Adopted kid not working out?/Re-Homing Child (Merged Thread)

[Ridiculous]

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/ado ... icle/part1

KIEL, Wisconsin – Todd and Melissa Puchalla struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager they'd adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad on the Internet.

Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They were eager to take Quita, even though the ad warned that she had been diagnosed with severe health and behavioral problems. In emails, Nicole Eason assured Melissa Puchalla that she could handle the girl.

"People that are around me think I am awesome with kids," Eason wrote.

A few weeks later, on Oct. 4, 2008, the Puchallas drove six hours from their Wisconsin home to Westville, Illinois. The handoff took place at the Country Aire Mobile Home Park, where the Easons lived in a trailer.

No attorneys or child welfare officials came with them. The Puchallas simply signed a notarized statement declaring these virtual strangers to be Quita's guardians. The visit lasted just a few hours. It was the first and the last time the couples would meet.

Seriously worth reading the whole article. It is SICKENING. There's a whole online world of this, people treating their adopted children like difficult puppies and placing ads to give them to strangers.

[Kira]

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/ado ... cles/part1

-People are adopting kids from foreign countries without the help of child services

-When the children become "problems" their parents trade them on Facebook and other social media.

-The children end up in abusive homes. One woman gave her son to a pedophile.(that's in part two, which I haven't read)

[Kira]

I posted about this, but you beat me by two minutes. I guess they'll merge the threads.

This story has left me speechless. One parent got rid if their adopted child after 5 days. Another gave her son to a pedophile.

One woman was asked why she keeps adopting children if she can't handle being a parent, her response: being a mother makes her feel important.

[rward]

I am appalled that people sell puppies this way. No reputable dog rescue or breeder would accept "people say I'm good with dogs!" as a reason to give someone a dog.

The fact that you can get a child this way . . . :pink-shock:

[2xx1xy1JD]

In light of several threads, including the Hanna Williams case, I was glad to see this getting some attention:

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/ado ... icle/part1

See my post in the Hanna Williams thread about how some horrific cases changed the law here (Ontario, Canada) to require background checks of non-biological parents, even when custody changes were done on consent. The potential for abuse is shocking.

[micatite]

Jeeze. It's sickening.

Especially the story about that poor boy who ended up being re-homed with a pedophile. And even now:

After returning to Wisconsin, Mueller sent the child to another home after getting approval from child welfare officials.

The boy turned 18 a few days ago. In an interview, his new foster mother said he is one of 10 children with special needs that she and her husband are raising. She said he is often combative and uncommunicative. He once asked if he could attend a school for troubled children, she said, but she and her husband insist on home-schooling him and don't believe in therapy for children. The couple declined to make the boy available for an interview.

Passed around like rubber ball, given to a pedophile, asked for but was denied the opportunity to attend a school for troubled children in favor of 'homeschooling' by people who don't believe in therapy for kids. And they wouldn't make him available for an interview (presumably, even if he was willing.) How many red flags do there have to be?

:angry-banghead:

[ILoveJellybeans]

You dont "rehome" a child! What kind of monster does that? Nomatter what they do, theyre always your child, whether you gave birth to them or adopted them. I think I would judge anyone who would give their own child up for adoption (except for as a baby if they dont feel they could raise a child), as once you have a child, theyre yours nomatter what, let alone just illegally dump them on someone else.

[garciarodrigez]

I first heard of this while following the Erica parsons case on websleuths. So, so sad.

[Rachel333]

I just don't understand this. It even bothers me when people do this with pets, let alone kids.

Some people we know very nearly sent their daughter back to China when they were having a tough time with her. Another family in the area with 12 adopted kids were very interested in her--they didn't have a Chinese girl yet! It was very child collector-ish. My parents were even prepared to take her to keep her from either option, but the first family worked things out and have since adopted a third kid from China. They're Evangelicals who feel like adopting is a mission, which I think has got to be a big part of the problem. They have three biological children as well, the youngest of whom was in college when they had their first adoption. They have grandchildren older than their youngest children now.

