TWO ADOPTIONS END IN RETURN TO SENDER
Unwanted Children / From Hungary to America, and Back by Peter S. Green, International Herald Tribune (8-11-98) http://www.iht.com
When they left the state children's home here in 1996, 7-year-old Gabor and 8-year-old Karoly were looking forward to a bright future as the newly adopted sons of two American couples in the wealthy suburbs of Connecticut.
In March, the boys, their names now officially Gabriel Petrosino and Jeremy Harper and their language now English, found themselves back in Hungary, delivered with little ado to the doorstep of Budapest' s main orphanage, each with two bags of clothing and toys, and a lifetime of emotional scars.
Their adoptive parents had simply had enough. They said the boys were children from hell, violent and emotionally disturbed. Unwilling and unable to fit in, they were destroying the lives of their adoptive families.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
Adoptions are not meant to be dissolved like mistaken marriages, and under a United Nations treaty protecting children, they cannot be. But legal loopholes in both Hungary and the United States, neither of which has signed the treaty, means that canceling the two boys' adoptions was no more difficult than an average divorce.
The two boys are now back in foster care, but Hungarian officials say the case has revealed the dark side of Hungary's adoption system, which does not properly prepare or screen prospective parents and which they suspect is riddled with bribery, corruption and even baby- selling schemes.
Two lawyers for the parents said that the parents spirited the boys back to Hungary and asked that their adoptions be annulled days before child welfare authorities in Connecticut were to remove one boy from his family. The lawyers said Gabor falsely accused his parents of abuse because he wanted to be sent back to Hungary.
But Hungarian officials said that returning the two, like a pair of faulty video games, was a cruel shock, and that new homes should have been found for them in America.
All that the parents said when they left the boys at the entrance to the Budapest children's home was ''bye,'' reported the parents' Hungarian lawyer, Istvan Fekete....
''Now, adoption seems to be a commercial transaction,'' said Maria Herczog, director of Hungary's National Institute of Family and Children. ''Parents can choose children and bring them home, and if they don' t like them they can bring them back.'' And that, Mrs. Herczog said, is devastating for the children. ''They have to learn for the second or third time that they are not wanted, '' she said. ''They learn they are not good enough for anyone, to be loved. And when they grow up, can you see what good fathers they will be?'' Hungarian authorities are waging a court battle against annulling Gabor and Karoly's adoptions, fearing a tide of unhappy foreign parents will simply return their problematic adoptive children. The parents' American lawyer, Sheri Paige, said the boys were so emotionally damaged before they reached Connecticut that their adoptive parents had to send them back or risk destroying their own families. Mrs. Paige said both boys suffer from ''attachment disorder,'' the effect of spending infancy without the emotional attachment to a mother.
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Thursday, May 20, 2010
WRONGFUL ADOPTION, WRONGFUL VICTIMS
WRONGFUL ADOPTION, WRONGFUL VICTIMS
contributed by Carrie, 5-18-03
jmb62959@yahoo.com
Please feel free to share my story and email address with anyone you feel is interested. I know someone at PrimeTime who is interested in doing a story if you know any families who would be willing to tell their stories on-air.
I am part of the ever-increasing number of adoptive families who have been lied to concerning their children's pasts, with those lies leading to the serious injury of members of the adoptive family.
In my case, my youngest adoptive son was brutally raped by an older adoptive son. This older son has been declared a serious threat to society by Illinois DCFS. He will be on their sex offender list for 50 years, which means it is illegal for him to be in contact with those he might victimize. Now DCFS, as per their usual policy, plan to remove him from the locked residential treatment facility where he is temporarily housed, and move him to a regular foster home. His current therapist says that this kid has made no progress and has a 100% chance of reoffending.
This policy is not limited to Illinois, but occurs regularly throughout the U.S. I am looking for families in similar situations who would be willing to share their stories. I have several newspapers and a national news program that are interested in helping to get this story out. Most people are afraid to speak out.
Yes, I do realize that my son who is now a sex offender is just as much a victim as the children he assaults. The point I want to make is that the chances of such a child becoming an offender is much higher if they themselves do not receive the treatment they need. When child welfare agencies refuse to acknowledge that sexual abuse of children even exists, usually due to monetary concerns, they are creating a new generation of offenders.
Unfortunately my son is now a violent, serial sex offender at the age of 14. I love my son, but I know he is dangerous. I am trying to do what I can to prevent other families from going through similar situations.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
contributed by Carrie, 5-18-03
jmb62959@yahoo.com
Please feel free to share my story and email address with anyone you feel is interested. I know someone at PrimeTime who is interested in doing a story if you know any families who would be willing to tell their stories on-air.
