Mark Pelusi holds his great-grandmother's obituary. He is trying to obtain adoption records for his grandmother and her two siblings, who were adopted by separate families during the 1920s. Submitted photo

Former Butler County resident Mark Pelusi has spent years trying to obtain official documents to solve a century-old family mystery, but bureaucratic red tape is preventing him from doing so.

“It’s cost thousands of dollars and required multiple legal filings, all for records that should be straightforward for me to get,” Pelusi said.

During the 1920s, Pelusi’s great-grandmother died prematurely of typhoid fever, leading his grandmother and her two siblings to be placed for adoption when they were between the ages of 4 and less than 1 year old. They were ultimately taken in by three farm families in rural Butler County.

A century later, Pelusi — who now lives in Maine — has tried to obtain official records concerning the adoptions, but has been out of luck so far due to what he describes as an opaque process in Pennsylvania for obtaining old adoption records.

“Families seeking documents from older adoptions, even those that occurred 50 to100 years ago, must petition the courts and then work through a private, often faith-affiliated intermediary approved as a ‘search agent,’” Pelusi said. “This applies even when all parties involved in the adoption are deceased and no privacy interest remains.”

Early in the process, according to Pelusi, an Orphans’ Court ruling denied him access to the adoption records from his grandmother and her siblings, leading him down a rabbit hole of legal expenses to have the ruling reversed.

“The denial forced me to pay for additional legal work, including three motions for reconsideration before the judge ultimately reversed course,” Pelusi said. “I also had to personally coordinate with the court-appointed search agent.”

In Pennsylvania, a “search agent” is an intermediary appointed by the court to locate biological family members.

“There’s only one person in the whole of Butler County and Beaver County authorized to act as a search agent,” Pelusi said. “And right now they’re on vacation, so I’m just waiting for them to come back from vacation to even get the documents.”

Pelusi said he does not believe he is alone in his predicament.

“I think many Pennsylvania families with historical adoption barriers face the same barriers, delays and costs because the state provides no direct access to these records and relies on private intermediaries,” Pelusi said. “I imagine many people give up and don't even attempt it because of these high costs and time barriers.”

For those people, Pelusi is placing his faith in two bills which have been placed before the Pennsylvania General Assembly regarding vital records of adoptees: House Bill 536 and Senate Bill 644.

Both bills aim to allow adoptees to receive an unredacted photocopy of their original birth record upon request, as well as remove the ability for biological parents to redact their names from the birth records of adoptees.

“It is my belief that any legal adult should be able to view their own vital records without redaction,” wrote Sen. Chris Dush, R-16th, the main sponsor of the Senate bill, in a memo supporting it in January 2025. “I have heard from constituents who feel like their identity and ties to their biological family have been stripped away because they are unable to access their original birth certificate.”

Both bills have stalled in committee in their respective chamber before reaching a vote, and have seen no action since early 2025.

While the bills are similar in language, scope, and intent, Pelusi said that neither of them addresses the specific case that affects him: the ability to obtain vital records of ancestors who were adopted.

“They’re good bills, but they don’t address cases like mine where the adoption happened nearly a century ago and everyone’s deceased,” Pelusi said.

Pelusi says he has proposed amendments to the bills which would, in addition to the existing changes, put adoption-related records in the public domain 105 years from the person’s date of birth, and allow descendants to gain access at 30 years from the person’s date of birth. In addition, adoption records would be transferred to the Pennsylvania Department of Health to streamline the process of recordkeeping.

“Right now, we don’t really have access to any of those (records), because the system is entirely sealed,” Pelusi said. “The way the system is, it’s decentralized. The records are spread across different agencies. It could be hospitals,; it could be different privately run adoption agencies, it could be Orphans’ Courts.”

Pelusi has been in contact with sponsors of both bills, as well as members of the committees to which each bill has been transferred.

“I’ve gotten positive feedback,” Pelusi said. “I don’t want to name any names because I haven't got any sponsorships for the amendment I'm proposing, but I have gotten positive feedback. Some of them have asked for more information, or said they're forwarding it to other people.”