Open and shut
Ma sobs for lost son, fights adoption ‘fraud’
A BROOKLYN mom who claims a wealthy Manhattan couple stole her son in an illegal adoption broke down in tears when she learned it could be another six months before she sees him.
Nina Yusupov, 32, left a courtroom where Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Rita Mella ruled Thursday that a court-appointed psychiatrist does not have to file an evaluation of her teenage boy until January.
“It means another six months, more than that, until I can see him again,” Yusupov said with tears streaming down her face.
Yusupov has been trying to unravel the adoption she approved in 2008 when her son, Eli, was 6 and she was worn out from multiple miscarriages and domestic violence.
“Eli used to run away. He’d hit me and the homemaker,” she recalled.
Yusupov, a Bukharian Jew from Uzbekistan, turned to Ohel, a private social services agency in Brooklyn, for help. Jennifer and David Bergenfeld, a childless couple from Manhattan, started visiting the boy and winning his affection.
Yusupov said she only submitted to an open adoption after she was tricked into thinking the Administration for Children’s Services was going to take Eli away. The Bergenfelds agreed, and allowed Yusupov to visit her son. But the visits were strained.
“I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t hold him. I couldn’t be near him,” she said, recalling the couple’s ground rules.
Those visits stopped after a March 2012 encounter in the gift shop of the Children’s Museum where the women fought openly. The couple got an order of protection barring Yusupov from going near Eli.
Yusupov’s lawyers, David Bellon and Steven Feinman, said that before they were on the case, their client tried to get the adoption overturned on the basis of fraud.
“Jennifer Bergenfeld made believe she was going to be my friend, my family,” Yusupov said.
A former Manhattan surrogate judge denied the fraud petition, but the legal wrangling continued.
By giving the psychiatrist until January to file his report, the lawyers contend, the judge has effectively delayed a ‘best interests’ hearing until next spring and a decision would probably not come until summer. Yusupov, who is now engaged and stable, wants to cancel the adoption.
The Bergenfelds refused to discuss the case. Approached in court, they erupted in fury at a reporter. “What’s the number of your legal department? This is just harassment! Guard! Guard!” Jennifer Bergenfeld shouted.