Background Info on the Case by Traciy Curry-Reyes
Richard Gitelman runs a private adoption referral service (National Adoption Counseling Service), and he uses classified ads to lure pregnant teens to give up their babies for adoption. Gitelman takes these babies and sells them to the highest bidder, mostly affluent White couples in the South. Most of his ads were placed in rural areas so as not to draw attention. The couples, desperate for babies, would pay up to $50,000 for a baby. He did not pay the pregnant teen aged girls.
Rebekah Lin Dulik is only 17 years old and she is 5 months pregnant. Scared and broke she decides to answer a classified ad placed by Richard Gitelman. Gitelman offered to pay for her delivery and all other medical costs. He also offered to by her some new clothes, a plane ticket, and some cash. So with the help of her boyfriend, Mark Hager, 20, Dulik boarded a plan and headed for Louisiana. Dulik’s parents filed a missing persons report with the local police. Rebekah Dulik was returned to her parents after about 5 days unharmed. Her boyfriend Mark Hager was arrested for helping Dulik run away.
October 28, 1997
Police authorities obtain an arrest warrant for Richard Gitelman of Coral Springs, Florida, for luring a 17 year old teenage girl named Rebekah Lin Dulik from Nemacolin, Pennsylvania to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by false advertising.
''I have stated to each and every client or potential client,'' he said, ''upon them first contacting me to solicit my services, the first sentence out of my mouth is that I am not an adoption agency, that I do not sell babies, stock babies or have anything to do with babies in any way, shape or form.'' said Gitelman.
Extra Tidbits
Unfortunately, the majority of the babies were lost. The classified ads were placed all over the U.S. Most of the babies were placed in New York.
Key players in the case
Rebekah Lin Dulik: age 17, teenage pregnant victim. She now goes by the name Rebekah Schroeder and lives in Michigan.
Michael Dulik, a coal miner and father of Rebakah Lin Dulik
Richard Gitelman: age 45, the baby broker
Karen Prejean: age 34, a paralegal in Baton Rouge, La
