Pound Pup Legacy

4-year-old boy from Taganrog, Rostov, Russia, adopted by Jane and Timothy Cochran. The boy had severe bruising, cuts from head to toe. He'd been beaten by hand and with a wooden spoon and had been cut with scissors. Allegedly he was beaten because he couldn't say his prayers properly. Jane confessed her crimes to her Catholic priest prior to being arrested.

From 1968 to 1990 the Nasons adopted in total 76 children, most of them having special needs, to form their "Celebration Family".

In 1992 things started to fall apart and they were were alleged to allow three small children to die neglected in their beds an infant girl who died of starvation in 1988, and a boy of about 2 and a girl of about 4 who died of a form of dysentery called shigella in 1985, days apart.

Some of the 76 children they adopted have told of being beaten and being shocked with a cattle prod. Younger children, were allegedly caged in their beds.

A 27-year-old woman adopted when she was 10 said that Dennis Nason, 49, molested her and attempted intercourse, and that she was forced to eat a bar of soap. She also said she had been hit with a belt during meals for eating too slowly and was hit again when the first beating caused her to urinate.

The Nasons were acquitted of abuse charges, but convicted of racketeering and forgery.
The children were adopted from Vietnam, India, Mexico, El Salvador and the United States

The girl was sexually abused by her older adopted brother since the age of seven,

3 year old boy adopted by Tim and Billy Jane King, slain by his adoptive mother, who first claimed he had been kidnapped, later she confessed to killing him. Ahmad had been adopted just a month before his death.

 
At age 6, Alex Pavlis of Illinois, was beaten to death by his U.S. adopted mother, Irma, 6 weeks after his adoption from Yeysk, Krasnodar, Russia. Adoptive father was Dino Pavlis. He was found to have 32 bruises, scars, and cuts. Irma had a difficult time with Alex. He banged his head on the walls, floors, and defecated and urinated on himself. Reports indicate that his injuries could have been self-inflicted. Irma was charged with involuntary manslaughter.

21 days old infant shaken to death by adoptive father Bruce Keintz.

12 year old girl adopted by Sandra Parker was brutalized kept chained and starving in the basement.

Sent by her adoptive mother to the Attachment Center at Evergreen (ACE), Andrea was put through the usual “two-week intensive,” but then diagnosed as so “damaged” that she had to stay on for periodic treatments at ACE, and live with AT-trained therapeutic foster parents (TFPs), at a cost to the family’s insurance company of $3,500 a week. Supposedly, Andrea made slow progress in the arrangement, until the insurance payments ran out. Whereupon, Watkins and the TFPs began pressuring the adoptive family to allow the TFPs to adopt her — and thereby get new insurance coverage.

One day in November 1990, Andrea returned to her foster home from school and reported to the TFPs that she had been sexually molested at school, which they regarded as typical “Attachment Disorder” behavior — false, manipulative, and attention-getting.

The next day, Andrea took an overdose of aspirin. She was in convulsions and delirious the next morning, but the TFPs did not attend her, and instead went bowling that afternoon. While they were gone, a relative visited the house and found Andrea dead in a hallway.

4-year-old boy, about to be adopted by Larry and Hannah Overton, was forced to drink a mixture of water and Cajun spices as punishment. The Overtons waited nearly three hours before taking the boy to a medical clinic, vomited and drifted in and out of consciousness. He was no longer breathing when he finally arrived there. A day later he died.

4-year-old girl adopted by Mary Perkins was allegedly beaten to death by her adoptive mother. There were also signs Angel had been sexually abused.

Angellika Arndt, died from asphyxiation a day after she was wrestled to the ground and held face first on the ground in a chokehold for over an hour by caregivers at Rice Lake Day Treatment Center. She was in Milwaukee County's foster care system at the time.

11-year-old boy, one of 5 adopted by a couple from Colorado Springs, was forced to spend days and nights in a small room beneath stairs with only a wool blanket and bucket in which to relieve himself. His parents at one point forced him to wear a dog collar with an electric shock that they would activate.

14-year-old boy was adopted from foster care by Donald Shissler with the intent to sexually abuse him. At least two other boys were also abused by Shissler, who made sexual explicit photos and videos of the boys while engaging in sexual activity. Shissler was a former Episcopalian priest, high school teacher, and foster parent.

16-year-old boy adopted by a former supervisor for the Administration for Children's Services and his wife, was sexually abused by his adoptive father.

Eight year old boy was scalded in bathwater. His adoptive parents waited six weeks before seeking treatment for him.

13 year old boy was beaten with a belt by his adoptive mother Jacqueline Anne Lerma. She was sentenced to four years imprisonment.

