Emma Epperly, The Spokesman-Review

Sep. 29—A 29-year-old man agreed to testify about the mysterious final days of 8-year-old Meela Miller's life when he pleaded guilty to his involvement in her death Friday.

Aleksandr Kurmoyarov pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, second-degree assault and three counts of unlawful imprisonment.

Mandie Miller, Meela's mother, and Kurmoyarov were arrested late last year in South Dakota after they transported the little girl's body from Airway Heights to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation where, according to court documents, they intended to bury her.

Biologically, Meela is Miller's niece, but the 33-year-old adopted her and raised her as her own.

Jupiter police charged the couple with aggravated child abuse after alleging they made one of their children live in an 8-foot box in their garage.

JULIUS WHIGHAM II   Palm Beach Post

WEST PALM BEACH — Jury selection for the trial of a Jupiter man accused of confining his adopted teenage child in a box-like structure in the family's garage began today at the Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach.

Timothy Ferriter, 48, faces one count each of aggravated child abuse and false imprisonment following his February 2022 arrest. On Thursday, the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office said it was filing an additional charge of child neglect. Ferriter pleaded not guilty to the new charge Friday and previously pleaded not guilty to the other charges.

Opening arguments are expected to take place Tuesday, with testimony running through much of the week.

Amid allegations of a corrupt adoption system in Seoul that falsified children’s records, those sent to Denmark as youngsters are desperate to find out their real stories

In the summer of 2022, Sussie Pflug Brynald, a Danish citizen, walked through the doors of Holt Children’s Services in Seoul, South Korea, looking for answers about her past. The agency had handled her adoption 49 years earlier when she was, according to Holt, a Korean orphan.

Brynald had brought with her a bottle of Danish liqueur and souvenir shot glasses adorned with Vikings and Danish flags. She had been told that bringing presents to the adoption agency might help her get some of those answers.

Brynald remembers being struck by how cold the Holt offices seemed, from the clinical interior of the building to the manner of the case worker sitting across from her. “I just felt like he was speaking to me the same way he would have spoken to the hundreds of others he’d encountered. It felt mechanical: ‘I’m sorry. Sorry. No information.’ That was all he said.”

On that day in July, Brynald didn’t know what she knows now: that the little information Holt Children’s Services had been able to provide about her before her adoption – that she was an orphan, found in the street by a stranger – was most likely false. However, she had a strong feeling, she recalls: “There was no credibility to what he was saying. At all.”

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances today co-hosted an event at the Palais des Nations in Geneva to mark the first anniversary of the joint statement on illegal intercountry adoptions.  Speakers discussed the content and objectives of the joint statement, highlighted its importance for victims and identified future actions to promote its implementation. 

Olivier de Frouville, Chair of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, said that the purpose of the joint event was to consider how to implement the joint statement and how to ensure that victims’ rights were protected.  Mr. de Frouville stressed the importance of listening to the voices of victims, who went through great personal stress to tell their stories.     

Mr. de Freuville said there was a rising tide of people adopted during the 1970s and later who were now looking for their relatives.  States needed to respect human rights conventions and instruments, and the joint statement constituted a practical guide in that regard.  The treaty body system offered several procedures that could be triggered to help persuade States to implement effective measures.  In closing, Mr. de Freuville said the practice of illegal intercountry adoptions was a multilateral and a societal issue, and needed to be treated accordingly. 

The joint event was co-hosted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child; the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Guarantees of Non-recurrence; the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children including child prostitution, child pornography, and other child sexual abuse material; the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, especially women and children; and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. 

During the session, two panel discussions were held, the first presenting testimonies of victims and States’ experiences, and the second discussing the relevance of the joint statement.  In addition to the co-hosts, representatives of the Governments of France and Ukraine, civil society organisations and persons affected by illegal intercountry adoptions participated in the panels.

• More than 170,000 South Korean children were adopted by Western families in the turbulent post-war period – nearly 9,000 a year at times in the 1980s
• Many were labelled orphans, despite their birth parents still being alive, and say their documents were falsified, making them question their identity

Aleksander Solum

It was late spring and Uma Feed had just dropped her son off at a kindergarten in Oslo when her phone rang unexpectedly, bringing news she’d been searching for her whole life: the true identities of her birth parents.

