Girl spent months harboring secret, fearing she would be sent away again.

[dipsydoodle]

Authorities say an Ohio mother used ‘re-homing’ to keep allegations of sexual abuse from coming to light

MARYSVILLE, Ohio - On an Internet forum where parents sought takers for adopted children they no longer wanted, a teenager from Haiti was offered more frequently than any other girl.

Starting at age 14, Nita Dittenber was passed among four families over two years through a practice called “private re-homing.”

In September, Reuters exposed an underground market in which desperate parents use online bulletin boards to offer adoptees to strangers, often illegally and with no government oversight. The Internet forums, including the Yahoo group where Nita was advertised, can enable abusers to acquire children easily; in one case, a pedophile in Illinois took home a 10-year-old boy hours after an ad for the child was posted online.

In the last home where Nita was sent, re-homing served a different purpose, Ohio prosecutors contend. They say it was used to silence Nita and another girl in an effort to conceal the repeated sexual abuse of children.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption-follows/

See also earlier Reuters report September 9, 2013 :

Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas : http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1

[Mnemosyne]

1. Absolutely horrifying. Poor kids... nt

[Jefferson23]

2. I don't know where to begin to express in words how terrifying this situation is for so

many children..I am shocked.

For what it is worth I am emailing this story to all my elected Reps and Governor,
State Attorney General too.

What percentage of people know about this?

[erpowers]

6. Nightly News

One of the nightly news programs did a story on this issue recently. I think it was NBC. It also could have been CNN. Whichever channel did the story, they did it on the then 14 year old Haitian girl who was moved around to four different homes. So, I think a large number of people know about this issue.

[Jefferson23]

7. I'm glad it was posted here, I never heard of such an extensive problem as treacherous

and criminal as this one.

Another poster expressed my concerns too, there needs to be Congressional hearings
on this problem..we are only giving lip service for the children's safety at this point.

Thanks for your input.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Sick people, these "adoptive" parents.

The Dittenbers should be ashamed.

Legislatively we owe children a bit more protection than just that toothless interstate compact.

[VA_Jill]

4. This is human trafficking

I don't care what other names you call it to "pretty it up". That's what it is. It needs to be investigated by congress and it needs to be regulated. It's no wonder some countries have shut down the adoption pipeline to the US.

Here is a link to the first part of a much longer article by Reuters on the subject. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1
At the end of this part you can link to the next. I think there are 5 in all. I first read it last year on Longform and I was appalled. These people treat children like "bad" pets! And lord only knows how many of them are physically/emotionally/sexually abusive. Many of them don't go through any kind of home study whatsoever (and even those don't weed out bad families, as we've seen in this country). A lot of them are fundamentalist Christians who have really sketchy reason for adopting in the first place. They really give the good adoptive families, of whom there are many, a horrible name. They need to be STOPPED!

[erpowers]

5. Ban International Adoptions and Put Parents in Jail

The United States should ban all international adoptions. In addition, the parents who participated in the re-homings should be put in jail. The parents put those kids into dangerous situations.

Those stories were just crazy. Some of those parents barely tried to raise the kids they adopted. I think the article said that in one case the parents had returned to the United States only a few hours before they tried to give the kid away. A number of the parents in the article seemed immature. It may also be that these people see celebrities like Angelia Jolie and Madonna adopting foreign kids and like any celebrity/Hollywood/movie trend they want to follow and never think about the consequences or the struggles that could arise three months to three years after adopting foreign kids. It seems adopting foreign kids has become for adults what getting the latest dog in the latest movie has been for years for kids. Go out and adopt a foreign kid because a celebrity did and when you get bored with the kid just leave it on the side of the road.

Some people complain about how hard it is to adopt a kid under the American system. I say this article is why it is so hard to adopt a kid under the American system. You do not want someone adopting a kid only to give the kid away a few hours, days, weeks, or years later. How many of the parents who adopted a foreign kid should not have been allowed to adopt any kid?

[Jefferson23]

8. It is horrifying...the re-homing aspect freaks me out! WTF? Who are these people?

On edit: I never heard that term before I read this story...ugh.