[Mama Mia]

When my kids were teens one of their friends came to live with us to finish high school. The parents had moved to another state. All we needed to enroll her in school, obtain medical care, etc. was show the note her mother signed giving us guardianship. I don't recall if it was even notarized, I'm thinking not.

It's important that kids can go visit relatives or friends with minimal hassle, especially if the family is having problems, but its crazy that children can just be passed around via the Internet with no oversight. Terrifying.

[Jana814]

Just saw something like this on NBC nightly news. So sad.

[tropaka]

Has this site been mentioned before:

http://poundpuplegacy.org/

Inspired by stories shared by birth parents, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees, PPL explores the dark side of adoption, and the consequences illegal and unethical actions have on future family-life and the well-being of those affected by adoption.

Too many children are placed for the benefit of agencies and based on the demands of prospective adoptive parents.

Too many children are placed in inappropriate homes because the business interests of adoption agencies have higher priority than the safety of children.

PPL documents and archives cases where the child placement system did not work in the best interest of the child and we offer a platform for those who want to express their thoughts and feelings about the dark side of child adoption.

The Hannah Williams/Alehu case is profiled, as is Above Rubies etc. Forgive me if it's been mentioned before.

[dianapavelovna]

I'm really glad that such a reputable news agency is focusing on this. I've been thinking about the issue a lot lately, largely because of discussions on the board. I'll look forward to the next parts, as horrifying as the first two were.

[GenerationCedarchip]

I just read through both articles. So sickening and sad. I hope that series like this and books like Child Catcher not only lead to beefing up child protection laws, but also to more support for adoptive parents. There really isn't a lot of good(and affordable) help out there for the parents or for the children.

[Antigone]

This is horrible stuff. Severus and I have had a friend who knows of a poor little girl who was told to her face that she was not wanted, and neither parent wanted to take her with them when they moved. So the girl is living with a friend of ours, and Sev offered our home to her, if she needed anything.

Stories like this make me wonder about people. Sev sees the dark side every day from being a medical professional, but wow. Every time I can't imagine something, I read a new story about it.

I hope someday those kids affected find some kind of peace or encounter a kind soul in their lives at some point. Everyone deserves peace.

[IamCanadian]

I just read parts 1 and 2 of the Reuters piece. Have the subsequent parts not been published yet?

Honestly, I'd rather see these kids with the vast majority of the fundie parents we snark on here than with the couple / trio profiled in this piece.

[patsymae]

I just read parts 1 and 2 of the Reuters piece. Have the subsequent parts not been published yet?

Honestly, I'd rather see these kids with the vast majority of the fundie parents we snark on here than with the couple / trio profiled in this piece.

The fundie parents we snark on here are part of the much larger problem outlined then the few couples in the lead of this story.

5,029 posts on one forum alone--one child a week on average "advertised" for "rehoming."

Fundie rehomers tend to do it legally--that is, they know other families through their network, share a lawyer, and get the kid "rehomed" legally. Doesn't make it less traumatic for the children.

Personally, I'd rather see these children in their own countries, in their own culture, with their own extended families if possible (and that includes being in "orphanages," the poor-people's version of "boarding schools," where their poverty-stricken parents place them but visit when they can) rather than being taken halfway around the world by strangers who were "called by God" to adopt them only to discover that whoops, the Lord surely didn't mean for us to keep such an ungrateful kid who isn't loving, obedient, or grateful, but we know that as we pass them along we are doing the work of the Lord. Just look at the posts of Laurel.

"Rehoming"--just like denial of father's rights (look at the recent Utah and SC situations), outright kidnapping (Guatemala, for one), agenda-driven phony "pregnancy crisis centers" -- is one of the dark sides of the (1.4 billion) adoption industry.

The more light shed, the happier I am, not for those who are suffering, but for the potential of eliminating future suffering.

