A look at the kids offered on a Yahoo group
- 8 year old California girl
- Boy adopted by Glenna Mueller
- Children sent to Nicole and Calvin Eason
- Despite ‘grave danger,’ government allows Internet forums to go unchecked
- Inga Whatcott
- Nita Dittenber (Nita Durand)
- Orphaned in Russia, brought to America, and then abandoned time and again
- Q&A: addressing abuses in private re-homings
- Quita Puchalla (Quita Davis)
- The Child Exchange: Inside America's Underground Market for Adopted Children
By Ryan McNeill, Robin Respaut and Megan Twohey
9-9-2013
[Inset to part 1 of a 5 article series here The Child Exchange: Inside America's Underground Market for Adopted Children ]
Created in September 2007, a Yahoo group called Adopting-from-Disruption was a place where struggling parents sought support from one another.
Some also used the group as a clearinghouse for unwanted children.
For an investigation into how parents use the Internet to offload adopted children, Reuters analyzed more than 5,000 messages posted on the forum over a five-year period, September 2007 to September 2012. During that time, the group was one of the most accessible Internet forums for adoptive parents seeking new homes for their children.
After Reuters shared its findings with Yahoo, the company acted quickly to shut down the group. Reuters identified more than 500 members who particpated at least once during the five-year time period. Just before it was closed, it had 184 members.
The information gleaned from posts on the group leaves some questions unanswered. Some advertisements for children contained limited information – for example, the age or sex of the child is missing. That means Reuters may have accounted for some children more than once.
Even so, the information in the posts provides a clear indication of the expanse of the Internet child exchange and many particulars about the children offered on it.
