I’ve been away from my computer and blog for awhile now. For those of you working to heal from adoption trauma you’ll understand. It comes in waves sometimes. Out of the blue. Where you can’t think about adoption for one more minute or you might explode, or fall into a pit. The times are getting further apart but they still come. During those times I focus on my family, my business, anything other than something adoption related. To feel a sense of normalcy. And to forget the pain. But now I’m back and here goes a hot topic for many.
Legalized Human Trafficking
Legalized Human Trafficking is when a child or teen is transported from one country to another (or from an institution to a family) and one or more organizations, or persons, make a substantial profit based on the transfer under the guise of adoption.
That is the definition of legalized human trafficking I created and wrote about in AdoptionCombat Zone.
Think about it. The common definition of human trafficking is to move a person from place to place and someone makes a profit from that movement. How is adoption any different? Because it’s legal? Because it has a “feel-good” reason behind it? Because emotions are involved? Because it falls under the guise of “helping” an orphan? I call foul.
Adoption is a HUGE business and there are millions, yes, millions of dollars being made, mostly off the backs of caring American and Western European families. Each of our four adoptions cost approximately $25,000. Multiply that by the thousands of adoptions done each year just from America and you soon realize that people and organizations are getting very wealthy at the expense of not only the adoptive families, but the orphans themselves.
These orphans are a commodity. And I will venture to say that most orphans are not being served by adoption. In the book I tell the story of one Family X orphan. I actually met him in Ukraine and spent time with him at the orphanage while in the adoption process for Viktor. He was one of the most joy filled young men I’d ever met. In fact, I wondered while there how he could be so happy living in that orphanage. He hugged me constantly and was so grateful I had advocated for him and found a family to adopt him. While in Kiev with his new family he was happy and chattered about moving to America. He was on top of the world.
A few months after his move to America I happened to go to their home for few days visit. Not once during the entire visit did I see this young man smile or laugh. He was belligerent toward his mom and dad, argumentative when they wanted him to join us in an outing, and sullen, staying in his room most of the visit. I remarked to his mom that he was a completely different boy than he was in Ukraine.
She agreed. She told me he had been like that since they had been home a couple of weeks. They had him in therapy and he had been prescribed anti-depressant medication. The meds were not helping, and he was becoming more and more withdrawn. The only time they could get him to smile is when they took a photo and then it was fake.
Years later, now that we’ve been through adoption hell with four adoptions I have a better idea of SOME of the cause. Cultural adjustment.
In the book I tell the story of my cultural adjustment while in Ukraine for 11 weeks. By week 5 Tom and I were both edgy and quick to snap. By week 8 I felt completely out of sorts and all I could think of was being back home. By week 10 I thought I was losing my mind and I spent all my time trying to figure out ways to get home faster. At the time I made NO connection that adoption children and teens go through that same cultural adjustment. OH MY WORD!! What were we thinking? For this reason alone we need to STOP adoptions until we understand this vast cultural adjustment better. We better be absolutely sure going forward that we really are doing what is best for the orphan. Because right now I don’t believe we are.
Because these orphans aren’t coming to America for just a few weeks like I did to Ukraine. This is forever! We saw it with our four and many others have seen it, too. Sometimes you get this honeymoon period of a week or even a few weeks before these kids disintegrate before your very eyes. It’s exactly like I did in Ukraine. And I’m a fairly healthy minded adult, not a child or teen who has already seen their share of trauma. The first few weeks were all fun for Tom and me. We explored and it felt like a vacation. When the vacation never ends your mind doesn’t know how to process it. Homesickness is very real.
Add to that all of the trauma and rejection the adopted child/teen has already experienced, FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorders), RAD (reactive attachment disorder), or other trauma issues, and you have a potent disaster in the making. And adoptive families have no idea they have a ticking bomb in their home. They only see a hurt child who needs their love and attention, which they are more than willing to give.
Hosting and adoption agencies are NOT serving the needs of the orphan when they transport them from one cultural environment to another. That is a lie from the pit of hell and many of us have fallen prey to that lie.
What the orphan really needs is to #1 be reunited with their biological family if there is one or #2 helped to transition into real life with real life skills if there is no able biological family. This is where the money needs to be spent. Group homes where they learn to live on their own and where they learn a marketable skill so they can support themselves.
But what about giving them a family you might say. They don’t want a family. They may say they want a family but they have zero reality on what that actually means. If they have not lived within a functional family (and you would be hard-pressed to find many orphans who have lived in a functional family) they have NO CLUE what that means. All they know is what they’ve been told by other orphans or VK or the orphanage staff or hosting staff (mostly lies by all of these) or seen on T.V. (more lies.)
Once in a functional family and once they realize that family life is NOTHING like they thought it was going to be they go into destroy mode. They are hell-bent on making their new family as or more dysfunctional than the institution they’ve come from. Many times they believe if they destroy their current family, “they” (unknown authorities) will give them to a “better” family. It’s a no-win situation for everyone, including the orphan.
One young girl aged 14 wanted her adopted family to die so she could live in the home, do whatever she wanted, and have the use of the car unsupervised. When told there are bills to pay to be able to live in the home she replied that she would beg for the money to do that. She just wanted her independence with zero remorse for the family who sacrificed so much. Fairy tale thinking. And it is extremely common among adoptees.
I am advocating for huge changes in this business of the adoption of children and teenagers. (The exception being infant adoption from a single birth mother to a family wanting a baby.)
Any child or teen coming from a trauma situation, no matter what age, should not be adopted into a family, and most especially if that family has biological children in the home. Keep them in the foster care system, or group homes, or other institutions. I know that sounds harsh. It’s why we adopted in the first place. We couldn’t stand to think of children or teens in those environments. But like it or not, those institutions are what they are used to and it does not help them one bit to bring them into your home.
However, those institutions, and the foster care system, need our attention and our money. The money we spent on adopting could easily have helped more than ten teenagers live in a transitional group home in their own country. The Bible instructs us to care for the fatherless. It never insists, or even suggests, bringing those orphans into our home. In fact, in the story of the Good Samaritan, he paid to have the man put up at an inn. He did not take him home. There is a good lesson there for us all.
In my opinion our money would go much further and have a better outcome if we helped orphans where they are. My question is are we really serving them the way we should by adopting them and taking them from their natural environment and culture? What are your thoughts on this?
Simply My Opinion,
Kathe
www.adoptioncombatzone.com
www.katheray.arbonne.com
https://www.facebook.com/adoptioncombatzone/
Oh my word. I couldn’t have said this any better myself, if asked to describe out adoption nightmare. This is the reality and the raw facts. We go in to this believing we are helping a child and what really happens is, we are opening the gates of hell With an open invitation for misery and destruction. Not only are we not helping this child, but we are destroying marriages, financial stability, our happiness and most devastating is we are putting our other children at risk. It’s criminal. It’s absolutely bait and hook for unsuspecting families. We adopted a 13 year old from Latvia. He’s 18 now and in a group home. We were abused physically and emotionally daily by him. Financially responsible until he’s 21. Nothing left to send bio kids to college and he refuses to make his bed, let alone work a job. No warning about FAS or RAD. No support, resources, nothing. It’s an unbelievable nightmare.
I understand everything you wrote Michelle. I’m so very sorry your family is still dealing with all of the trauma. There needs more dialog about this so more people become aware. Hugs, Kathe
This idea is counterintuitive but makes so much sense in many situations. My experience is not with foreign adoption but from our own foster care system. One of our daughters is definitely better off in our family, but the other cannot make family life work and functions much better in an institutional setting. It is so hard to get people to understand this as we all assume that being part of a family has to be best.