Abuse after child placement, an update

It's been less than a week ago that I wrote in my blog post Masha Allen Betrayed Again: "

I know of at least 77 cases that eventually made the news and that's only a tip of the iceberg

Since writing that post I've been spending a lot of time on our abuse cases list. For quite some time it had bugged me we had only a few articles about Masha Allen, knowing their was much more out there. When I first started working on the list, hers was the first case I added, but knowing how much there was still to come, I only added a few of the key articles, knowing I would get back to it one day. That day was last week and now I feel the article archive we have on her case is as complete as possible.

Encouraged by the help I got from Kimette, I've been spending more time on the list than ever before and eventually we were able to find 108 cases. That doesn't mean we have everything covered that is published on the internet. It just means I am going to take a short break from it after I finished this post. It's not good for my mental health to work too hard on this stuff. It's heart breaking material and after several days I get really sick of it.

The last three months a lot cases have been in the news:

Half of these 28 cases relate to charges made against abusive adopters, the other half relate to trials having taken place during the last 3 months. Even though I have been closely involved in collecting all the articles, I was astound by the sheer number of it all.

28 cases in just 3 months!!!!

Is their still someone out there who can seriously say, these are exceptions?

The eternal question that surrounds these cases remains of course, why do people do this? I don't have an answer to this, though having waded through all the articles I believe there are certain patterns:

On the most devious end of the spectrum we can find people like Matthew Mancuso (Masha Allen's adopter), William Peckenpaugh, John Krueger and Vladimir Karpov, all four single men who deliberately adopted children to take sexual advantage of them.

Though I only could find one article about the case, it seems the deeds done to Shawn Lowrance (Andy Mohler) are equally viscious. He died in a "drowning accident", after being adopted only a year before. Five days after his death his adoptive mother attempted to cash out one of the life insurance policies with a value of $650,000.

Then there is of course the case of Judith Leeking, who adopted 11 children to cash in on support money and maltreated these kids terribly. This is not an isolated incident, there are also the cases of James and Stephanie Dickinson and that of Shirley Allen.

There is also a group of predominantly men who didn't necessarily adopt to sexually abuse their adopted children, but did it anyway. John Bryan, Gerald Dale Snapp, Ellery James assisted by wife Krisi, David Charles Gilmore. I guess fitting in this category is the case of Earl Kimmerling, who first successfully contested the adoption of a girl by a gay couple, after which he adopted her and was found out to have abused her sexually.

Less devious in intent, but none the less cruel in their actions, is a large group of parents with torture-like discipline practices. Most of them are strongly religious and often practice home schooling. The Gravelle case was particularly present in the news, but there are also the cases of Brian Edgar, Bruce, Michael, Tyrone and Keith Jackson, that of the Charles and Marjorie Moss, James and Vonda Ferguson, John and Linda Dollar. Nellie Jasper Johnson, Roberto and Shirley Acosta and the list goes on and on...

Another category of cases, which sometimes overlaps with the previous are the Attachment Therapy victims, such as Andrea Swenson, Candace Newmaker, Cassandra Killpack, Lucas Ciambrone, Krystal Ann Tibbets and David Polreis.

Another large category are the parents who snap and hit, shake or drop (mostly infants). Luke Evans, Maria Bennett, Tyler Vanpopering, Emma Alvey, Kaitlyn Brosch, Alex Pavlis. All these children had the tragic misfortune of being adopted by people who didn't have the temperament to deal with their special needs.

So what is being done to avoid this?

As far as I can tell, nothing. No measures have been taken as a response to any of these cases. Child placement professionals either keep silent and when really pressed to speak out hasten to mention the cases in which adoption works out well.

If 108 children got hurt or killed by a dangerous toy or a malfunctioning car-seat, that product is taken off the market and charges are pressed against the manufacturer, even if that product has been sold by the million. For tangible goods the look at the bright side motto doesn't apply, so why does it for the business of child placement?

It is pretty clear child placement professionals don't want to know. There is no research being done. There are no statistics about abuse in adoptive families. In fact the sweeping statements I made above in a quick and dirty categorization of the cases is probably the best research done in the 30 years, which I don't say to pride myself.

Last year I contacted Prof. Brodzinski about this issue. Unfortunately I can't find back the email he sent in response, but he told me more or less that no-one would be interested in such research. I found that response rather dismissive, to be honest.

In the past there must have been research done in this area, because in a 1971 paper called

Paediatric Implications of the Battered Baby Syndrome

, C. Henry Kempe makes the following remark:

Adoption is a middle and upper class phenomenon and, predictably, few adopted babies show up among studies limited to the poor, but among our group of well-off patients there is a higher than expected incidence

And in the research after adoption disruption as reported by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in

What’s Working for Children:
A Policy Study of Adoption Stability and Termination

the following two statements are made:

Echoing other studies, Howard and Smith (2001) found that children adopted by relatives have fewer factors predictive of termination risk than children adopted by foster or matched parents, including fewer behavior problems, less moves in care, and lower incidence of physical and sexual abuse.

and

McRoy (1999) connects parents’ own history of abuse with their abuse of an adopted or foster child and subsequent termination. In her sample of 40 intact adoptions and 40 disrupted/dissolved adoptions, 15 cases involved child-abuse allegations, 13 of which dissolved/disrupted. Of the 24 adoptive parents who reported being abused (sexual, physical, spousal, etc.) themselves, 9 (37.5%) subsequently abused their adopted or foster children.219 McRoy noted that “this group of abusive adoptive families was not well-investigated prior to placement."

The report doesn't go into much detail, which doesn't surprise me given Prof. Brodzinski's, in my eyes, dismissive response to my questions and Adam Pertman's constant refusal to take this issue seriously. After all their work for the Adoption Institute is being paid by the adoption industry, which has no interest in bad publicity.

One final note, before I'm going the end this post. So far I've only talked about children that have been abused by their adopters, while there is a significantly larger group of placed out children that are being abuse: the children in foster care. A quick estimate tells me there are at least 10 times as many abuse cases in foster care than in adoptive families. One of the reasons I haven't started to document that. I've got my hands full documenting the adoption cases. I wish I had ten pairs of hands extra and at least 30 additional heads to get that work done. The news need to get out that far too many children are not safe within the child placement system and those responsible for that system should be confronted with the mess that is being made.

by Niels on Tuesday, 24 June 2008

Topics: abused adoptees