I am part of the ever-increasing number of adoptive families who have been lied to concerning their children's pasts, with those lies leading to the serious injury of members of the adoptive family.
In my case, my youngest adoptive son was brutally raped by an older adoptive son. This older son has been declared a serious threat to society by Illinois DCFS. He will be on their sex offender list for 50 years, which means it is illegal for him to be in contact with those he might victimize. Now DCFS, as per their usual policy, plan to remove him from the locked residential treatment facility where he is temporarily housed, and move him to a regular foster home. His current therapist says that this kid has made no progress and has a 100% chance of reoffending.
This policy is not limited to Illinois, but occurs regularly throughout the U.S. I am looking for families in similar situations who would be willing to share their stories. I have several newspapers and a national news program that are interested in helping to get this story out. Most people are afraid to speak out.
Yes, I do realize that my son who is now a sex offender is just as much a victim as the children he assaults. The point I want to make is that the chances of such a child becoming an offender is much higher if they themselves do not receive the treatment they need. When child welfare agencies refuse to acknowledge that sexual abuse of children even exists, usually due to monetary concerns, they are creating a new generation of offenders.
Unfortunately my son is now a violent, serial sex offender at the age of 14. I love my son, but I know he is dangerous. I am trying to do what I can to prevent other families from going through similar situations.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
CT ADOPTER CLAIMS "WRONGFUL ADOPTION"
CT ADOPTER CLAIMS "WRONGFUL ADOPTION" by J. Block-Gianini
(Adopters in CT and Nationwide Can Add Their Comments at Abolish Adoption! petition page)
I adopted a boy from Connecticut DCYF. After destroying my home and my life, I could take no more and made the state take him back. They tried to charge me with neglect. They couldn't prove it though. I did pay a lawyer a lot of money to not go along with their bullying tactics. This boy told a state social worker he was homicidal and until she asked him 4 or five times if he was sure he was homicidal he said he didn't think so. I of course had him leave my home. My sister, a third year law student, discovered recently that he was on Risperdal; they said it was for PTSD...It is for schizophrenia, and I now realize that is what he has definitely. I am looking for any people that are in Connecticut with these tort claims as I am going to pursue a case against the state of CT for "wrongful adoption." -- Joanna Block Gianini
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
(Adopters in CT and Nationwide Can Add Their Comments at Abolish Adoption! petition page)
I adopted a boy from Connecticut DCYF. After destroying my home and my life, I could take no more and made the state take him back. They tried to charge me with neglect. They couldn't prove it though. I did pay a lawyer a lot of money to not go along with their bullying tactics. This boy told a state social worker he was homicidal and until she asked him 4 or five times if he was sure he was homicidal he said he didn't think so. I of course had him leave my home. My sister, a third year law student, discovered recently that he was on Risperdal; they said it was for PTSD...It is for schizophrenia, and I now realize that is what he has definitely. I am looking for any people that are in Connecticut with these tort claims as I am going to pursue a case against the state of CT for "wrongful adoption." -- Joanna Block Gianini
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
ADOPTION, A CAUTIONARY TALE
ADOPTION, A CAUTIONARY TALE
by Nancy (CA) (therabbitts@cox.net)
My husband and I adopted two children from birth. The adoptions were open adoptions and we had met the parents. My son is caucasian and my daughter Caucasian/Hispanic. They are both beautiful children. The birth parents filled out the health forms for the adoption process. There were some gross omissions. However, since the birth parents were 18, how much realistically can they be expected to know about their genetic background? It was complicated by the fact that our son's mother was herself adopted at age two. We were encourage by what looked to be two normal births with good APGAR scores.
Our son seemed to develop normally in the beginning. He walked very late though...16 months. He also potty trained late at 4 years old. By the time he was four, he was seeing a neurologist and was diagnosed with developmental delays of unspecified origins.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
In the meantime, our daughter who had the colic from hell the first 10 months of her life was not out-growing the terrible twos. We had moved on to the terrible threes. She could not be kept in a time out chair unless she was strapped in the car seat. By age three I was taking her to see a therapist who diagnosed a child/parent relationship problem. Her problems continued to dominate our family life. Our son's care which I might have pursued more aggressively was relegated to a lot of physical activity to help develop his deficit skills with balance, hopping, skipping, etc.
Our daughter continued to have a hard time of it and at age 6 she came to me with a red mark on her neck and showed me how she tried to hang herself. She cried that night for four hours straight. She was put on Prozac. Later she was diagnosed with ADHD and put on Adderal. She became extremely manic and at age 8 she chased her brother through the house with garden shears and ended up hospitalized. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and begun on medications for that.
