Adoptions Gone Awry: Enhancing Adoption Outcomes Through Postadoption Services and Federal and State Laws Imposing Criminal Sanctions for Private Internet Rehoming

• Date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12168
• Published date: 01 July 2015

ADOPTIONS GONE AWRY: ENHANCING ADOPTION OUTCOMES

THROUGH POSTADOPTION SERVICES AND FEDERAL AND

STATE LAWS IMPOSING CRIMINAL SANCTIONS

FOR PRIVATE INTERNET REHOMING

Johnathan James Nobile

The federal government should invest in adopted children who make up the future of the country and are in dire need of reha-

bilitation and therapy because of their past circumstances. If the government steps in to rescue vulnerable children from inad-

equate or abusive birth parents by removal, it should also intervene when adopted families are faced with behavioral problems

of adopted children that the adopted parents cannot address on their own. Postadoption services need to be accessible and

effective to ensure the success of adopted families. Assisting families in crisis postadoption will lower the instances of dissolu-

tion and rehoming and keep adoptive families intact. In cases in which postadoption services fail, uniform federal legislation is

necessary to make it a federal crime to advertise children for adoption on the Internet without proper certification and state

legislation is required to make it a crime to pass on adopted children to strangers without judicial consent, to dissuade Internet

rehoming. Internet rehoming of adopted children should be a serious crime as it is tantamount to child trafficking.V

C2014 Asso-

ciation of Family and Conciliation Courts

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Postadoption services need to be more accessible and more narrowly tailored to the needs of adoptive families to

ensure the success of adoptions.

Better postadoption services create better adoptive families and adoptive parents will not reach the point of dissolution

or private Internet rehoming.

Adoptive parents should be provided with information regarding all available postadoption resources after adoption is

finalized and a government Web site should be created that lists all available resources.

The federal government needs to provide funding to states that specifically target postadoption services.

A uniform federal statute is required to punish parties who use Internet forums to avoid government oversight and pri-

vately rehome their adopted children.

States should enact laws that criminalize the unauthorized interstate placements of children.

Keywords: Adoption Outcomes; Dissolution; Internet Adoptions; Mental Health Services; Postadoption Services; and

Rehoming.

I. INTRODUCTION

In September 2013, Thomson Reuters uncovered a large underground market on Internet forums

where hundreds of adopted parents look to find permanent homes for their unwanted adopted chil-

dren without the involvement of adoption agencies, child welfare officials, lawyers, or the courts.

1

On forums such as Yahoo’s “Adopting From Disruption” and Facebook’s “Way Stations of Love,”

parents and “middlemen”

2

advertise unwanted children and transfer guardianship of children through

a simple power of attorney document.

3

All that is needed for a power of attorney is a notarized state-

ment that states that the child is in the care of an adult and, with such a document, the new guardian

is able to enroll a child in school and even secure government benefits.

4

Reuters analyzed over 5,000 posts on Yahoo’s “Adopting From Disruption” forum and discov-

ered that, on average, a child was advertised for “rehoming” once a week.

5

Most children ranged

from ages six to fourteen and most had been adopted internationally from countries such as Russia,

Correspondence: johnobile@gmail.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 3, July 2015 474–486

V

C2015 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts