KILLER ADOPTEES - DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER
The author of
"The Myth Series: Killer Adoptees"
suggests that "to label all adoptees as innately
damaged and potentially dangerous, to presume that
adoptees are less able to control anger, to deal with
rage, does an injustice to the millions of adopted
persons around the world who are living proof that
this is, indeed, just a myth."
America's Dirty Little Secret: Adoptees' Outcomes
Greg Mox was one of those "well adjusted" adoptees who
controlled his anger for 21 years. Then one day, this
adult adoptee who still was forbidden any clues as to
his pre-adoption reality, brutally murdered both his
adopters and burned their bodies. He said he was
simply "tired of having to live in the skin of the
child they could not have and saw no other way out."
The fact is, there is no comprehensive study on
adoptees' outcomes, partly because there is no
followup beyond finalization of the adoption, and
partly because our government has failed to implement
the National Adoption Data Collection System approved
since 1988, yet has managed to guarantee over $1
billion in funding over the next four years to
"promote and increase adoptions." There's not even a
reliable figure as to total number of adoptees over
the past five decades.
The fact is, adoptees' adoptive status and broken
birth bonds, how they impacted their lives, and the
"adopted child syndrome defense" is rarely addressed
at their trials - partly due to inadequate defense by
public defenders, partly because they are offered plea
bargains instead of trials, and partly due to the
complexity of psychiatric defenses which are often
lost on juries who have been inundated with
pro-adoption rhetoric in media. I have been assisting
Patrick J. Callahan, a forensic psychologist who
provides expert witness testimony in the defense of
juveniles (including adoptees) who kill - not as an
excuse to "get away with murder" but as a reason or
proximate cause for consideration in sentencing, so
that the adoptee can obtain appropriate,
adoption-oriented psychiatric treatment and in some
cases a chance for rehabilitation, instead of being
executed or warehoused for life. For adoptees
imprisoned for lesser crimes, I have attempted, often
successfuly, to find their families. When found, their
families have been supportive of their incarcerated
adult adopted children, which often helped those
adoptees turn their lives around. So, yes, I believe
it is worth the risk of "upsetting someone" to help
these adoptees.
The point is not whether or not to sweep adoptees who
have criminal behaviors under seal, lest they reflect
badly on the the rest of the adoption community. The
point is that each of us in the general populaton has
the potential for violence but we also have a genetic
and learned resiliency. Resiliency is impacted,
exponentially, by the accumulation of abuses one
suffers. So why play Russian Roulette with our
children, whose resiliency cannot be foreseen, by
further burdening them with adoption abuses? The point
is, there is an overrepresentation of adoptees 'in
trouble' - in psychiatric therapy and
institutionalized - no one disputes this. Why
perpetuate it with an abusive system when there are
more humane forms of custody available that do not
place such burdens on children and adults?
Hearing All Sides
The purpose of the
Abolish Adoption website
is to
truly dispel myths about adoption by giving a voice to
those adoptees and parents who are not being heard
"because it might upset someone." To hear them would
risk acknowledging that the cause of their injury is
adoption itself. In addition to comments by those who
have added their names to our petition also on the
home page, there are links (at the left) to many
supporting pages, including Adopted Prisoners, whose
photo ads with their prison addresses invite your
correspondence and/or search assistance, free e-books,
synopses, reviews and publisher information regarding
this author's books,
"The Ultimate Search Book"
and
"Chosen Children"
.
Adoptee Rights Are Human Rights
I can understand resistance to the concept that "all
adoptees are damaged." Some, who are otherwise content
with their lives, may not consider loss of basic civil
and human rights as "damaging" - that is, until they
wish to freely exercise one of these rights and are
blocked by adoption laws - even as adults, even as
adults whose children inherit their burden. For a
listing of the specific Articles of the Declaration of
Human Rights and how the scheme of adoption itself
violates these rights, please go to
Human Rights and Adoption
.