[GawkingToo]

Personally, I'd rather see these children in their own countries, in their own culture, with their own extended families if possible (and that includes being in "orphanages," the poor-people's version of "boarding schools," where their poverty-stricken parents place them but visit when they can) rather than being taken halfway around the world by strangers who were "called by God" to adopt them only to discover that whoops, the Lord surely didn't mean for us to keep such an ungrateful kid who isn't loving, obedient, or grateful, but we know that as we pass them along we are doing the work of the Lord. Just look at the posts of Laurel.

Is this the Laurel of the "I'm Ghana Adopt" blog? Because that Laurel has done her share of posting on at least one disruption Yahoo group. (I was a lurker on a few adoption-related Yahoo groups for a period, after I noticed a bunch of kids disappearing from family photos on adoption blogs and wanted the inside scoop.)

In Laurel's defense, it would appear that at least two of her disruptions were due to issues more than just the kids not being "loving, obedient, or grateful." Per her emails to the Disruption-Respite Yahoo group, she disrupted two of the kids because she found out that they had been sexually abusing their sibling(s) and had ensured the sibling(s)' silence with blackmail and threats. Apparently they had tried keeping the kids at home but separated for a period (don't know how long), but there were issues with the dynamic of the victim(s) living with the abusers and she thought it was making it very hard for the victim(s) to heal and for the other kids to be kept safe. (And for those who think overseas orphanages are so wonderful, it's those orphanages where the kids learned to abuse after experiencing it themselves. Not saying adoption is the best answer, just that it's best to avoid the crystal glasses.)

(I still have Laurel's emails in my Gmail archives, but my understanding is that forum rules prohibit me from posting screenshots.)

(And for the record, I'm not saying that justifies shipping off the third kid; I don't know what the story is there.)

[GawkingToo]

I should probably clarify that I'm not saying that Laurel actually used a Yahoo group to find homes for the kids. She began posting on Disruption-Respite during the months I happened to be following the group and when she began posting those kids were already out of the home.

[Miss M]

Who was the woman who re-homed her adopted child after posting pictures on her blog of the kid looking like a demon? It was that story that brought me to FJ, and now I can't remember anything other than the demon picture!

[chaotic life]

Fundies are often the DRIVING force of this underground method of re-homing children. And, I don't give Laurel ANY break. I cannot count the times I have seen adoptive parents flat-out lie about sexual abuse simply because it's the ONE thing anyone will give them a pass for re-homing a child on. It was absolutely an allegation laid against my son, and was patently FALSE from start to finish--which I verified with his therapy and medical team before I brought him into my home.

Secondly, if your child has issues, the FIRST place you start is in THERAPY not trolling the underground to get rid of them. Laurel got rid of them, like so many others just like her.

I've watched this for at least ten years now. Most children who disappear from fundie families are never formally re-adopted via legal channels.

My son was the third child the first family threw away through this underground, a fact they concealed from me. I did my research and discovered that, which is why we considered it a credible threat that they would dump him somewhere else if we did not take him, though they flat-out rejected my offers of peer support, of support to navigate legal avenues and proper support resources, or even to provide respite for a summer and re-integrate him back into the first family.

To this day, I have no idea what happened to the second of the three children. The woman blogged extensively about re-homing the first child but denied there were ever any other adoptees than my son to me. Yet, the insurance card they provided for my son STILL had the missing child's name on it.

The Campbells did not formally have most of their children re-adopted. They just found other fundie families to take them in.

There has to be reform.

There are little to no formal and legal avenues for parents to explore when they are in crisis. Almost no states offer post-placement support for international adoptions, and the agency support (assuming you used an agency) is often a joke. There are honestly times when a family in crisis is not going to go get through the issues, but right now there are NO legal channels for those families to pursue. Out of home placements are costly, infrequent and if you involve the state you may find yourself losing all of your children and facing child abandonment charges, which discourages such families for reach out for help.

Families find themselves looking for new homes on the internet because they cannot find the help they need otherwise. The first place to change the problem is to establish that support. The second place is to aggressively and vigorously prosecute people doing this black market trafficking of children.

