How I became an international adoption activist

In 1997 Outer Search Inner Journey hit the bookstores. My memoir of being adopted from a German orphanage and brought to the United States broke a barrier; this was the first book written by a foreign-born adoptee on international adoption. Until that time the singular perspective of the international adoption industry's PR machine dominated media outlets.

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.