Johnston father fights to raise girl given to California couple

Pernell Ingram is fighting to raise a daughter he thought was dead.

Brianna turned 4 last Sunday, a milestone she celebrated in California with a couple who tried to adopt her at birth. Ingram has never held her or read her a story. He has never seen her, save for pictures in a pink album mailed to him by the strangers raising her.

It's a tangled tale how this Johnston County man, 24, came to battle all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court for his right to be a dad. The story is mapped out in charged testimony, briefs and orders filed in the Wake County courthouse and the state Court of Appeals.

It started simply enough. A high school football player had a crush on a childhood friend.

There was always something about Wednesday Robinson, Ingram still muses when he tells the story. By the time he headed to East Carolina University in the fall of 2001, their friendship had turned to courtship. He sneaked home to Johnston County to see her every chance he got.

Robinson became pregnant that fall. Ingram finished the semester at ECU, then moved home to get a job and prepare for the baby. But over the winter, the relationship soured. Marriage plans derailed. By spring, they talked sporadically -- and only about the baby.

Ingram said he stayed serious about being a dad. He traded in his sports car for a more family-friendly Honda Accord. He picked up shifts at his uncle's janitorial business, landed a job at the Smithfield outlet mall and enrolled at Johnston Community College.

Robinson wasn't so sure about raising the baby. She was already raising two little ones alone, she said in an interview. She dreamed of this baby having something her older ones didn't: a mom and dad living under the same roof, both devoted to the child's well-being.

She called A Child's Hope, a private adoption agency in Raleigh. According to court records, she told staff members that a stranger at a party in Chapel Hill had drugged her and raped her. She said she remembered little of that night, let alone the culprit's identity.

The adoption agency pinpointed a perfect couple in California, well-educated people who couldn't have children. Robinson liked them immediately, she said.

The agency ran a notice in The Chapel Hill News, alerting the unidentified father that a judge would terminate his parental rights if he didn't challenge the adoption.

Robinson kept her plans for the baby quiet. A month before she delivered, she told Ingram she had had a miscarriage, according to court documents. Ingram's mother, Francine Wilson, called Robinson to confirm news of the miscarriage, court records show.

Robinson denied last week that she had deceived Ingram. But her explanation contradicted what she said in court in 2003 and contradicted testimony offered by the adoption agency in court.

She said in the interview that she was tired of being portrayed as a "bad mother."

A seed of doubt

Ingram took the news of the miscarriage hard, but he tried to move ahead with his life. A football coach at Catawba College in Salisbury offered him a spot on the team; Ingram enrolled in classes for the next semester.

In June 2002, a short article in The News & Observer caught his eye -- and planted a seed of doubt. A newborn baby had been abandoned at the Johnston Memorial Hospital emergency room. Wondering whether the child might be his, he went to the hospital to inquire.

The baby was white; Ingram is black, but social workers let him take a paternity test anyway. It came back negative.

Still, Ingram's inquiry sparked the curiosity of Melissa Williams, a Johnston County social worker. She checked into what had become of Robinson's baby.