My son had been diagnosed as ADHD and was also on medication for that. He experienced angry outburst almost daily and the physician's response to that was to further increase his medication. This year, my son now 13, was switched to a newer ADHD medication. Well, it made him psychotic and he ended up in the hospital and returned to us with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome (high functioning autism).
Both children have significant learning disabilities. We fought tooth and nail with the school district to give us the much needed services. Still we could not avoid a legal action. The school district refused to acknowledge either of my children's diagnosis or include it in their IEP's (Individualized Education Plan). We have had to spend a lot of money on tutoring, private school, etc. and often at the expense of what would be more pleasureable activities.
Our son and daughter are doing relatively well now. We still have touchy and sensitive days rather frequently but nothing like in the past. The toll on our family has been enormous. My husband and I both have stress-related disease processes now. There have been days I wanted to call it quits. Because our adoptions were private, we get no help from the state. Having a lot of money to throw at some of the problems like education would be helpful. My daughter was also subsequently diagnosed with partial complex seizures.
In the year(s) since our children were adopted we learned some of the following: our daughter was born with cocaine in her system (hospital let us leave with her, never telling us), she has an older brother with lots of problems and raging. The mother of my son is a diagnosed sociopath. His father now in his early thirties is barely functional and his mother describes him as having been her "problem child".
I love my children and my life wouldn't be as enriched without them. But I would never adopt again or advise adoption....
I used to be naive enough to believe heredity and environment played about a 50/50 role in personality development but that is no longer true. I surmise it to be more like 90/10...
-- Nancy R. (CA)
adoptive mom to Evan, 13, bp and aspergers and Julia, 11, bp, seizure disorder and both with ld's
by Nancy (CA) (therabbitts@cox.net)
My husband and I adopted two children from birth. The adoptions were open adoptions and we had met the parents. My son is caucasian and my daughter Caucasian/Hispanic. They are both beautiful children. The birth parents filled out the health forms for the adoption process. There were some gross omissions. However, since the birth parents were 18, how much realistically can they be expected to know about their genetic background? It was complicated by the fact that our son's mother was herself adopted at age two. We were encourage by what looked to be two normal births with good APGAR scores.
Our son seemed to develop normally in the beginning. He walked very late though...16 months. He also potty trained late at 4 years old. By the time he was four, he was seeing a neurologist and was diagnosed with developmental delays of unspecified origins.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
In the meantime, our daughter who had the colic from hell the first 10 months of her life was not out-growing the terrible twos. We had moved on to the terrible threes. She could not be kept in a time out chair unless she was strapped in the car seat. By age three I was taking her to see a therapist who diagnosed a child/parent relationship problem. Her problems continued to dominate our family life. Our son's care which I might have pursued more aggressively was relegated to a lot of physical activity to help develop his deficit skills with balance, hopping, skipping, etc.
Our daughter continued to have a hard time of it and at age 6 she came to me with a red mark on her neck and showed me how she tried to hang herself. She cried that night for four hours straight. She was put on Prozac. Later she was diagnosed with ADHD and put on Adderal. She became extremely manic and at age 8 she chased her brother through the house with garden shears and ended up hospitalized. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and begun on medications for that.
My son had been diagnosed as ADHD and was also on medication for that. He experienced angry outburst almost daily and the physician's response to that was to further increase his medication. This year, my son now 13, was switched to a newer ADHD medication. Well, it made him psychotic and he ended up in the hospital and returned to us with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome (high functioning autism).
Both children have significant learning disabilities. We fought tooth and nail with the school district to give us the much needed services. Still we could not avoid a legal action. The school district refused to acknowledge either of my children's diagnosis or include it in their IEP's (Individualized Education Plan). We have had to spend a lot of money on tutoring, private school, etc. and often at the expense of what would be more pleasureable activities.
Our son and daughter are doing relatively well now. We still have touchy and sensitive days rather frequently but nothing like in the past. The toll on our family has been enormous. My husband and I both have stress-related disease processes now. There have been days I wanted to call it quits. Because our adoptions were private, we get no help from the state. Having a lot of money to throw at some of the problems like education would be helpful. My daughter was also subsequently diagnosed with partial complex seizures.
In the year(s) since our children were adopted we learned some of the following: our daughter was born with cocaine in her system (hospital let us leave with her, never telling us), she has an older brother with lots of problems and raging. The mother of my son is a diagnosed sociopath. His father now in his early thirties is barely functional and his mother describes him as having been her "problem child".
