But international adoption is a very large pie. Stakeholder groups include human rights activists, sending nations, the adoptee, biological parents, international relief organizations... The industry represents only one small slice of this complex pie.
With
the onset of book tours and speaking engagements, I wanted to learn more about
international adoption. Outer Search Inner Journey was my story, not at all an
academic work. Outside of personal experience I knew little about this subject except
a vague awareness Korean children were also being adopted by foreigners. So I
started researching.
Two
horrific cases surface:
On
May 28, 1997, Richard and Karen Thorne were arrested at New York's Kennedy
Airport on arrival from Moscow for beating the two 4-year-old girls they had
just adopted from Russia. A judge later found the Thorne's guilty of slapping
and verbally abusing the girls.
In
September 23, 1997, Renee Polreis was convicted of murdering the boy she
adopted from Russia, beating him to death to death with wooden spoons and a
rubber spatula. He was two-years old.
What
was overlooked by the press:
1. The agencies and people that approved these
adoptions weren't mentioned. No account was provided of their role and responsibility,
nor were they held accountable for permitting monsters to adopt children.
2. The international adoption industry (agencies
and their trade associations such as Joint Council on International Children's
Services) remained silent. No outrage about these atrocities, demands for
investigations or promises to enact new policies to prevent children from being
harmed.
3.
Nothing was written about the children's perspective. What was it like for them
to lose all that was familiar and be thrust into a foreign, terrifying and
alien environment? I knew what these three children experienced when adopted by
strangers from a different country.
I
could not comprehend the incomprehensible. The International adoption industry should have come under withering
criticism for failure to act adequately after the abuses and murder of these
children. Time has proven their collective inaction has led to more children
being harmed and murdered.
The
Thorne and Polries cases ignited the fuse that propelled me into the movement
to reform the international adoption system.
