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Kerry and Niels' blog

by Kerry and Niels on Thursday, 04 March 2010

For some, Paradise is a long lost garden, bound to a time when Man and God walked together. For others, Paradise is the promise of an idyllic afterlife. For Lydia Schatz, Paradise was a hell hole in the northern foothills of California's Central Valley.

Lydia Schatz was one of three children adopted from Liberia in 2007, by Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz. Lydia Schatz is no more. On February 6 of this year, Lydia died on her way to a hospital. She had been beaten for hours with a length of plastic tubing, for the mispronunciation of the word “pulled”, during one of the children's homeschooling sessions.

Lydia's sister, Zacharia received similar beatings that same day. Lucky for her, she made it to the hospital alive, and survived the torture her adoptive parents administered.

The abuse of adopted children is not an uncommon phenomenon. Over the years, hundreds of cases have made the news. It is very likely many other abuse after adoption cases never became public.

by Kerry and Niels on Tuesday, 02 March 2010

Over the years we have posted extensively about abuse in adoptive families, and within our archives collected information about many different abuse cases. Abuse in adoptive families comes in many shapes and forms, ranging from neglect to deprivation, sexual abuse, exploitation and physical abuse.

When looking at the physical abuse cases, there seem to be two patterns that often emerge. Children, especially babies, beaten or shaken violently, and cases related to so-called "discipline".

Just two weeks ago, the California town of Paradise, was shocked by the abuse taking place in their community, when Lydia Schatz was "disciplined" to death by her adoptive parents for the mispronunciation of the word "pulled".

Outrageous as it may sound, this is not the only case where a child received cruel and unusual punishment over mispronunciation. In 1988, 5-year-old mentally delayed Abert Smith was beaten to death by his foster mother for not saying his prayers correctly. And in 2006, Jane Cochran tortured her 4-year-old adopted son to death, again for incorrectly saying his prayers.

So far most cases of absurd discipline we were able to find related to devout Christian adoptive and foster families, but an excerpt in the complaint of Boe v. Christian World Adoption, shows not only adoptive families sometimes engage in ridiculous forms of "discipline", but adoption agencies sometimes do the same.

by Kerry and Niels on Thursday, 14 January 2010

Since the ratification of the

Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption

on April 1, 2008, and the closure of Guatemala, around that same time, inter-country adoption has changed the inter-country adoption landscape significantly.

Since April 1, 2008 the following adoption agencies have gone out of business:

by Kerry and Niels on Monday, 11 January 2010

December 31, 2009 the litigation team in Masha Allen's case against the agencies involved in her adoption by Matthew Mancuso, filed a Motion for Leave to File Amended Complaint. This motion for the first time makes direct allegations against Adagio Health, a health care provider in Pennsylvania, which also performs adoption services. Currently

Adagio Health

, which at the time of Masha's adoption went under the name 

Family Health Council, inc.
by Kerry and Niels on Wednesday, 30 December 2009

Over the last two years we have written extensively about the case of Masha Allen, culminating in the article The untold story of Masha Allen, which attempts to explain the circumstances of both Masha's adoption by Matthew Mancuso and her adoption by Faith Allen.

Today a new development emerged when this document was filed with the district court of New Jersey. The document is filed in a case against the agencies responsible for the placement of Masha with Matthew Mancuso, and asks the court to amend the pleadings to reflect a new representative party Plaintive, Timothy J. Sloan.

The reason for this change in representation is the fact that Faith Allen's parental rights and duties have forever been terminated in the Court of common please of Cambria County, Pennsylvania orphans court division, as of December 3, 2009.

The document filed today makes the following statement:

by Kerry and Niels on Tuesday, 29 December 2009

As of September 2009, the U.S. State Department recognizes 232 adoption agencies, accredited under the Hague convention. All of these agencies are allowed to participate in inter-country adoption with other Hague countries.

Some of these 232 agencies are not directly involved in foreign countries at all.  Instead, some mainly focus on doing home studies and facilitate the placement of children through other, often out of state, adoption agencies that do have foreign programs. This type of agency doesn't list any adoption programs on its website because it usually cooperates with any adoption agency prospective adopters choose to work with.

There are some other agencies that don't really work abroad themselves but do list various country programs. In these situations, the agency obtains children through another adoption agency with whom they have a contractual agreement.

Most adoption agencies, however, run some foreign programs themselves, while cooperating with other, often out-of state, agencies for the remainder of their programs.

by Kerry and Niels on Wednesday, 23 December 2009

This week the U.S. State Department presented the figures of intercountry adoption for FY 2009, and for the fifth year in a row the numbers have dropped.

Here are the total number of inter-county adoptions for the last 6 years:

2004:

22,990

by Kerry and Niels on Sunday, 20 December 2009

For years adoption advocates and adoption agencies have used the claim that there are 143 million orphans in the world, based upon an estimate made by Unicef, to further the agenda of inter-country adoption.

Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS). a trade association of adoption service providers, claims:

Deprived of a basic of human right, these unknown children are denied the nurturing needed to thrive as children and later as members of our global society

.

by Kerry and Niels on Saturday, 19 December 2009

In September we published the untold story of Masha Allen, an attempt to make sense out of all information published about Masha, well knowing there will never be a definitive story.

Until now, very little was known about Masha's Russian history. The Wikipedia page about Masha, which was removed two years ago, made the following statement:

Allen was born in 1992 in Novoshakhtinsk, a small town near Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Her biological father left her mother to raise her on her own. The woman was an alcoholic and stabbed Allen in the neck at the age of three, forcing police to remove her from the house and put her in the local orphanage.

Her mother visited occasionally, and told Allen she would be able to return home soon, but eventually Allen was told she would instead be among a group of children to be adopted by American families. She was hopeful that her life would improve, although slightly disappointed that she would have only a father (Mancuso was a single man).

The Wikipedia article is a pretty good summary of what had been written in the various news paper articles, although some media outlets placed the alleged stabbing at age three, others at age four and some even at age five.

Apparently none of that is true.

by Kerry and Niels on Friday, 18 December 2009

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported the State Department released the international adoption figures for fiscal year 2009. The reported numbers are no surprise, more than a month a ago, we already published the preliminary numbers, and the figure presented now are nearly identical.

Not surprising, but none the less distressing, is the enormous growth of Ethiopian adoptions. In 2000, the number of children adopted from Ethiopia was 95, while this year it has sky rocketed to 2277. With this sort of exponential growth, Ethiopia is following in the foot steps of Romania and Guatemala.

Most interesting about the Associated Press article are the responses of Chuck Johnson and Tom DiFilipo.

Chuck Johnson. chief operating officer of the special interest group National Council for Adoption (NCFA), which represents several of the largest christian adoption agencies, made the following statement: