Tag Archives: transracial adoptees

Adoptee Remembrance Day 2025

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Today is Adoptee Remembrance Day, designed to honor and remember adoptees who have died, who have been deported, who are survivors of the Troubled Teen Industry, who are incarcerated, who have been abandoned after being adopted, and those dealing with mental illness and/or substance abuse. We honor and remember all the forms of loss in the adoption community.

My post today is drawn essentially from my 2024 post about Adoptee Remembrance Day. The reasons for the day remain the same, and I am grateful for all those, especially adopted people, who promote awareness and the need for this day.

In the words of Pamela Karanova, the U.S. adoptee who founded Adoptee Remembrance Day, “While our primary goal is to uplift the legacy of those who are no longer with us, we also seek to share the truth of how adoption has impacted each of us. October 30th is our day of truth, transparency, and remembrance—a day for adoptees around the world to come together and be seen.”

What can you do to observe this day? There are many wonderful suggestions here. I’ve drawn some ideas below from the Adoptee Remembrance page. Please consider these actions, and share them with others.

  • Pause for a moment of silence for adoptees who have died.
  • Donate to help Mike Davis, who was adopted by a U.S. Army officer and was deported to Ethiopia in 2005. He has never met his grandchildren, and hasn’t been his wife and children for many years.

Twelve years ago yesterday, the parents of Ethiopian adoptee Hanna Williams were sentenced to lengthy jail terms for Hanna’s death. So many of keep Hanna in our hearts.

Adoptee Remembrance Day is “a beacon of awareness, remembrance, and solidarity.” Deep gratitude to those who work tirelessly to help and support adopted people around the globe.

Aselefech Evans, MSW–Clinician, Co-Editor “Lions Roaring,” Writer, Ethiopian Adoptee, More–Is Now on Substack

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Aselefech Evans, MSW, LSWAIC, has launched on Substack.

From her first post: “…I am Aselefech, proudly Oromo from the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Mother, Daughter, Auntie, Author (Lions Roaring Far from Home), family preservationist, and Black clinician—a title I hold with pride, as we make up only 4% of the field—and the owner of Stillness Therapy.”

Aselefech will be focusing on adoption, on neurodivergence, and on eating disorders and recovery. Her Substack is titled “From Stillness to Storytelling,” She will be writing primarily about three areas: adoption, eating disorders and recovery and neurodivergence. Aselefech has lived experience and extensive professional training in all three areas.

She notes “I’ve found deep connections with others whose paths to self-understanding have been anything but linear. I’ll share reflections, resources, and community voices that honor the diversity of our brains and experiences.”

Please read, subscribe to, share, and learn from this new Substack writer.

In full disclosure, Aselefech is my daughter. I could not be more proud of her. She brings a knowledgeable, compassionate heart to her writing and her work.

3 Challenging Ideas for Adoptive Parents to Consider, If Not Embrace

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This is a starter pack of potentially jarring notions for us adoptive parents.

Consider how your brain and body react to them, and why.

If you feel defensive or dismissive, pause to consider why. If you nod and feel less alone, explore that. Feel free to share this post with others, including your adult adopted children, folks without direct connections to adoption, therapists, counselors, relatives, friends. Please feel welcome to share your reactions, either in the comments or in an email to me: Maureen@LightOfDayStories.com. I’d be happy to hear from anyone about these Challenging Ideas.

This is an unsettled time in the adoption community. Adoptees are speaking out more, on TikTok (#AdopteesOfTikTok) and other social media platforms. They are hosting adoptee-only webinars, starting nonprofits, building businesses related to adoption which do not involve placement of children. In my work with Adoption Mosaic, I have developed curriculum and co-facilitated multi-week workshops for Seasoned Parents and on Navigating Estrangement, geared to adoptive parents of adult adoptees. So many adoptive parents are perplexed by their adult children’s anger about adoption (or about the parents’ approach to racism and racial identity). So many are estranged. So many are startled by some of the current volatility in adoption.

