Killer Adoptees: Don't Shoot the Messenger

by Lori Carangelo
© 2002,All rights reserved

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 forthcoming books, "The Ultimate Search Book-2002" (available in February 2002), and "Chosen Children", (scheduled for March-April 2002 release).

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 & Adoption.

© 2002 Lori Carangelo

Adoption Profiles

Blair & Ciara We are excited to adopt and start our family. We look forward to the joy and love a child will bring to our home. Our children will know their birth... [more] other adoption profiles | add your profile A service of Adoption Profiles, LLC