Adopted as a baby from South Korea in 1983, Feed grew up in Norway being told she’d been abandoned – a story she refused to believe but could only disprove in May this year, when at age 40 she was finally reconnected with her biological mother thanks to DNA testing.

A long letter and video message followed, revealing that Um Sul-yung – the name given on Feed’s adoption documents – was actually given up for adoption by her grandparents without the consent of her mother, who was hospitalised with tuberculosis at the time.

Woman from Pleasant View gets 32 years; child may never recover from injuries

By Colette Czarnecki

Garland Malcolm was sentenced Monday to the maximum term of 32 years in prison for the abuse of her adopted 6-year-old son that resulted in severe head and bodily injuries in January 2022.

“Today, the child injured in this incident received some small amount of justice,” said prosecutor Jeremy Reed, adding that the boy “will never recover from his injuries, and will never regain the life he had.”

“The sentence imposed by the court was appropriate to the crime committed, and justice was served,” Reed said.

Jose and Gina Centeno are accused of adopting two girls and a boy in 2007 for financial gain. Prosecutors say the children endured years of torture and one of them disappeared in 2012.|

COLIN ATAGI

A judge on Wednesday upheld most of the charges leveled against a Rohnert Park couple accused of abusing children authorities say they adopted in order to secure financial assistance from the state.

During a brief hearing in Sonoma County Superior Court in Santa Rosa, Judge Robert LaForge addressed motions for dismissal filed June 13 by attorneys for Jose and Gina Centeno, who will return to court Sept. 8 to schedule a trial.

LaForge dismissed one count of forcible lewd act upon a child under the age of 14, which was filed against Jose Centeno. The judge cited uncertainty about the victim’s age when the alleged crime occurred.

by Laila Freeman 

TAOS, N.M. (KRQE) – Taos woman will spend nine years in prison after being sentenced on child abuse charges.

Stephanie Valdez was first charged with abusing two of her adopted children back in 2021.

The criminal complaint says one of the children ran to a neighbor’s house on Christmas Day in 2020 and told them he was tired of standing in the cold while only wearing a trash bag.

The boy told police about numerous accounts of abuse, including being forced to use the bathroom in a pickle jar and drinking water from the toilet.

By Liam Easley

A 42-year-old woman was sentenced to 9 years in prison by a Taos County judge on Thursday (Aug. 3) for her part in the physical and mental abuse of her two adopted children.

Stephanie Valdez, 42, was convicted on charges of second-degree child abuse, along with eight additional third-degree counts of child abuse.

Valdez was accused of continued abuse of two of her adopted children, identified only as siblings John Doe and Jane Doe. According to a statement written by Jane Doe and presented to the court on Thursday, the two children were subjected to various forms of punishment and harassment by both their adoptive parents. She said John Doe was locked in his room for the most part, without a mattress and clothes, with only a pickle jar in which to relieve himself. His room even had an alarm system installed, the boy's sister said, so he couldn’t leave lest it sound.

According to the statement, the siblings were punished in various ways, but a core narrative in the case took place on Christmas Day. Jane Doe noted that they were punished for eating sweets. After being caught, the siblings were beaten; John had a pot of coffee spilled over him before being tossed into a garbage can.

One of Hayim Cohen’s 9 adopted sons, Avshalom, charged with sexual assault of his brother, and human smuggling, amid fallout from high-profile scandal in Houston

By LUKE TRESS

A man in Texas has been charged with sexual assault and human smuggling, months after his father, who posed as a Hasidic Jew with a “unique family” of nine adopted sons, was arrested for a slew of sex crimes.

Hayim Nissim Cohen, 39, fabricated his Jewish background and used the fake persona to help him adopt nine boys. He paraded the family on social media and in the news, receiving glowing coverage from Jewish and mainstream US media outlets.

Behind the sunny facade, however, he allegedly sexually abused some of his own adopted sons and a foreign exchange student who stayed with the family.