Adoptees are not a monolith; nor are adoptive or birth parents, so there’s lots of room for conversation. And we need more conversations and connections in the adoption community.

Here are three Challenging Ideas. I will give a brief description, and then share some resources, mostly by adoptees. Some of the adoptees draw primarily from their lived experience; some draw from academic research.

Relinquishment in adoption is trauma. Adoption itself can be trauma as well.

The separation of children from their mother is inherently traumatic. Think of how you’d feel hearing about a baby or young child whose mother had died, recognizing the depth of that loss. Separation from one’s mother, even if for a child’s safety, is a traumatic event.That’s true in relinquishment for purposes of adoption as well. There is a wealth of material about Understanding Trauma and Behavior in Adopted Children. If children are older when they are relinquished, they may have also experienced many Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, such as neglect, abuse, witnessing violence, removal from their home into foster care, or relinquishment for adoption, which can include physical relocation into a place where they don’t speak the language, don’t have racial mirrors, and have been taken from all that was familiar.

None of this damns anyone to horrible outcomes, especially if they grow up with or at some point find stability, safety, and recognition of their needs. Not all adoptees do. In any case, the Hallmark version of adoption as all-happy, the rainbows-and-unicorns scenario, could use more skepticism and less pressure on adoptees, especially, to be grateful or to have no issues with having been relinquished and adopted.

Lina Vanegas MSW, an adopted person from Colombia, is profiled here as an Adoptee Advocate. She discusses trauma, loss, suicide prevention, and other related topics.

Via Boston Post-Adoption Resources, Erika Kramer MSW writes on Adoption Trauma.

Theodora Blanchfield AMFT, an adopted person, writes that “I Am Grateful to Be Adopted–And Yet, Adoption Is Still Traumatic.”

Michele Merritt, an adopted person, writes in Science Direct about “Discovering latent trauma: An adopted adult’s perspective.”

Adoption should be abolished.

Abolition of adoption is a complex subject. No one wants children to be abused, neglected, in danger, needing medical care, out on the streets: that’s true for adoption abolitionists as well.

What adoption abolitionists want, as I understand it, is a systems overhaul, where, for example, poverty or patriarchy aren’t automatic reasons to remove a child from a family. where no one is entitled to a child, where families have access to equitable medical care, where children can afford to go to school, where a child can remain somewhere within his or her won family, safely.

Adoption abolitionists argue for an overhaul of the current adoption industry, which would include ending it. First steps would include genuine transparency (currently lacking in many adoptions) where adoptees have access to their own information, such as their original birth certificates and their parents’ names. Fraud, corruption, and coercion in adoption practices must be eliminated.

The role of money, for example is a huge structural factor: it is mostly white, relatively wealthy people who adopt, and children of color who are removed from their families. An international or private attorney adoption of one child can cost $40,000. That money could instead be used for job training, rent, and child care to allow a mother to keep her child. I’ve heard more than once that “adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary situation,” for example.

The US adoption tax credit is a significant government option that goes to adoptive parents; over the years, it’s involved billions of dollars for adoptive parents. Imagine if there were a structural overhaul that re-distributed funds so that families could keep their children, or get medical care for the children, or help grandparents or older siblings to care for the children. According to the Tax Policy Center, “The adoption tax credit has been repeatedly expanded, from an initial maximum value of $5,000 in 1997 to $14,300 in 2020. In 2020, taxpayers claimed total adoption credits of $322 million. The temporary availability of a refundable credit pushed the cost of the credit up to the dramatically higher figures of $1.2 billion in 2010 and $610 million in 2011 (including the refundable portion).”

Adoption Mosaic held a We The Experts panel featuring four adoptees who advocate for the abolition of adoption. Learn more here.

Lina Vanegas, listed above, often writes about abolition, and has also presented workshops with Mila Konomos, an adopted person from Korean, who posts about adoption survivors, abolition, and liberation.

Melissa Corrigan, an adopted person, writes “Abolish adoption.”

Nicole Eigbrett, an adopted person from China, tells her story here: “Adoption abolition envisions a world without ‘organized abandonment’ “

Marjie Alonso, an adoptive parent, wrote “I willingly, joyfully adopted my sons from Paraguay. I would never do it again.”

Adoption is rooted in white privilege, supremacy, and saviorism.

This can be an especially hard idea for adoptive parents to wrestle with. Like many other aspects of societal inequity, adoption is rooted in power and privilege. Who adopts? Who loses their children to adoption? What do they look like? What are their incomes, education levels, religions?

How does adoption perpetuate societal inequities, rather than prevent or eliminate them?

Kimberly McKee, Ph.D., an adopted person from Korea, writes about “White Supremacy, Christian Americanism, and Adoption.”

Alyssa Enright, an adopted person from China, wrote this editorial: “White Saviorism’s Effect on Transracial Adoption.”

Chidimma Ozor Commer, Ph.D., wrote “When ‘Good Intentions’ Backfire: A Case for Non-Transracial Legal Guardianship Rather Than Adoption, and Why Transracial Adoption Is Not Trauma Informed.”

Final Words for Today

Please be assured that this is a superficial presentation of three topics that are deeply nuanced. Nonetheless, adoptive parents can and should lean into them, since their adopted children (perhaps especially those who are full-fledged adults) may be doing so as well. Yes, there can be great joy and love in adoptive families–I love my children more than I can say. I also know that relinquishment and adoption have deeply affected them, as well as their original families (including grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins). All children should be loved, safe, and as healthy as possible. All parents deserve to keep their children, and we all have a stake in helping them do so. That’s the goal. (There will always be exceptions.) How can we move toward that goal together, in a fair way, sooner rather than later?

Should Adoptive Parents Ask Adoptees For Help?

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Over the years, when adoptive parents are asking other adoptive parents for advice about adoption, I’ve recommended that they ask adult adoptees. I am reconsidering this approach.

My lens here is as a white adoptive parent of (now adult) Black children, two born in the US and two born in Ethiopia. In an international adoption group, questions like this have been posted: Would Europe be a safe, less racist place than the US for my Black son to live? Should we send money to our children’s birth family? My adopted child (a young adult) is feeling anxious about the current immigration-ICE events: what should I tell them?

We white adoptive parents tend to default to other white adoptive parents as sources of information about adoptees. Often this is because the parents live in an almost completely white space with few racial mentors and few adoptee mentors. Also, it may feel safer to ask our familiars these questions, than to do the work of developing friendships with, say, Black or Asian people. We may not know many (or any) adult adoptees, or may feel insecure about asking them questions. Sometimes adoptive parents feel they should know all the answers, as we are often held up as exemplary merely because we adopted.

Often in Facebook groups and in other settings, I suggest adoptive parents talk to adoptees to get answers to their questions. Why do I say this?

  • Adopted people are the experts on the lived experience of being adopted.
  • Adoptive parents need to stop defaulting to the safety and comfort of other adoptive parents as experts. Sure, they can be one source, but
  • For far too long, adoptive parents have dominated many adoption spaces, and were seen as the best and sometimes only people who should speak about adoption.
  • This one’s more nuanced: my implicit hope is that adoptive parents have done work to incorporate other adoptees and people of color (besides their children) in their lives because the parents are white and not adopted, and their children are not white and are adopted. They should have at least a few adult adoptees to talk to in person. “Should” is of course a tricky word.
Black and white photo of foggy street with trees and telephone poles
®Maureen McCauley. Foggy street, fog in adoption.

Our adopted children might be good sources of information, and we adoptive parents also ought to make the circle wider. I have had many adoption-related conversations with my four children, now all in their late 30’s. Each has a very different perspective on adoption. I got to know many adult adoptees during the process of editing our book, “Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees.” Those adoptees had been raised in the US, Canada, France, Sweden, Australia, and the Netherlands. I also follow groups such as Ethiopian Adoptees of the Diaspora, Ethiopian Adoptees Foundation, the podcast Ethiopian Adoptees Unapologetically Unfiltered, and more. I follow many adoptees on Instagram and on LinkedIn. There are lots on TikTok of course; I am not a frequent TikTok user.

I have probably overstepped fairly often, injected myself into conversations that were not mine to enter, and unintentionally leapt over boundaries. Mostly people have been kind to me about that.

Like any group, the perspective of adult adoptees will vary. That, to me, is why having a variety of folks to talk to can be so important.

Still: I believe we adoptive parents must accept that, while adoptees can be excellent, valuable sources of information, they have no obligation to talk with us. Some adoptees who are active on social media have no interest in talking with adoptive parents, their own or anybody else’s.

Others are more open to working with adoptive parents. Transracial adoptees Isaac Etter, Angela Tucker, Patrick Armstrong, and Cam Lee Small come to mind, for example. Same race adoptees Joyce Maguire Pavao, Jennifer Dyan Ghoston‘s podcast “Once Upon a Time in Adopteeland,” and Haley Radke’s podcast AdopteesOn all provide amazing resources. I’d be remiss if I did not mention the incredible, valuable programs of Adoption Mosaic, for whom I am a co-facilitator and consultant. The “We The Experts” programs are thoughtful, challenging, and community-building. The adoptee-centric workshops require that non-adoptees do not ask questions or otherwise comment; we are meant to listen and learn.

When we connect with any of these folks, and there are many more, we adoptive parents should consider the professional training in which many of the adoptees have participated. Buy the books. Pay for the classes. Leave a positive review. Do not partake without giving back in some way.

Consider also the value of lived experience and the notion of emotional labor. The essays that are in “Lions Roaring” are an example of that. Some of our writers shared stories that are haunting and painful. They wrote from their hearts, and the rest of us are fortunate to read their words. Some of the writers do not want to read their own words ever again, because offering that gift of writing was soul-draining.

Some adoptees thus have no interest in performing any emotional labor, especially for adoptive parents. It’s too heartbreaking for them. We adoptive parents need to be mindful of that, and not expect that all adoptees can or ought to share with us. Ask first; respect boundaries without judgment. Express gratitude.

I continue to learn, including now from my grandchildren, who are not adopted yet adoption affects them too, as the children of adoptees. I believe fully in listening to adoptees, in asking questions while first asking permission, and in respecting those who may not want to talk whether because of deep trauma or a headache or whatever: no reason has to be given. I will do my best to answer questions as well, if asked, and to hold myself back from offering my insights if not asked. I genuinely hope we can all continue to learn from each other, to heal, to grow.

The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States

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Kit Myers is an adoptee from Hong Kong; he is also an assistant professor at the University of California-Merced. I was fortunate recently to attend a talk he gave at the University of Washington about his book, “The Violence of Love: Race, Family and Adoption in the United States.”

It’s a powerful book, and I recommend it. In full transparency, it is an academic book of sorts, with hundreds of footnotes and many pages of bibliography. Lots of great research presented usefully.

“The Violence of Love” is an important exploration of, as Dr. JaeRan Kim notes in her blurb, the question “How can transracial or transnational adoption be an act of both love and violence, and how can we envision a different future?”

Dr. Kim is herself an adoptee from South Korea, and an associate professor at the University of Washington-Tacoma. She also blogs at the highly respected Harlow’s Monkey.

JaeRan and Kit had a great discussion at the book talk. Many in the audience identified themselves as adoptees. I am grateful to scholars like Kit and JaeRan who share their wisdom with grace, insight, and truth.

From the book: “…we must eradicate not just the family policing system and adoption industry but the structural conditions and ideologies that enable them to exist…How do we draw on radical love to care for the most vulnerable–not in isolation but together? What would we do if we allocated the resources and were unafraid?”

A revolutionary sort of love. “There can be no love without truth.”

You can download a free copy here. You can buy a copy of it at that site as well, or from Amazon, or your local bookstore.

