September 10, 2013

Rehoming: Adoption’s Horrifying New Trend

NBC News has released their first report of a horrifying investigation that reporter Megan Twohey has been working on for 18 months: adoption rehoming. Rehoming is the underground process by which adoptive parents can give children they’ve adopted and don’t want anymore to couples found via underground message boards and sites on the internet. These transactions are completely illegal and involve no government officials or child service workers. The transferring of “parental rights” is generally a notarized letter acknowledging the transfer of parental guidance from the adoptive parents to the new parents. And then most children never see their original adoptive parents again. Some don’t even know what’s really going on.

The victims of this process have primarily been children who were adopted internationally, and the callous ads written adoptive families are shocking in their willingness to do anything to give their child up.

A woman who said she is from Nebraska offered an 11-year-old boy she had adopted from Guatemala. “I am totally ashamed to say it, but we do truly hate this boy!” she wrote in a July 2012 post.

“I would have given her away to a serial killer, I was so desperate,” one mother wrote in a March 2012 post about her 12-year-old daughter.

The investigation is painful to read, especially for those whose hearts and intentions for adoption are nothing but genuine. NBC’s investigation goes deep, though, and the article posted this week is only one in a series of many. We urge you to keep up with the series and to spread the word of rehoming. This absolutely needs to be brought down, not only because it’s entirely illegal and unethical, but more importantly, it is putting so many children in grave danger at the hands of individuals who have less than their best interests at heart. This is not why the adoption industry exist. There are no give-backs.

This video details more about the situation, including a heartbreaking interview with a now-21 year-old adoptee who was told by her rehomed mother she should go out back and “dig her own grave.”

The internet’s influence is one that everyone must take seriously, and as advocates of adoption, it is the responsibility of each of us to spread as much awareness about this issue as possible, and to keep ourselves informed as well.