I think we look at this 19 years down the line and think of how things would have been handled today and not how they would have been handled then. Twenty years ago it wasn't all that uncommon for these types of adoption situations to be arranged and the laws for adoption have become much stricter and more controlled. Cassie may have been considered a special needs adoption based on her achol/drug addictions and the likely hood that Dustin would be born with problems himself. The state that granted the adoption might have been just as glad to find someone willing to take on the child and the mother so they didn't have to pay the cost themselves. It sounds out there and would be called baby buying now but the rules were different and as I said Cassie's child might have been hard to place based on her history. Even then we knew about drug addicted babies and the problems they could have. So was it a shady deal, who knows. As for judging the people based on the second wife I haven't found a mistresss to be a good judge of the wife's character.

As I try to put this story into perspective I keep coming back to the reliabilty of the witnesses. Cassie's story has no consistancy and changes with the wind. Now I wil give her the benefit of the doubt and suggest that the drugs and achol may have fried her brain and she doesn't know the truth but I find any and all her stories questionable.

The ex was the husband's mistress before marriage and already loses crediblity right there. The fact that she hates the adoptive mom with a passion also makes her a lousy character witness.

One person it would have been interesting to hear from was Dustin's gf. I wonder what her opinion is of his Mom. Now gf can have issues as do wives with MIL but it would have been an interesting take on how she sees the family dynamic.