Cam Lee Small on “Why Adoptees Need a New Kind of Village”: TedX Talk

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Let’s “make more space for the adoptee voice, so they can be brought up and witnessed in the light, and be met compassionately with the resources they deserve.” That’s one powerful line of many that were shared by Cam Lee Small, MS, LPC, at his recent TedX Talk, Why Adoptees Need A New Kind of Village.

Cam is multi-faceted: an author (The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment), a licensed clinician, a transnational transracial adoptee from South Korea, and an advocate for adoptees and for adoption literacy.

His TedX Talk was powerful for me as an adoptive parent, and I believe that may also be true for adoptees and birth/first parents. He is compassionate and insightful, balancing his lived experience with years of professional training and expertise.

In the TedX Talk, he uses anecdotes from adoptee summer camps (sometimes the only places that adoptees see others who look like them and who are all adopted as well) along with powerful recommendations to create that vital village to raise a child.

While noting the variety of adoptee stories and experiences, Cam contends that “adoptees need tools that destigmatize mental health support and honestly address how history, loss, early adversity, and adoption can have an impact on nervous system development, brain and body functioning, racial and ethnic socialization, identity, search and reunion.” He calls for “ethical DNA testing” in the U.S. and around the globe so that people who have been relinquished can find their families. Also needed are “quality language interpretation skills” for when adoptees and those who relinquished them find each other.

All adoptees need access to their own health records and to “targeted health screenings, especially when records are kept from them or are falsified,” as happens so often.

It’s a brilliant talk. Please listen, learn, and share.

Follow Cam on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Upcoming “Seasoned Parents” Class From Adoption Mosaic: Join Us!

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Adoption has its own rhythm through our lifetimes, depending where we are in the constellation. There’s certainly no magic ending to issues when a child turns 18; legal adulthood can look very different from the emotional and psychological realities.

In fact, as adopted people and adoptive parents get older, many new issues can emerge. Our understanding of what adoption means can change over time, as well as our lens on parenting. Our adopted children may become parents themselves, and that can raise significant new thoughts. The role of race in the case of transracial adoptions can become more pointed as our children are out in the world, and as they reflect on their childhood experiences.

I, for one, am constantly learning and growing and striving to do better, even as my children are in their 30’s and I have 3 grandchildren.

I also have the honor to co-facilitate Adoption Mosaic’s Seasoned Parents class, a 6-week program start October 16, for adoptive parents whose children are over 18. My co-facilitators are Adoption Mosaic’s founder Astrid Castro, an adoptee from Colombia, and Katie Christians, a U.S. adoptee with extensive experience in Adoption Mosaic youth groups, panels, and programs.

Maureen McCauley (L) and
Katie Christians (R)

From the website:

“Need help trying to figure out how adoption plays a part in your family now that your kids are adults?

In this course, participants will:

  • Reflect on why we chose adoption, and what we have learned over decades of raising children; 
  • Dig into the challenges of talking about race, the adoption industry, gratitude, anger, adoption fog, search, and reunion; and
  • Practice talking about these adoption issues with our adult children and with others, in ways that are clear, respectful, and helpful.”

“Why is race still a factor in adoption?” Ask adoptees about that. A Call to Conversation and Action.

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While there are many reasons, race is a factor in transracial adoption because transracial adoptees have told us this, for decades.

I’ve been reluctant to publicize this New York Post article “Why is race still a factor in adoption?”. It is woefully uninformed, relies on attacks and haughty insinuations, and shows no real depth in terms of the nuances and complexity of race in adoption.

The writer, Naomi Schaefer Riley, does share the voice of an adoptee in the article. Riley vilifies Angela Tucker, a Black woman and adopted person, pouncing on Angela’s admittedly challenging Substack post, “What It Felt Like to Stop a White Couple From Adopting a Black Baby.”

