The Dark Side of International Adoption  – UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog (2024)

Adopting a child from a country foreigndifferentfrom your own is a complicated and controversial practice. If done correctly, you have saved a parentless child from a life of probable poverty and despair. If done incorrectly, you have either aidedorganizations who coerce parents into giving their children up or even facilitated child abuse,if the individual institution is unethically managed. Even if the adoption is conducted using appropriate channels and oversight, the adopting families are not always wellintentioned.

International adoption peaked in 2004 and has been declining ever since, in part because of increasing restrictions fueled by incidents of violence.The problems that surround international adoption are complex and deeply intertwined with a variety of factors.Race, gender, religion, culture, sexuality, and global inequality together form the sticky, problematic web of international adoption.

“Orphan Fever”

At the peak of international adoption in the United Statesnearly fifteen years ago, much of the hype was driven by religious organizations. Adoption became a primary social welfare issue in the early 2000s after American Evangelicals began to champion the issue. This is not to be taken as an explicitly negative phenomenon; some religious organizations are instrumental in protecting human rights violations for international orphans. Many individuals who adopted in the name of their religion have vibrant, happily integrated families. However, religiositydoesprovides a cover of moral legitimacy that often discourages scrutiny of organizations or individuals.

Adoption agenciesare not legally requiredto be accredited, and many faith-based agencies are not. Only303organizations are accredited per international standards of the roughly3,000agencies that perform adoption services in the United States. Central to this issue is the white-savior industrial complex, a term coined by notable author and activist TejuCole. Cole explains that white people (often Americans) tend to view less developed regions but most specifically Africa as “a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism.” Families sometimes adopt international children with perverse motivations of piety and applause. Children arestripped of their culture and forced to adapt to Western norms overnight, and face dire consequences when they cannot conform. Individualshave relayedbeing severely disciplined for hesitating to eat unfamiliar foods, not adapting to American norms for eye contact quickly enough, and for speaking their own languages. This is a direct violation ofthe human right to culture.Internationally adoptedchildrenhavetheright tofullyexperience theirbirthculturefor the sake of human dignity and the preservation of that child’s identity.

AdoptionFacts and Flaws

The majority of international adoptees (71%) in the United States from the last twenty years have come from one of five countries: China, Russia, Guatemala, South Korea, or Ethiopia. All five of these countries have increased restrictions on foreign adoption, accounting for 88% of the decline since 2004 (Source: Pew Research Center). The restrictions come on the heels of majorly publicized cases of abuse and/or deaths of international adoptees.

Abuse and deaths in intercountry adoptive families are common. Numerous appalling incidents involving the misfortune of adopted children have circulated in the media in the past few years. International adoption is a tricky subject.Exploitation can occur on a number of levels, as the adoption process includes a variety of actors. The adopting families, the adoption agency, and the source institution can all be separately complicit in unethical behavior.To amplify corruption, there is little to no legislation to identify or prosecute exploitation on any level.“Sending countries” or the countries which children are most frequently adopted from,have had to become increasingly strict on foreign adoption policies.This isone ofthemost criticalissues–thesending countries, who are most often relatively disadvantaged compared to receiving countries,carrythe burden to makemajorpolicy reformin order to protect their children from exploitation. International policy on intercountry adoption is scarce, vague, and oftenunenforced.

Policy Issues

While the international adoption system contains many flaws,themost identifiable fundamental issueislack of oversightand policy.Adoptions are most often conducted through private, individual agencies who each have different standards of what the adoption process should look like.These private agencies operate without much restriction placed on their activity. It seems unacceptable to permit adoption to occur through non-accredited agencies, yet that is the current norm. Lack of accreditation creates a wider pathway for unethical behavior. The market for adopting children is huge and incredibly lucrative, as it is full of wealthy potential adoptivefamilies. The desperation for many families to find and adopt a child can often generate more demand than the current supply of available children can sustain; this eventually leads to gaps in supply being filled by non-orphaned children who were either stolen, coerced through misinformation, or otherwise manipulated into leaving their families.

Internationally-Adopted Victims of Child Abuse

One of the most recentand infamouscases was that ofSherinMathews, a three year old girl from India whohad developmental disabilities.Sherindied in October of last year from allegedly choking on milk that she was being forced to drink, though her adoptive father has made various claims about the circ*mstances of her death. The three year old was missing for a period of time but was found in a culvert. The international community was in an uproar after this crime came to light, and Indiaquickly adopted legislationto reduce foreign adoption.