7-year-old Samoan boy adopted together with his 3-year-old sister by Scott and Catherine Kanani Nelson was malnourished, suffered from frostbite and several other injuries. As a form of punishment he was forced to sleep in his underwear in a shed during subzero temperatures.

17-year-old former foster child was sexually abused by his adoptive father, who was a Devereux Florida state-contracted foster care facility worker

4 year old girl and 5 year old girl adopted by Richard and Christine Dodson were abused by their adopters. The girl's leg and arms were broken and the boy was being starved and beaten. Both children were home-schooled.

A 6 year-old boy was found by child protection officers bruised, huddled and clutching his knees to his chest in the cot that had been converted to a virtual cage in a darkened garage in November last year. The only light was sunlight coming under the garage door. He was malnourished and weighed just over 12kg. The boy was given one or two meals a day, water, a screwdriver and saucepan to bang together when he needed to toilet. His body mass was so low that two months after going in to new care he suffered mild cardiac failure and returned to hospital.

His foster mother, 34, was jailed on Nov 7th for two years and eight months for reckless neglect of the boy. The woman also has five biological children, aged up to 15. Her husband, 31, the father of three of the six children, received a maximum jail term of three years and two months for assaulting the boy.

All the five natural children of the woman were well cared. The judge  read from the woman's police statement, where she described resenting the boy because he was not one of her natural children. She made his bedroom in the shed so he was out of the way of the family, the court was told.

1-year old "Baby Andrew" was placed in foster care by James Ryan Hadlock. The boy suffered from fractured legs and ribs, plus bleeding of the brain. Hadlock was sentenced to 100 days imprisonment.

11-year-old boy was allegedly punched and slapped regularly, forced to wear a diaper, sleep on the floor and refused food.

At least four out of eleven boys adopted by David Allen Lindsey were sexually molested by him. Lindsey was the first single man in Florida to adopt.

Between 38 and 56 Melanesian and Micronesian boys and girls were brought to the USA by nobel prize winner D. Carleton Gajdusek, at least one boy claimed to have been sexually abused. Prosecutors said more were abused. Gajdusek claimed the boys were adopted, no records were found. Boys may have come to US on student visas.

Two boys adopted by their aunt and uncle in Blackstock Ontario were found caged. One boy was found in a makeshift cage that was strapped to a wall and padlocked.

They were often tied to their beds, sometimes handcuffed. At one time, one brother was forced to sleep in a bare dog cage.

They were kept in diapers because they couldn't get to the washroom, subjected to rectal examinations and often beaten with a variety of household implements.

They lived in such fear, court heard, they ate their own feces to hide evidence of accidents and, deprived of water, felt compelled to drink their own urine. ...

At least two boys placed by Brian John Bergthold were sexually abused by him while being filmed. Bergthold was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for sexual assault and for 70 years for child pornography charges.

9-year-old Brian Edgar, died when he was bound like a mummy in duct tape by his adoptive mother as a punishment for stealing cookies. The boy was left overnight with only his nose uncovered and suffocated on his own vomit at the family's home in Overland Park, west of Kansas City.

Four New Jersey boys who had been systematically starved by their adoptive parents, while state child welfare workers, in a bewildering series of errors, failed to make the most basic checks on the children over a dozen years.

Cameron was adopted from Aktobe, Kazakhstan in April 2001 by Michael & Jodene Van Hyning. Michael was the primary care-giver. One month home, Michael nearly beat 15 month old Cameron to death in several incidents over a two week period. VanHyning is serving a 28-year prison sentence for aggravated domestic battery.

Candace Elizabeth Newmaker (19 November 1989 — 18 April 2000) was a victim of child abuse, killed during a 70-minute treatment session supposedly to treat reactive attachment disorder. The form of diagnosis and the treatments used were unvalidated and non-mainstrean methods practised within the field of attachment therapy.

5-year-old boy in foster care with Oswaldo and Luz Peralta died from bleeding from the brain.

Four-year old Cassandra adopted by Jennette and Richard Killpack died after they forced her to drink a gallon of water, which caused her brain to swell.

The Killpacks maintained it was a form of therapy to help Cassandra with her emotional problems that she had from being abused before they adopted her.

18 month old adopted son of Charles Thomas McEntire Jr. and Edrina Gibson McEntire. His adoptive father stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife.

21 month old boy from Russia, adopted by Miles and Carol Harrison. His adoptive father left him in the car for hours while being at work, causing Chase to die of the heat. He'd been adopted only three months before.

11 year old girl adopted by her grand parents Charles and  Rita Mensinger. After having shot her husband Mensinger fled, bringing Chelsea with her. She later shot Chelsea and herself. Charles Mensinger survived his wife's attack on him.