I say “admittedly challenging” because Angela knew her writing would be controversial. It is nuanced and thoughtful as well, rooted not only in Angela’s personal experience as a transracial adoptee but also in her years of professional work in adoption. She is currently the executive director of the Adoptee Mentoring Society, an adoptee-centric organization guided by many members of the adoption community, including those deeply familiar with the complexity of transracial adoption and racial identity.

Angela, like many adopted adults who speak out about the role of race for transracial adoptees, is used to pushback from white adoptive parents, and indeed from white people generally. She does not oppose transracial adoption. She loves her white adoptive parents. She and I, a white adoptive parent of 4 transracially adopted Black now-adults, have known each other for years.

In part, I am suggesting here a Call to Conversation and Action because of my respect for the experiences of adoptees like my own beloved children, and of Angela, and of so many other transracially adopted adults.

This is a both/and situation, one that the New York Post article does not grasp: Adoptees can both love their adoptive family, and want to see adoption transformed (or abolished—and many folks do not understand what abolition means in the adoption community). You can be grateful for adoption (gratitude is an extremely controversial subject in adoption), and have traumatic, painful experiences due to racism. You can deeply love your adopted children, and also be aware that they were not prepared for racism and racist attacks.

You can protect your Black or Brown children in the loving bubble of your white family, and realize that the world is full of systemic and institutional racism, which might manifest as personal attacks both subtle and overt on your children.

You can want all children to have safe families, and also oppose adoption, arguing for other measures that don’t separate children from their mothers, siblings, cousins, grandparents, country, heritage, culture, language. You can acknowledge that adoption may have benefits (especially economic), and also recognize the struggles that some transracial adoptees have in terms of mental health, racial identity, sense of self, and more.

I am still processing my thoughts about the article. I welcome other voices to the conversation. The details of any Call to Action are yet to be determined, but I for one cannot let Riley’s question go unanswered.

A final note:

Research spans decades on the impact of race in adoption. Here are a few examples.

The Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York has no fewer than 14 articles in its “Family Resources and Supports” section, with titles such as “Understanding the Impact of Racism on Children’s Mental Health” and “Racism and Microaggressions in Transracial Adoption.” There is a range of perspectives provided; all note that race is a compelling, forceful part of adoption.

This is from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute in 2000, following the 1999 Gathering of Korean adoptees: https://iamadoptee.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Gathering-Donaldson-survey.pdf A quote: “The majority of respondents reported that they had experienced some form of discrimination while they were growing up. Race (70%) was cited more often as the basis for discrimination than was adoption (28%).”

Another example is from the Washington Post in 2021: ‘I Know My Parents Love Me, But They Don’t Love My People: Adoptees of Color with White parents struggle to talk with their families about race.

From Pepperdine University, 2017: “Empowering Adopted Children in the Face of Racism and Discrimination.”

From the Journal of Family Psychology, 2022; The Intersection of race and adoption: Experiences of transracial and international adoptees with micro aggressions.

A Tough Topic, An Important New Book: Adoption and Suicidality

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A valuable, vital new book is being released today: Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Health Care Professionals, and Allies.

Congratulations to the editors and contributors. I hope the book gets widespread distribution, as it tackles an often overlooked subject in the adoption community.

I’ve had the privilege of reading the book. I am deeply moved by each essay and poem. While I know several of the contributors, I did not know all the powerful stories. The voice of each writer and contributor—whether an adopted person, a birth/first parent, or an adoptive parent—brings deeply valuable insights.

Thank you to Beth Syverson and Joey Nakao, the team that has brought the book into publication. Beth hosts the podcast Unraveling Adoption. Beth (an adoptive parent) and Joey (her son, adopted from Japan) have shared their journey together for years, in the hope that they can help other families understand and cope with the challenges of addiction, adoption, and suicidality.

The book will be available on Amazon and other sources. There will be a Book Launch event on August 24, featuring “several of the book’s 17 authors who will share their experiences and insights on adoption and its impact on mental health.”

May this new book continue the important and hard conversations ended in the adoption community. May all those struggling find resources, healing, and understanding.