I love my children and my life wouldn't be as enriched without them. But I would never adopt again or advise adoption....
I used to be naive enough to believe heredity and environment played about a 50/50 role in personality development but that is no longer true. I surmise it to be more like 90/10...
-- Nancy R. (CA)
adoptive mom to Evan, 13, bp and aspergers and Julia, 11, bp, seizure disorder and both with ld's
ADOPTER EXPLAINS "WHY I'M ANTI-ADOPTION"
ADOPTER EXPLAINS "WHY I'M ANTI-ADOPTION"
From an Interview with Sheila Grove, 12/29/02
by Lori Carangelo
By coincidence, Sheila phoned me wanting to know if there is a local support group of adopters for frank discussion about problems encountered while raising adopted children. I suggested we start a forum online via this webpage.
"At first," explained Sheila, "I hesitated to express my views about adoption except among adoption-affected friends in private. Sharing my thoughts online is a big step. I was concerned that other adoptive parents 'might hate me' before knowing me and undesrtanding where I'm coming from. But I'm finding out that I'm not alone in my feelings and views. I spoke to a friend today who has two nieces both adopted. One girl is a severe diabetic which the parents were never told at the time of the adoption. The girl has had two liver transplants because this information was withheld at the time of adoption. I feel so frustrated and know I am not alone. And I know it was the same for adult adoptees and their parents who have gradually 'come out of the closet' over the years, to 'open up' their adoptions and the secrets kept under seal so long. I see more and more adoptive parents supporting 'open records.' I think it's time that adoptive parents to began an honest dialogue about adoption itself."
In "Desert Hot Springs Woman Stabbed," (The Desert Sun, Palm Springs, 8/7/93, page A-3), staff writer Stephanie McKinnon wrote:
"Twenty-four year old ..... was in critical condition from multiple stab wounds believed inflicted by an assailant as a result of a drug deal gone bad."
But McKinnon didn't get the whole story. The twenty-four year old in the newsclip was Sheila's adopted daughter. The photo at the top of this page was taken 4 years prior to the stabbing incident, when we were on the local news lobbying support for an open adoption records bill in California.
Sheila remembered "We told television viewers why my husband and I support her efforts to find her mother and I said to local primetime TV viewers.
'If I had adopted a dog, I would have known more than I am allowed to know about my own adopted daughter!'"
I asked Sheila if she now sees the problems with adoption are not only about secrecy.
"Yes, but I also see that the problems are not magically cured by opening a sealed record decades after an adoption, nor by our children finally meeting the mother they've never known--though they still need to do so. At the time of the stabbing, I knew that her stab wound was self-inflicted--one of many suicide attempts of the past 3 years during which she had not found her mother and which included slashing her own throat and wrists."
From her hospital bed in ICU, she told AmFOR that she still wanted to find her mother. In just 24 hours, by "pulling some strings," AmFOR located this adoptee's mother who immediately flew from San Francisco to be at her daughter's bedside and they began what was hoped to be a healing process. But despite what appeared to be an "Oprah happy reunion," drugs and the hurdles imposed by post-adoption relationships didn't bring them the healing that even adoption-oriented psychologists have come to expect--and not for Sheila.
"In fact," Sheila said, "I was entirely left out of my daughter's life from then on. I was no longer 'mother,' or 'mom.' I have to admit this change didn't begin with their reunion. There was always the feeling that something wasn't quite right as we became more estranged. Certainly we did everything within reason to show her our love and nurturing. We never withheld any information about her adoption or pre-adoption past from her, but neither was anything significant told to us. We told her she was adopted as soon as she was old enough to understand what 'adopted' meant. But it was obvious that she had had other parents. We're small Italians and she has a large frame and Scandinavian features. She seemed to just be resigned to the fact that she was with us."
I asked Sheila why she decided to speak out now.
"My perspectives on adoption have been evolving over the years since we adopted her. We were misled by the adoption industry that adoption is a 'quick fix' for a child's and parents' problems. And that all a child needs is love to 'adjust' to loss of a biological reality and to 'adjust' to strangers becoming her 'new parents' despite that she was so physically and emotionally different from us. And that somehow her reunion with her mother would put a bandaid on all the hurt she felt for more than two decades believing she wasn't wanted.
Our adopted daughter was also misled by the adoption industry to believe she could raise her own two children with no family medical nor social history to relate to, just as I had to.
Today, I would like to see a local support group for adopters to help them cope with and understand troubled adoptees.
