Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas
her time seeking children on the Internet, Nicole Eason has referred to
herself as Big Momma and Momma Bear. Her term for informal custody
transfers is "non-legalized adoption," and she defines the phrase to
mean: "Hey, can I have your baby?" REUTERS/Samantha Sais
Part 1: When a Liberian girl proves too
much for her parents, they advertise her online and give her to a
couple they’ve never met. Days later, she goes missing.
KIEL, Wisconsin – Todd and Melissa Puchalla
struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager
they'd adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they
found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad
on the Internet.
Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in
their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They
were eager to take Quita, even though the ad warned that she had been
diagnosed with severe health and behavioral problems. In emails, Nicole
Eason assured Melissa Puchalla that she could handle the girl.
"People that are around me think I am awesome with kids," Eason wrote.
A few weeks later, on Oct. 4, 2008, the
Puchallas drove six hours from their Wisconsin home to Westville,
Illinois. The handoff took place at the Country Aire Mobile Home Park,
where the Easons lived in a trailer.
No attorneys or child welfare officials came with
them. The Puchallas simply signed a notarized statement declaring these
virtual strangers to be Quita's guardians. The visit lasted just a few
hours. It was the first and the last time the couples would meet.
To Melissa Puchalla, the Easons "seemed wonderful."
Had she vetted them more closely, she might have discovered what
Reuters would learn:
• Child welfare authorities had taken away both of
Nicole Eason's biological children years earlier. After a sheriff's
deputy helped remove the Easons' second child, a newborn baby boy, the
deputy wrote in his report that the "parents have severe psychiatric problems as well with violent tendencies."
• The Easons each had been accused by children they
were babysitting of sexual abuse, police reports show. They say they
did nothing wrong, and neither was charged.
• The only official document attesting to their parenting skills – one purportedly drafted by a social worker who had inspected the Easons' home – was fake, created by the Easons themselves.
On Quita's first night with the Easons, her new
guardians told her to join them in their bed, Quita says today. Nicole
slept naked, she says.
Within a few days, the Easons stopped responding to
Melissa Puchalla's attempts to check on Quita, Puchalla says. When she
called the school that Quita was supposed to attend, an administrator
told Puchalla that the teenager had never shown up.
 |
| GIRL AVAILABLE: Quita Puchalla's adoptive parents used this photo to advertise her online. REUTERS/Handout |
Quita wasn't at the trailer park, either. The
Easons had packed up their purple Chevy truck and driven off with her,
leaving behind a pile of trash, a pair of blue mattresses and two
puppies chained in their yard, authorities later found.
The Puchallas had rescued Quita from an orphanage
in Liberia, brought her to America and then signed her over to a couple
they barely knew. Days later, they had no idea what had become of her.
When she arrived in the United States, Quita says,
she "was happy … coming to a nicer place, a safer place. It didn't turn
out that way," she says today. "It turned into a nightmare."
The teenager had been tossed into America's
underground market for adopted children, a loose Internet network where
desperate parents seek new homes for kids they regret adopting. Like
Quita, now 21, these children are often the casualties of international
adoptions gone sour.
READ MORE (in the series): HERE
So adopters, if we don't meet your expectations, you create a network to dump us? No wonder so many adoptees commit suicide... Trace
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