Police are investigating allegations a serious abuse against a five-year-old boy, known as "Child C", while he was in the care of Haringey.

Child C was snatched from his home in Africa and adopted as a "miracle baby" by a follower Gilbert Deya, the evangelist who has been at the centre of investigations into a "miracle baby" child-trafficking scandal, with infants allegedly stolen and passed to infertile women who were then convinced they had conceived through prayer.Once in the UK, the follower adopted the five-year-old, but he was seized by police in 2003 and taken into care where he has passed through six different sets of carers.

His sixth, and final, foster carer, who looked after him for 15 months, forged a strong bond with the child, but partly because her north African ethnic background was different to that of the boy, Haringey council opposed her application to adopt him. Instead, social workers fast-tracked his adoption by a black couple of Caribbean origin instead.  Since being placed with the adoptive parents allegations have surfaced that Child C was admitted to intensive care in a coma in 2006.

The authorities were alerted when concerns were raised by a consultant child psychiatrist after the boy was taken to hospital. The Guardian quoted a report which said that while in care of an adoptive couple, Child C had his head banged against a wall so hard that he needed hospital treatment. Anonymous complainants suggested that Child C was unhappy and would not eat properly. The adoptive mother complained that he was wrecking her marriage and left him with a social worker, it was claimed, only taking him back when the local authority agreed to pay £26,000 for looking after Child C.

Five siblings aged 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15 placed in legal guardianship of their aunt Rita Makekau were repeatedly abused by her.Makekau used a hammer to break and chip their teeth when they misbehaved. She struck them on their heads with knives and metal spoons, causing bleeding and permanent scarring.The children sometimes went without food for a week, and one had been forced to sleep under the house with dogs and insects and without warm clothes or bedding as punishment for misbehavior.

Four children adopted from Guatemala, allegedly abused by their adoptive father.

Eight children from foster care were abused by Marjorie; she punched children, hit them with a wooden paddle, locked them outside for hours with no food or water, held their heads under hot water, and threatened them with a gun.

A 4 year-old boy was brought to the hospital at Haute-Loire (France) by his adoptive parents for an injury resulting from falling; but the doctors realized quickly that the injuries were not consistent with a fall. The younger brother of the victim, 18 months-old, was also hospitalized since few days for an injury to his leg. The boys were adopted since May 1, 2008. After having denied any violence, the father admitted that sometime he strikes the children to correct them but he minimizes the brutality of his behaviour saying that it was his way of educating his adoptive son who only speaks an Ehtiopian dialect. The father is imprisoned for aggravated rape, sexual assault and violence on children. The man is known to be impulsive and violent with his wife. His wife is under investigation for "non-denunciation of ill-treatment".

Three children were abused for six years by their adoptive parents, in Becancour Quebec. They have been beaten with fists, feet and with sticks. The children were also subjected to backbreaking works for their age.

Three adopted boys were found severely malnourished, a 5-year-old boy who weighed less than 20 pounds, an 8-year-old who weighed less than 40 pounds and a 7-year-old brother who weighed about 32 pounds when police found. The boys also were treated for bruises, scratches, burns and head lice. The boys told officers they were tied up to be kept from food in the mobile home.

Earnest and Windie Perry, adopted six children in total. Five of them were removed from the house after the couple was charged with eight count of aggravated child abuse. Their eldest, Elizabeth Perry, together with her adoptive mother Windie, was also charged with two counts of rape of a child and two counts of aggravated rape.

In November of 1999 the half-naked disabled adoptive son of Emily Miller was found tied to a plastic bucket partially filled with urine. During the examinations, it was revealed two children in the care of  Emily Miller had died earlier. First in January 1993, 4-month-old Ieisha Dyson died after being born with a significant birth defect and in April 1995 DuJuan Miller, Emily Miller's 2-year-old adopted son died, supposedly of sudden infant death syndrome.

All material kindly provided by Jack Kresnak President & CEO of Michigan's Children

Five children and two disabled women were locked in a basement cell, fed meager food and rarely allowed to bathe. The couple were paid $9,000 a month to care for the seven.

