The “Brangelina” brood hit Manhattan last week and was assaulted by the paparazzi, tourists, and the ignorant, who think nothing about invading the privacy of a celebrity family. Naturally, anonymous Web posters spewed their hateful envy on various entertainment forums and inevitably one nastily inquired why Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt didn’t adopt American orphans. But, according to a terrific book, “The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption,” by Barbara Bisantz Raymond, adopting in America hasn’t always been the safest option.

Recently, New York was rocked by the arrest of Judith Leekin, who allegedly collected nearly $3 million in an adoption scam that began in the 1970s with two foster boys in Queens. She subsequently adopted several disabled New York children and was under investigation for alleged cruelty when she fled to Florida. The teenage children in her care were found in what police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., reportedly called a house of horrors.

Before reading about the case, I had no idea that the city made supplemental payments after children are adopted, but there is a lot about this case that appears to confound even the authorities. After Ms. Leekin’s arrest, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services scrambled to explain how she had been allowed to take the children in while using different names. The ACS said the adoptions had taken place before the policy of taking fingerprints from adoptive parents to verify their identity was introduced in 1999. The authorities in Florida have asked a New York Family Court judge to unseal the adoption records in the hopes they may shed some light on the alleged scam. Four adoption agencies are believed to be involved, but until the documents that have been requested — birth certificates and caseworker reports — are obtained, they can’t identify the agency or agencies that did the placements.

The scandal is eerily familiar to what has been uncovered about “baby thief” Georgia Tann. I met the author of the new book that tells the thief’s story, Ms. Raymond, a Queens resident who is herself an adoptive mother, and was shocked to learn the implications of Tann’s crimes, even though they occurred decades ago. Ms. Raymond told me Tann was involved in more than 1,000 adoptions in New York.

Tann was a highly respected director of an orphanage in Memphis, Tenn., who used her position to oversee more than 30 years of baby-stealing, baby-selling, and abuse. While she is credited with popularizing the worthy undertaking of adoption, she corrupted the mission by arranging adoptions for profit to the rich, the famous, and the unfit to parent. Joan “No Wire Hangers!” Crawford was one of her clients, and we all have heard from her two adopted children just how unfit a mother she was.

Tann operated between the 1920s and 1950s under the auspices of a Memphis mayor, Edward Hull Crump, and employed a wide network that included judges, attorneys, and social workers whom she would bribe with “free babies.” These children came to her after being seen by “spotters” who either targeted babies ripe for abduction or located desperate single women seeking a better future for their child.

Many of the birth certificates she provided as part of the adoption process were altered, and she was the chief force behind the legislation that sealed these records. Tann and her cohorts convinced the powers that be that her stolen and kidnapped children, as well as all other legally or illegally adopted children, should be forevermore barred from accessing the simple facts of their birth that most people take for granted.

Ms. Raymond told me her daughter has met her biological mother and that, although it may be painful for adoptive parents, they should support their search. I asked her if opening the adoption records would discourage adoptions. “On the contrary,” she said, “Alaska and Kansas are the only two states that have always allowed adoptees access to their birth certificates and adoptions there have increased.”

Tennessee passed a law in 1996 that allows access to birth records. Since then, five other states have passed similar laws. According to Ms. Raymond, open records bills are pending in seven more states, including New York.

I recommend her book to our Legislature because while the Brangelina children know the answer to “Who am I?” every other adopted child here deserves to have that answer as well.