What Has Happened to the Ethiopian Son Adopted by Former Kentucky Governor Bevin?

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A headline from yesterday’s Kentucky Lantern:

“Former KY Gov. Matt Bevin’s adopted son reportedly removed from abusive facility in Jamaica.”

The article names “Matt Bevin, a conservative Christian and Republican who served as governor (of Kentucky) from 2015 through 2019” as the adoptive parent of “Noah” (a pseudonym). Noah was adopted from Ethiopia in 2012 by the former governor and his wife; they adopted 3 other Ethiopian children at that time. They also have five biological children.

News reports have said that Noah, now 17 years old, was placed in a Florida facility in 2019. In 2023, Noah was placed at the Atlantis Leadership Academy, a Jamaican treatment facility for teenage boys, several of whom were adoptees.

The Lantern article refers to Noah: “…now, one of those adopted children, a 17-year-old boy, is at the center of international attention after he and seven other boys were removed from the Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica in February, where authorities found horrific conditions,” according to a lengthy article published July 13 in the Sunday Times of London.

The Sunday Times story, ” ‘I’d Rather Die Than Go Back:’ Jamaica’s school for troubled US boys,” says that Noah was among “three teens who were made wards of the Jamaican state…It’s not clear where the Bevins’ son is now.”

A Kentucky news station posted this article today: Report claims former Gov. Matt Bevin abandoned adopted son.

Screenshot

Noah’s story is one example of the complexity of the so-called “Troubled Teen Industry” (TTI), which has garnered a tremendous amount of publicity in recent years.

Paris Hilton was in the news in April regarding the Atlantis facility and her concern for the boys in Jamaica. In June, Hilton testified about her own experiences at similar facilities. Netflix is featuring a documentary called The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping.

Adoptees are disproportionately represented at some of these facilities, and that could be for a variety of reasons. I do not want to pathologize adoptees, nor do I want to minimize the need for specialized services by counselors and therapists with appropriate training in adoption.

Here is an excerpt from an article by the American Counseling Association, Adoption Complexities:

“Counselors who treat transracial and transnational adoptees and study the practice of adoption say it warrants scrutiny. People who are unfamiliar with these types of adoption may view them as an act of altruism to “rescue” a child from unfortunate circumstances, says Amanda Baden, PhD, a professor of counselor education at Montclair State University in New Jersey.  

“But if you ask the adoptee community, they would say there are a lot of abuses in transracial and transnational adoption and there needs to be much more careful and ethical oversight of the practice,” says Baden, a transracial and transnational adoptee from Hong Kong who works with transracial and transnational adoptees in her private practice in New York City.”

I hope that Noah is found to be safe, and that all adoptees and teens in therapeutic centers find the help that they deserve.

Additional Articles about the TTI in the U.S., including Adoptee Treatment

The Troubled Teen Industry and Its Effects: An Oral History

Five Facts About the Troubled Teen Industry (American Bar Association)

Troubled Teen Industry Statistics Revealed: Alarming Facts and Figures

Differences Between Adopted and Nonadopted Adolescents in Wilderness and Residential Treatment From the Abstract: “Adopted children are disproportionately represented in residential treatment programs in the United States. Adopted children in the United States constitute only 2% to 3% of the U.S population. Nevertheless, they comprise approximately 16.5% of the population in residential care. This descriptive study evaluated a sample of 473 psychological evaluations of adolescents in wilderness and residential treatment centers. Results indicated that, compared with nonadopted youth, adopted youth had greater histories of recent trauma, higher rates of suicidal tendency and biological parents’ mental illness, and poorer academic achievement. However, there were no significant differences between adopted and nonadopted youths in terms of defiant behaviors, IQ, substance use/abuse, reasons for referral, impulsivity, anxiety, or depression. Study results suggest that wilderness and residential programs may need to target programmatic elements specifically to meet the special needs of adopted adolescents who comprise a significant percentage of their client population.”

Adopted Youth in Residential Care: Prevalence Rate and Professional Training Needs