Cases

  

Adam was last seen in 1999 at age 11 or 12. His adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman, did not report him missing for 10 years and continued to collect adoption subsidy payments until he would have turned 18. The Herrmans told their family that Adam had returned to state custody. They are telling the police that they think he ran away. Adam was adopted when he was 2 yrs old. Valerie Herrman allegedly mentally and physically abused the boy: punching, hair-pulling, spanking with a wooden spoon or belt, refusing to feed him, and making him sleep in the bathtub without a pillow or blankets. CPS investigated several times. The sheriff is investigating the case as a death. (Left age 11, middle photo is an age progression, right 2 years)

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.

Logan Higginbotham of Shelburne, Vermont died of massive head injuries. Adoptive mother Laura Higginbotham, stated that Logan fell and hit her head on the floor of an upstairs bedroom. It took 3 years for the medical examiner to determine whether the case was accidental or homicide. In 2004, Laura Higginbotham pled no contest to a charge of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 1 year in prison.  Logan was adopted from Smolensk, Russia  in May 1998 and had been in the US for 7 months. Logan's younger sister Layne was adopted at the same time.

    
Lakshmi placed her daughters temporarily in an orphanage so they could get and education. The girls names and ages were changed and they were adopted by a US family.

     
In Oct 1997, Inga was adopted by Neal and Priscilla Whatcott at age 12 from St. Petersburg, Russia. She was adopted out of birth order; becoming the oldest in the family that included 1 bio child and 2 adopted from China and Taiwan as infants.
Inga had previously been placed with two Russian families who returned her to the orphanage. Once home, she displayed increasingly violent behavior and less than a year post adoption, she was moved to a family in Maryland. That family asked to have her removed from their care and she was moved to two different families in Michigan before finally being placed in a psychiatric facility in Michigan. She was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, major depression disorder with psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder.  The Whatcott's were charged with child abandonment and Inga was then placed with three more foster families before being placed in an institution. In 2000 the Whatcott's dissolved the adoption of Inga. They were able to maintain contact with her after the dissolution.

John Gaul III was born in Thailand and adopted by a Florida family as a toddler in 1979. He grew up in Tampa, Florida, attending a private high school where he played soccer, baseball and basketball. The Gauls did not realize until they applied for their son’s passport at age seventeen that he was not a U.S. citizen. They immediately filed an application to naturalize him, but Gaul turned eighteen before the process was completed. At age nineteen he was convicted of writing bad checks and stealing a car, and he served 20 months in prison. By the time he completed his sentence in late 1996, the law had changed and he was not eligible to apply for discretionary relief from deportation. An immigration judge ruled that the agency had taken too long to process Gaul’s citizenship application, but that the 1996 law allowed him no discretion to halt Gaul’s deportation. Gaul was placed in immigration detention upon his release from prison, and was subsequently deported to Thailand, where he knew no one. Gaul is barred for life from returning to the United States.

Status: Deported

Berta, right front on Denis' lap.

6-year-old Roberta "Berta" Evers, sexually abused as a preschooler, adopted by Dennis and Sandy Evers, was restrained in her bed, covered with bruises, when found dead from choking on her own vomit. She was adopted after her 2 bio brothers were adopted by Evers.

After having fought a gay couple from adopting a girl, Earl Kimmerling was later found to have sexually molested her. Kimmerlings were the girls' foster parents who had 50 or more foster children before. Kimmerlings separated after the charges were filed, and the girl remains with Sandi Kimmerling. Kimmerlings attended Center of Faith Church (now Greenbriar Community Church) a pentacostal church.

14 year old girl adopted by Baptist minister Richard Cook and his wife Mary Cook was sexually abused by her adoptive father. There were 9 foster or adoptive children in the family who were originally from South Dakota and 1 bio child. More of the girls may have been abused. Cooks also used a wooden paddle to beat the children. Cooks  were missionaries in remote Ruby Alaska and the abuse was discovered after Cooks came to Fairbanks to get help for the girl who had attempted suicide.

Eight year old boy, adopted with his siblings Sharnea and Shamale, by Catherine Marie Hudson. Even before their adoption in 1996, when the three children were in Hudson's foster care abuse had been reported.

From April 18, 1996, through November 13, 1997, eleven different witnesses filed twenty-six child-abuse reports in writing to the Worcester County Department of Social Services (WCDSS) and to the state's attorney in Worcester County concerning the Hudson children. Reports were filed by schoolteachers, the school nurse, the school therapist, the vice principal, several teacher's aides, and a few summer program workers.

All reports were unsubstantiated except two, which "alleged that the previous foster parent and her son were responsible for injuries to the children" (even though the children had already been living with Hudson for two years)

In December 1996, WCDSS child protection staff met with the school staff "regarding the numerous reports of suspected abuse already filed with [the WCDSS] from the Buckingham Elementary School.

WCDSS officials told the school staff that they "were overreacting and that [the WCDSS] had seen worse."

The staff was intimidated by orders from the WCDSS not to send children to the nurse or counselor unless treatment was needed, "not to do extensive questioning or investigating," "not to question caseworkers as to when they are coming to the school," and "not to make follow-up calls to workers."

The WCDSS called the Board of Education, complaining that the school staff was harassing them. The school was "told that burns, cuts, bruises, and open wounds were not enough" to substantiate child abuse.

In January 1998, the WCDSS closed the case. On March 24, 1998, Shamir died "in the Hudson household, a sanctuary arranged, approved and supervised by the state, a place that produced no fewer than two dozen reports of suspected abuse in the past two years."