[GawkingToo]

I yield to Chaotic Life. If someone who's actually been there and lived it is calling bullshit, then I'm going to go with that. Honestly, I hope the sexual abuse stuff is a lie because if not she told waayy too much of her kids' history on the interwebs. (I'm not talking about the stuff re the kids who were re-adopted, who presumably have new names, etc.** I'm talking about the kids identified as victims. In my synopsis above I had edited out some of the details to protect those kids' privacy, but there were more specifics given. Totally not the mom's story to tell. But that's a different rant...)

**If I recall correctly, she has a blog post that mentions termination of parental rights, which doesn't necessarily mean those kids were adopted, though I'm hoping they were...

Fundies are often the DRIVING force of this underground method of re-homing children. And, I don't give Laurel ANY break. I cannot count the times I have seen adoptive parents flat-out lie about sexual abuse simply because it's the ONE thing anyone will give them a pass for re-homing a child on. It was absolutely an allegation laid against my son, and was patently FALSE from start to finish--which I verified with his therapy and medical team before I brought him into my home.

Secondly, if your child has issues, the FIRST place you start is in THERAPY not trolling the underground to get rid of them. Laurel got rid of them, like so many others just like her.

I've watched this for at least ten years now. Most children who disappear from fundie families are never formally re-adopted via legal channels.

[IamCanadian]

I need to clarify. I wasn't advocating re-homing these kids with a fundie family. I was referring to the Nicole Eason, her friend and boyfriend mentioned in the Reuters article. The ones who have had their bio kids taken away, who broke their bio daughter's femur when she was a baby, who were supervising a neighbour's 18month old when he drowned in the bath. At least one of the two men associated with this woman is a registered and self-proclaimed pedophile, and the woman herself has been accused of sexual abuse of minors. This woman is trolling the disruption forums and has gotten more than one child from there. THIS is the woman I deem less safe than the majority of the fundies we snark on here. What I meant was, hypothetically, if I had to decide between the Duggars and this woman, or Rebecca Eleventy!!!'s family and this woman, etc it wouldn't be a hard decision for me.

Ultimately, the system is a mess. Re-homing generally means that the adoptive parents either haven't done their homework or were't really committed to the child in the first place. That being said, I think that there are many adopted kids (and bio kids) who are too violent etc to live in any home. They might need residential care for a while. These kids shouldn't be re-homed in the first place.

I had a look at another "Adoption disruption" board. Heartbreaking, but a central theme was that many adoptive parents felt that they had been misled about the child they were about to adopt. (It was a British forum and IIRC none of the posts specifically mentioned international adoptions). Example: One couple had been told that their son-to-be had been in a psyc ward for less than 1.5 weeks as a child because social services had nowhere else for him to go at the time. After dealing with his behavioural issues, they hired a lawyer and got his medical records. He had been hospitalized for a month and a half due to violent tendencies and uncontrollable behaviour. His medical notes advised against his being placed in a home with other children. This couple, who already had 3 adopted children, we not told about any of this.

If adoption agencies are being less-than-forthright, or if they are not vetting adoptees very well, a lot of this is on them.

It's weird. When I was in university, I was on staff at the local SPCA. We had a clause in our adoption contracts that if an adoption didn't work out, the animal could not be re-homed without our consent. The animal had to either be returned to the shelter or the new family would have to pay us a visit and formally sign a new contract with us. This way, we maintained our responsibility to the animal throughout its life. It's sad that the agencies overseeing these children do less in this regard.

[samithemage]

I remember crying and begging my best friend not to give up the shelter dog she rescued. She was going through a difficult divorce and the dog was totally wild. We were roommates at the time and I remember lecturing her about the promises she had made to that poor pup and that once you make that choice, it's for life. (She key him and he's now the most wonderful dog. I actually have "custody" at the moment, since she can't find a place that will take big dogs.) How is it even possible to view an innocent child the way these monsters saw her? I've treated my pet hamsters and rats with more compassion than these people are capable of.

[FreeJosie]

Who was the woman who re-homed her adopted child after posting pictures on her blog of the kid looking like a demon? It was that story that brought me to FJ, and now I can't remember anything other than the demon picture!

Her name is Emma; she's a revolting woman. That story turned my stomach.