Three boys and two girls were beaten with sticks, belts, shoes, fists and hammers; burned with a clothes iron, the stove, and a curling iron; bitten; kicked; stabbed with knives, forks and sticks; urinated on; forced to eat their own excrement; forced to drink urine; fed rotting food as well as cat food; forced into the clothes dryer and the dryer turned on; beaten while naked; duct taped to a chair or their beds for days; strangled with a belt; held under water; held over a banister by their feet and dropped; made to drink hot sauce with red hot peppers; made to drink from the toilet; forced to go without food for days; forced to wear urine soaked clothing on their heads; and body slammed, along with other abuses.At least two of the victims also detailed sexual abuses and assaults using a toilet plunger.
James was a former lay minister and church trustee

Three boys adopted by an unordained priest from Huntsville Alabama were sexually abused by him. Circuit Judge Karen Hall sentenced Jerry Wayne Love, 51, to 15 years on each of three first-degree sodomy charges. But she followed the prosecutors' recommendation, ordering Love to spend five years on probation and undergo treatment in a sex offender program.

In the 1990s Love and his wife were named as adoptive parents of the year by the Madison County Department of Human of Resources

A 12-year-old girl who weighed 40 pounds and her 10-year-old brother, who weighed 45 pounds, were found unattended near a church playground in Union County, South Carolina. Both children were adopted from Estonia eight years before.

Five children adopted by the Dollars who starved them, shocked them with electricity, pulled out their toenails with pliers, bound them with chains and strips of plastic and struck their feet with hammers.

During 1999 - 2003 DiMaria and her husband, John DiMaria, lived in Jericho and operated the Gypsy Grace Ranch, advertised as "North America's Largest Breeder" of Gypsy horses, an expensive English draft horse. The DiMarias adopted 21 girls from third-world countries. The adopted girls were all impaired; most were deaf. In February, 2003, the State of Vermont learned that John DiMaria had been sexually abusing the older girls for years. He was convicted and jailed by the State.

In 2002 and 2003, after the DiMarias had exhausted Marian DiMaria's trust fund of over $7 million, they deceived the Mellon Bank in Pennsylvania, a trustee of the adopted girls' trusts, into sending them $168,000 for fictitious expenses. Further investigation revealed that DiMaria had received and spent $96,000 from one adopted victim's trust, and had defrauded the Social Security Administration of approximately $13,000, after she learned that her husband had been sexually abusing the children.

Three children adopted a year before, had allegedly been abused and tortured by their adopters.

Nine teenagers and young adults were held like prisoners in Judith Leekin's home in what appeared to be a decades-long scheme to line her pockets with the government payments she received for adopting and raising them.

Three out of thirty-five children adopted by "father of the year" Kodzo Dobosu were sexually abused by him.

Former foster parents of the year Bessie and Mechelle Saffold, neglected and battered five children they adopted.

Liggins' children, ranging in age from 8 to 17, were discovered a month ago at the Nigerian orphanage by an American missionary. The children, some of them suffering from typhoid and malaria, told the missionary they were from Houston and wanted to go home. The church's pastor told two U.S. congressmen and arrangements were made to return them to Texas.

Liggins said her only mistake was trusting her brother-in-law to care for the children in Nigeria. The relative took money she sent for the kids' benefit, causing the children to be kicked out of their boarding school and put in the squalid orphanage, she said.

The children initially were taken to Nigeria in October so she could take a job in Iraq, working for Houston-based Hallilburton subsidiary KBR.

11 children adopted by Michel and Sharen Gravelle were found to be kept in cages.

20 children adopted by Gainesville, Fl woman were beaten with sticks, pipes, belts, extension cords and paddles during more than 10 years of abuse.

In 2004, the Kelleys were accused of burning, beating, and slapping their five adopted children, 10 to 15 years old. Later investigation cast doubt on whether the evidence would hold up in court, according to prosecutors. In January 2007, Superior Court Judge Mike Wolverton accepted no-contest pleas to greatly reduced charges and released the Kelleys, who had served about 17 months in jail.

George and Shirley Long were accused of standing by while their adopted grandchildren were abused for years.

George Long, the adoptive grandfather, is found guilty of chaining his 10-year-old adopted grandson to a dog run.

Two boys and a girl, all 9 or 10 years old, were sexually abused by their adoptive father.

Four children between 3 and 9 being beaten with boards, locked in a basement without food and doused with cold water as punishment.

A 6 year old girl and an 8 year old boy were deprived food and water, which resulted in severe malnourishment.

Scott Francis, a 41-year-old Northville, MI man, lived with his two adopted children despite a plea agreement that was supposed to stop him from having unsupervised contact with any child, after his previous conviction on two offenses of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

The registered sex offender was convicted of violating probation, and also was charged with new counts of sexual assault involving an adopted son. A judge's written order had failed to mention the plea agreement that forbade contact with any child, and a probation officer also admitted to failing to enforce the deal.

A 12 year-old boy and a 13 year-old girl, the adopted children of Shelley Blair, were found wandering a busy road. The children were bruised and malnourished. Shelley Blair is now under investigation.

In 2003, Blair pleaded guilty to three counts of child abuse.