Good news for all concerned adopting Americans, looking to help less fortunate foreigners.... Amici dei Bambini (Italy) is going to help a growing number of very desperate people who want to be parents, and assist 'neglected and abandoned' children left to languish in horrific in-care conditions. 

Once in a while (not often) I like to have a piece within the Adult Aftermath group made public, so more people can read topic-matters posted/discussed.

This is one such piece.

After I posted my Adoption Myths, and Realities piece, I had contact with an adoptee working on her own film-project, 'Imaginary Mothers', (a project that is not yet completed), and I was pleased to see more and more adoptees born in other countries are doing what they can for the mothers left-behind in a foreign land.  [One does not have to belong to a larger formal organization like United Adoptees International, to mak

Last week the US Department of State released its annual report on inter-country adoption for fiscal year 2010.

In May, 2007, Today (MSNBC) featured a story about six common adoption myths and realities. The introduction paragraph reads:

I've been thinking about the many ways in which adoption gets sold to the public, and one of my favorite misleading paths adoption advocates like to take is the one that teaches newcomers adoption is an altruistic decision, made by people who really care about the lives of children.

While there are various formal social studies/essays written about the stigma of Adoptive Parent and Birth Mother status, I found an excellent blurb that explained, very clearly, why adoption is altruistic from an evolutionary perspective. 

This morning I checked recent posts on the PPL pages and found a very nice blog-piece written by a person claiming to offer free services to those who lost a family member in El Salvador.  Note, no private email or PM was sent to myself, Niels, or Admin, asking if advertisement for a service for victims can be posted in a blog.

The post, titled, "FREE INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES IN EL SALVADOR ON (MISSING CHILDREN OR FAMILY MEMBERS) IN EL SALVADOR ONLY" began:

Earlier I read an adoption-related article that began with the story of an adoptee who wanted to marry an older woman he loved...

 A new study, fresh from the Williams Institute at UCLA, is making headlines these days....

This week the Department of State put out the following question on their blog:

How can the international community best ensure that adoptions are transparent, and that the rights of adopted children, birth families, and adoptive families are protected?

It is good to see the Department of State is looking for input, though the assurances being looked for can only be appreciated when realizing adoption is a business and has been around for more than 100 years.

I would like this opportunity to post my story.

As foreplay to Adoption Awareness Month, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) held its annual Angels in Adoption Award gala, October 4. The Angels in Adoption Awards have become a formulaic adoption love-fest, praising an industry no politician dares to regulate, with the occasional celebrity to give the gala an aura of importance.

When Pound Pup Legacy started the Demons of Adoption Awards in 2007, it was very much a spur-of-the-moment action, triggered by the sugar coated news surrounding the Congressional Angels of Adoption Awards^TM. Over the last couple of years the Demons of Adoption Awards have grown into an anticipated annual event, followed by many in the adoption community, and a critical voice kicking off Adoption Awareness Month.

This year we want to add an even more sobering element to the start of the adoption love-fest, introducing Rohnor's Angels, honoring those children who died this year due to abuse in their forever family.

Over the years we have documented abuse in adoptive families and raised awareness for increased safety in placement procedures. Despite our efforts, every year several children die at the hands of their adopters and many more are physically or sexually abused. Rohnor's Angels is part of our ongoing effort to make the public more aware that, even when many outcomes appear to be good, adoption practices continue to be unsafe and reform is still needed to serve the best interest of children.

This year's edition of the Demons of Adoption awards drew unprecedented attention. Several bloggers raised awareness for the awards and helped by posting PPL links to their pages, encouraging readers to vote for their preferred Demon of Adoption. As a result we can proudly state that this year 70% more votes were cast than in any previous edition.

Readers of Pound Pup Legacy nominated 14 candidates, all "worthy" candidates to receive the Demons of Adoption Awards. A full month of polling showed a clear neck and neck race between two contestants: LDS Family Services and the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. The two nominees constantly remained within a few votes of one another, leaving all other nominees far behind.

On September 28, 1854. the New York Times ran an article with the title: Murder of an Adopted Child in New-Orleans, describing the abuse and subsequent death of Christian Rohnor, a two-year-old boy, adopted by a couple from New Orleans. Christian Rohnor was locked up in the attic, starved to the point of being completely emaciated, and eventually beaten to death by his adoptive father.

The story of Christian Rohnor is almost entirely forgotten and we may like to think those barbaric times are long gone. We may be compelled to think that in the 156 years that have passed since the death of Christian Rohnor, adoption standards have been raised to the point that such horrific abuse of an adopted child no longer takes place.

Christian Rohnor may have been the first documented case of lethal abuse in an adoptive family, his death was certainly not the last. To this day adoptees are abused and killed by members found in their new "forever family". Every year there are several cases of adopted children being tortured to death, shaken to death or disciplined to death. 156 years after the cruelties performed on Christian Rohnor, there are still adopters who choose not to love,  care for and protect their young additions, but instead, choose to lock up the children in their care, starve them, sexually abuse them and beat them to death.

In memory of Christian Rohnor, we honor the children who met their death due to abuse in adoptive families since Adoption Awareness Month 2009.

Rohnor's Angels 2010:

Colin David Jones: Killed,  Christmas Eve 2009, Loganville, Georgia
Lydia Schatz: Tortured to death, February 6, 2010, Paradise, California
Tristan Dosdall: Beaten to death, March 24, 2010, Peyton, Colorado
Collin Parker William Holdgrafer: Drowned, June 12, 2010, Andrew, Iowa
Kairissa XingJing Mark: Beaten to death, July 1, 2010, Mount Juliet, Tennessee
Larandon Nichols: Beaten to death, July 11, 2010, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

May these chosen adopted angels finally rest in peace.