed into witness protection. My bio mom sold, trafficked and sa’d her own kids. And then she got out on good behavior.”
The video then cuts to a newspaper clipping with the headline: “6 charged in sexual abuse of kids, and a circle around one woman in particular.”
Because Buffy can’t see her own adoption files, she didn’t know that reaching out to her now-free mother was a bad idea.
In a follow up TikTok, she went into the story with more detail.
“I was placed into witness protection because my biological mother is a human trafficker who not only trafficked her own children but participated in the sexual assaults of her own children.”
That’s tough. She also explains that her mother tried to murder her and others “a few times.” She even went to court, pled guilty and admitted that she wanted to murder her own children.
From there, Buffy was put into witness protection and then adopted out. “Unfortunately, I was adopted by an abusive family, but that’s trauma for another day.”
A content heads-up; Buffy shares some disturbing details, which I won’t elaborate. Buffy said she didn’t realize she was in witness protection until she was 25 years old. “I thought it was a joke,” she said.
“In general, [adoptees] do not have rights to our adoption records, to our original birth certificates, or any of that.”
When she did find out, she “had already made contact” with her biological mother. She said her mom “is a free woman,” and that she left witness protection to have contact with the family of her biological father.
As for her mother, “I just have no contact with her, and I will not have contact with her for the rest of my life. She does not deserve my Grace at all.”
Buffy also shared a video about her problematic adoption, after someone asked her if “the adoption process” was “that simple” back then. Apparently, while Buffy’s adoptive mother was “planning on adopting me and my siblings, she was actually in the middle of a divorce from a sailor who slept with her 17-year-old foster child.”
Despite that jarring revelation, Buffy was still placed in the home. That seems incredibly terrible.
“Adoption and foster care needs so much reform because things really haven’t changed since the 90s.”
The witness protection program, by the way, originated with the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. The program has helped more than 19,000 witnesses use new identities.
“People in the Witness Protection Program are typically given new names and a backstory to tell others and avoid discovery. In addition to providing 24-hour security, the U.S. Marshals Service provides funding for basic living expenses, medical care, job training and employment assistance.”
They also apparently don’t tell you you’re in the program if you enter it when you’re a small child. Imagine that. You spend your whole life believing you’re one person and then one random phone call one day and everything’s different.
It seems like that’s something you should tell someone ASAP. Buffy made a TikTok about that very thing and captioned it “Like that seems really important to tell someone.”
All in all, she seems to be handling it as well as anyone in her situation can handle it. Unfortunately, according to Buffy, abuse is a common occurrence for foster children.
