A Mother Finds Her Lost Child After A 40-year Search: 'She Was Always There'

i know you're not supposed to hate anyone but i hate what he done to me when nancy womack was 16 she lived at an orphanage in dalton georgia nancy fell in love but when the orphanage director learned nancy was pregnant he made a decision that would haunt her for the next 40 years he said this is what's gonna happen you're not shaming the children's home and we're gonna take care of this at three months pregnant the director sent nancy away to hattiesburg mississippi and the bethesda home for girls it was a long dirt road from main road down to bethesda at the time i thought it was the longest dirt road in the world and then it opens up to this long white building it was like a nightmare [Music] i was born in dalton georgia my grandparents raised me up until i was about nine or ten they had got sick and the state had told her either she'd do something with us or the state would take us they put us in the dalton rescue mission i had never heard of bethesda until they sent my sister there just woke up one day and she's gone and the director of the home had told me that that's what she wanted to do that she would get more spirituality at this home in bethesda when i got pregnant the house parent had found out i was and he said pack an overnight bag you're going to see your sister halfway there he told me what they were going to be doing they were taking me and leaving me there the baby would be taken from me we were on the interstate i was going to jump out because i wanted this baby i wanted her they took her from me the bethesda home for girls advertised itself as a place where troubled kids would learn discipline through the word of god according to nancy and other women who lived there when they were young days at bethesda started early and consisted of praying cleaning and listening to the preaching of national evangelist and founder of the home lester roloff the state let her run her own institution but let the church they had us listening to audio tapes of lester roloff day in day out when you wasn't praying or listening to the preacher you were cleaning i seen one girl refuse they drug her to the shower room beat the holy daylights out of her you just learn after a while after being abused and slapped and hit and punched i guess survival mode kicks in that's the result of your television program say what you please you can raise all the cane you want to raise just let me get through this day two weeks before she was due to give birth nancy was put on the first airplane she'd ever been on and flew to tennessee to deliver her baby i remember them putting the iv in man i remember i was falling asleep and i'd pull it out and then put it back in and they just give me a shot and put me out i don't remember having her i don't remember them wheeling me into the delivery room i don't remember nothing well the next morning the doctor he come in and i said i want to see my little girl and he said how did you know you had a little girl you weren't supposed to know what you had i never forget that i don't have the words to tell you what it feels like to have your baby stolen from you to know that you want her and for them to take it because they want the money off of it there's no words for that and there's always that hole [Music] in hattiesburg mississippi where brother roloff runs a home for unwed mothers the district attorney has been looking into charges he has been selling the girls babies for hundreds of dollars in 1974 five years before nancy gave birth homes run by the lester roloff ministries in both mississippi and texas were coming under scrutiny by local authorities brother roloff denied the charges he says he doesn't profit from the babies he merely tries to place them in good christian homes in fact selling babies wasn't illegal in mississippi and wouldn't be until 2009. amid allegations of abuse roloff fought most of his legal battles in texas over his refusal to follow state licensing requirements during this time he produced a documentary freedom's last call to argue against the government's right to regulate religious homes it's an insult to god's work and god's people that support these homes to accuse us of doing irreparable damage to children when we make no charge and i've done nothing but glove them and lift them and teach them to sing the praises of god girls do you love jesus roloff closed his facilities in texas rather than submit to the state but in mississippi where there were no regulations on religious homes bethesda stayed open the law of the lord that's what we go by statutes man-made unscriptural they don't mean anything to me roloff died in a plane crash in 1982 but bethesda remained operational through the mid-80s when a girl ran away from the facility youth court judge referee dan wise investigated and declared bethesda an illegal jail in 1986 the state took custody of the 117 girls who lived there the home closed permanently a year later we actually had to take over the home the pastor abandoned the property however there were all kind of records at the court and they would bring the girls into hattiesburg they would be pregnant and then they would move the girls out to another state to stay in a foster home and do the adoption in another jurisdiction so there's no way to track them down there were at least a hundred adoptions in our county that i'm aware of there's no way to know how many you could just say and spell your name okay my name is melanie spencer can you just tell us a bit about yourself where did you grow up okay so i grew up mostly in africa in south africa my dad was a missionary my parents have always told me that i was adopted they said it was through a christian adoption agency and that it had been important for my biological mother that i go into a good christian home i think a lot of times growing up i didn't feel rooted or connected melanie spencer had always been curious about her biological family but when she got older and tennessee passed a law opening adoption cases like hers she was nervous there were some cases that were being opened where maybe the mom didn't tell the family that there had been another child the more i thought about do i really want to disrupt her family or you know what she's done with her life moving forward maybe i shouldn't dig into this anymore i decided to walk away in the years after the birth nancy tried to find her daughter one lawyer told her she wasn't fit to be a mother she also tried contacting child services when i tell them what happened they didn't believe me so i quit telling my story after that through the years i remember thinking well she should be taking her first step now or that her first day of school should have started and every year on her birthday i know it didn't make any sense but i always baked her a cake she would be 12 today she would be 13 today she would be 14 today she was always there so i had my son in 2014 and then i had my daughter in february of 2018 i really started thinking about what will i tell them about where they're from when they're older and they start asking questions and so i decided to do ancestry the most interesting part was that it came up with a dna match i sort of looked at it and i was like whoa you know what do i do with this you know i think i just decided to go for it my name is melanie spencer and i was born in june of 1979. i was adopted as a baby from east ridge tennessee and i know nothing about my family my adoption was closed but i think my mother's birth name was nancy nancy's sister received melanie's message and on january 31st she said yes i know the story and she said yes i know the story we need to talk i think she said she was born in east ridge on june the 14th and i knew i knew who she was so i connected with nancy through facebook i remembered looking at her picture and was like wow there she is hello melanie hi how are you it's good to finally find you i know this is scary i have waited 39 years for this i've wondered about you for a long time it's a little overwhelming there's not a day goes by that i'd have not thought of you i want you to know that you are loved so much i'll answer any question you have sometimes i wake up and i think oh god i'm just dreaming because i used to dream about meeting her so yeah this is like a dream to me oh god i'm so nervous i'm happy she will know that she was loved i'm happy that that i've finally found her or she's found me that's her [Music] hey sis how are you hi [Music] god i'm so glad you're here the drive down you know i was kind of anxious and then i got out of the car and there she was 42 years of questions it almost feels like there wasn't any missing time it feels like coming home she wanted to know about her siblings she had always wanted brothers and sisters and she has a house full now and she's just what i thought she would be she's beautiful she's smart she just didn't realize how crazy i was until she so i was very aware of elvis being the number one man he's my happy place since connecting with melanie nancy has shared her story with other women who lost their children at bethesda she hopes that finding melanie inspires them to keep looking for their own children seven pounds seven ounces when i was in labor you felt bigger than that first birthday living in indonesia these girls on the bethesda groups they talk about forgiveness and healing then they say let it go i can't let it go yes she's in my life and yes i get to spend a week with her but so many things i've missed i can't let that go maybe after this it won't be so bad they won't take no more from me the bethesda home for girls closed in 1987 but roloff's teachings have continued to inspire homes for troubled teens and of course when we closed them the people that operated at edisburgh moved to the state of missouri which shamefully had almost no regulations on these kind of homes and so that's still going on in missouri to this day the homes are no longer accused of selling babies but allegations of abuse persist they're all over the place unfortunately and with internet they've actually gone international but it's the same people the same deal brother roloff's photo is still hanging at the front door thanks for watching our youtube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the nbc news app

Channel: NBC News

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Keywords: NBC News, NBC, news, video, Breaking News, Top Stories, Bethesda

Id: cm8MQa_RO-s

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021