Ethiopiamade similar measureslast month following similar stories of abuse, though this act still surprised many, as the country has been well known for their high frequency of international adoption.Ethiopian adopteeHana Williamsdied at age thirteen from exposure after being forced to stay outside for hours as punishment.Hana was adopted byCarriand LarryWilliamsin 2008, but was quickly subjected to torturous conditionsafterCarribecame dissatisfied with Hana’s maturity.Carrireportedly said,“Iexpected to adopt a little girl, not a half-grown woman,” as Hana began to menstruate shortly after arriving in the United States. The Williamsesforced Hana to stay in a closet for upwards of ten hours at a time and required Hana to use an outdoorportable toilet, while the Williamses’biological childrenwere never subject to such misery.The night that Hana died, the entire Williams family spectavted andallegedlylaughed as shestaggered aroundnakedfor several hoursin thecold, rainybackyard.

Two victimswho survived their abuse are Guatemalan adoptee Carolina and Russian-born Leonid, who together endured years of physical and psychological torture from Kathleen and Martin O’Brian. TheO’Brianswere originally charged in 2012 of abusing their adopted children, includingallegations of“locking them in a room with nobathroom, forcing them to kneel naked on sharp rocks and stand in a feces covered dog pen, and withholding food from them.” Both Carolina and Leonid have been happily adopted by different families after both Kathleen and Martin were found guilty, but will likely always retain the emotional and physical scars from the hellish O’Brian family. Russia banned foreign adoption the same year that theO’Brianswere charged, asnineteenRussian children have died at the hands of foreign adoptive parents in the past twenty years. Stories of child abuse inflicted upon international adoptees are depressingly frequent. It is imperative to identify which flaws in the system are to blame for these horrible crimes, and how change can be enacted to prevent future suffering.

Re-Homing

Despite the seemingly endless desperation to adopt,it issurprisingly easy to exchange children online with no legal intervention or monetary exchange. Re-homing communities exist in niches of the Internet, where families with adopted children post advertisem*nts to give their “troublesome” children away.Reutersgave a detailed investigation of this practice in 2013, recounting several personal narratives of individuals who have either taken part in rehoming children, been re-homed themselves, or otherwise interacted with the re-homing community. Laws vary by state and have become more common since Reuter’s report incited brief public interest, but many states still only require the signature of a legal guardian to transfer custody to another adult. The exchange can occur privately without notifying any government officials, which creates a dangerous avenue for predators to easily obtain vulnerable children from desperate parents. Within Reuter’s report,multiple detailed accountswere given of children who were re-homed with individuals with documented pasts of abusing children physically, sexually, and emotionally. This occurred because the original adoptive parents did not thoroughly vet the family who was taking their child, a common experience among re-homing communities. One motherstatedof her twelve year old adopted daughter, “I would have given her away to a serial killer, I was so desperate.”

Re-homing perseveres despite ethical quandaries due to the imminent need for post-adoption support for adoptive parents. Most agencies provide little to no support after the adoption process has been finalized, despite the difficulties that many families have in acclimating to the change. Reuters found that70%of the children being re-homed were of international origin, and many of those children had behavioral problems indicative of some form of trauma or disability.

The Path Ahead: Hope and Reform

The dark side of international adoption is one shrouded in mystery and corruption. Vulnerable children all over the world are being victimized on all levels within the process of adoption. Abuse can occur at the hands of adoptive parents, in re-homing families, by private non-accredited agencies, and within local orphanages. Considering that these children are already incredibly vulnerable (as many are already impacted by compound discrimination of race, disability, and class), this systematic abuse is particularly heinous. The United Nations’Convention on the Rights of the Childfully secures and protects all human rights of children, and specificallyrequires that“the system of adoption shall ensure that the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”Shockingly, theUnited States is the onlyUNmember nation who has not yet ratified the CRC.This is a blatant failure to protectthemost vulnerable members of our population.America cannot remaincomplicit in such an exploitative system;it istrulyreprehensible thatour country is soheavily engagedinthe adoption ofvulnerable foreign children yet refuses to protect them.This is a failure for the global community as well —international communityhas accepted a flawed adoption system for far too long.Both domesticand internationalpolicy reformareessential to preserving and promoting the human rights and dignity of children.