Today, you could say that I am 'anti-adoption' because, had I to do it over again, I would have opted for legal guardianship, or remained a foster parent, rather than burden our daughter and us with the inequities that the adoption system imposed on all of us. I wish we could call the "adopted parents" "custodial parents" which I think is more correct. Do you agree? We have custody of the child and only that.'"
Copyright by Lori Carangelo 2002.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
From an Interview with Sheila Grove, 12/29/02
by Lori Carangelo
By coincidence, Sheila phoned me wanting to know if there is a local support group of adopters for frank discussion about problems encountered while raising adopted children. I suggested we start a forum online via this webpage.
"At first," explained Sheila, "I hesitated to express my views about adoption except among adoption-affected friends in private. Sharing my thoughts online is a big step. I was concerned that other adoptive parents 'might hate me' before knowing me and undesrtanding where I'm coming from. But I'm finding out that I'm not alone in my feelings and views. I spoke to a friend today who has two nieces both adopted. One girl is a severe diabetic which the parents were never told at the time of the adoption. The girl has had two liver transplants because this information was withheld at the time of adoption. I feel so frustrated and know I am not alone. And I know it was the same for adult adoptees and their parents who have gradually 'come out of the closet' over the years, to 'open up' their adoptions and the secrets kept under seal so long. I see more and more adoptive parents supporting 'open records.' I think it's time that adoptive parents to began an honest dialogue about adoption itself."
In "Desert Hot Springs Woman Stabbed," (The Desert Sun, Palm Springs, 8/7/93, page A-3), staff writer Stephanie McKinnon wrote:
"Twenty-four year old ..... was in critical condition from multiple stab wounds believed inflicted by an assailant as a result of a drug deal gone bad."
But McKinnon didn't get the whole story. The twenty-four year old in the newsclip was Sheila's adopted daughter. The photo at the top of this page was taken 4 years prior to the stabbing incident, when we were on the local news lobbying support for an open adoption records bill in California.
Sheila remembered "We told television viewers why my husband and I support her efforts to find her mother and I said to local primetime TV viewers.
'If I had adopted a dog, I would have known more than I am allowed to know about my own adopted daughter!'"
I asked Sheila if she now sees the problems with adoption are not only about secrecy.
"Yes, but I also see that the problems are not magically cured by opening a sealed record decades after an adoption, nor by our children finally meeting the mother they've never known--though they still need to do so. At the time of the stabbing, I knew that her stab wound was self-inflicted--one of many suicide attempts of the past 3 years during which she had not found her mother and which included slashing her own throat and wrists."
From her hospital bed in ICU, she told AmFOR that she still wanted to find her mother. In just 24 hours, by "pulling some strings," AmFOR located this adoptee's mother who immediately flew from San Francisco to be at her daughter's bedside and they began what was hoped to be a healing process. But despite what appeared to be an "Oprah happy reunion," drugs and the hurdles imposed by post-adoption relationships didn't bring them the healing that even adoption-oriented psychologists have come to expect--and not for Sheila.
"In fact," Sheila said, "I was entirely left out of my daughter's life from then on. I was no longer 'mother,' or 'mom.' I have to admit this change didn't begin with their reunion. There was always the feeling that something wasn't quite right as we became more estranged. Certainly we did everything within reason to show her our love and nurturing. We never withheld any information about her adoption or pre-adoption past from her, but neither was anything significant told to us. We told her she was adopted as soon as she was old enough to understand what 'adopted' meant. But it was obvious that she had had other parents. We're small Italians and she has a large frame and Scandinavian features. She seemed to just be resigned to the fact that she was with us."
I asked Sheila why she decided to speak out now.
"My perspectives on adoption have been evolving over the years since we adopted her. We were misled by the adoption industry that adoption is a 'quick fix' for a child's and parents' problems. And that all a child needs is love to 'adjust' to loss of a biological reality and to 'adjust' to strangers becoming her 'new parents' despite that she was so physically and emotionally different from us. And that somehow her reunion with her mother would put a bandaid on all the hurt she felt for more than two decades believing she wasn't wanted.
Our adopted daughter was also misled by the adoption industry to believe she could raise her own two children with no family medical nor social history to relate to, just as I had to.
Today, I would like to see a local support group for adopters to help them cope with and understand troubled adoptees.
Today, you could say that I am 'anti-adoption' because, had I to do it over again, I would have opted for legal guardianship, or remained a foster parent, rather than burden our daughter and us with the inequities that the adoption system imposed on all of us. I wish we could call the "adopted parents" "custodial parents" which I think is more correct. Do you agree? We have custody of the child and only that.'"
Copyright by Lori Carangelo 2002.
http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html
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