Sunday, October 2, 2011

Adopted and Abused: How Many More?

Teen kept in Florida bathroom, beaten by adoptive mother, Tai-Ling Gigliotti and boyfriend


2009. For three years, neighbors in a quaint, middle-class community scarcely saw the lanky 16-year-old boy who lived with his adoptive mother and her boyfriend.

Now, they know why: According to authorities, the teen was brutally abused and held captive in his own home. Most recently, he'd been confined to a bathroom, locked from the outside and sealed with a piece of plywood over the window.

By the time he escaped last week, the Florida boy had a broken forearm and scars, scabs and oozing wounds that investigators say mark years of abuse.

Retired hero cop William Fox busted in Pennsylvania on sex-abuse charges

A former hero NYPD cop who became a father to a troubled teen he coaxed out of jumping from a downtown flophouse 30 years ago was arrested in Pennsylvania on charges of molesting three boys.

William Fox, 65, was collared Monday at his Liberty Township home and accused of sexually abusing the juveniles between 1996 and 2009, the Sun Gazette newspaper reported Thursday.

Fox later adopted the boy and wrote a book about his experience. He also received the National Father of the Year Award. William Fox adopted 10 boys in total, three of whom filed complaints about sexual abuse.

Florida woman charged with murder of adopted daughter


The adoptive mother of a Florida girl found dead in a plastic bag in her husband's truck has been charged with first-degree murder, police said Saturday.
Carmen Barahona also faces seven counts of aggravated child abuse and seven counts of child neglect, the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a press release.
Authorities have said Jorge Barahona -- the 10-year-old girl's adoptive father and Carmen's husband -- parked his pest control truck alongside I-95 on February 14. A roadside ranger said he found Barahona beside the truck and his adopted son ill inside the vehicle, which was filled with toxic chemicals. The boy was taken to a hospital to be treated for severe burns.

The body of his adopted daughter, Nubia -- who is the boy's twin sister -- was later discovered in the back of the truck in a plastic bag.

Four days later, Jorge Barahona pleaded not guilty on charges of attempted first-degree murder with a weapon and aggravated child abuse with a weapon in the case.

At least two people tried to warn authorities about alleged abuse of the twins.

Teen kept in Florida bathroom, beaten by adoptive mother, Tai-Ling Gigliotti and boyfriend

2009. SPRING HILL, Fla. - For three years, neighbors in a quaint, middle-class community scarcely saw the lanky 16-year-old boy who lived with his adoptive mother and her boyfriend.

Now, they know why: According to authorities, the teen was brutally abused and held captive in his own home. Most recently, he'd been confined to a bathroom, locked from the outside and sealed with a piece of plywood over the window.

By the time he escaped last week, the Florida boy had a broken forearm and scars, scabs and oozing wounds that investigators say mark years of abuse.

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Father Predatory monster who was allowed to adopt sentenced to 119 years for 'horrific' beatings of adopted son

An El Paso County man was sentenced Monday to 119½ years to possibly life in prison for what a prosecutor called “horrific” beatings of his adopted son that spanned two years.

Jeremiah Lovato, 41, showed little emotion as 4th Judicial District Judge Robert L. Lowrey rattled off the maximum penalty for many of the 18 counts of which Lovato was convicted in February.
Under Colorado law, one of the felonies, sexual assault, carries an indeterminate sentence of six years to life, based on the judgment of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Before delivering the sentence, Lowrey described the abuse as “extraordinary” and mentioned the graphic photographs that depicted the boy’s infected wounds from being beaten with a stick.
Prosecutors said Lovato also hit him in the head with a meat tenderizer, punched and strangled him, and stomped on his testicles when the boy attempted to roll over or otherwise deflect the blows.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, Mr. Lovato,” Lowrey said.

The victim – now 16 – is living with a foster family. Lovato’s parental rights were terminated before his trial in February, authorities said.

The Gazette generally withholds the names of juvenile victims, particularly in cases involving sexual assault.

The abuse came to light in January 2010, when the boy jumped a fence and ran for help rather than submit to another beating by Lovato. Prosecutors alleged the abuse began shortly after the boy went to live with Lovato in Craig in 2008 and escalated after they moved to a subdivision east of Colorado Springs.

Addressing the court in a black striped shirt and dark tie, the teenager pushed for a stiff sentence against the man prosecutors described as his captor.

“I’d like to see Jeremiah Lovato locked away for a long time because of all the things he ended up doing to me,” he said.

Others were more strident in characterizing the abuse.

“Mr. Lovato earned every year that he received,” said Diana May, the chief deputy district attorney who led the prosecution. “The abuse he inflicted, both mentally and physically, is the worst I’ve seen in my 17 years as a prosecutor.”

Janae Houser, a mother of three who sat on the jury that convicted Lovato on 18 of 21 counts in February, said she wept throughout the trial as prosecutors described the cruelties inflicted on the boy.

“You just wanted to hug him when he was giving his testimony – to let him know that there are people out there who are ready to love him,” she said.

Of Lovato’s stiff sentence, she said, “Justice was served.”

Lovato’s attorney, Shimon Kohn, said he was disappointed by the severity of the sentence. He had argued that imposing the maximum on each of the counts, would push his client’s sentence beyond what some have received for cases involving a death.

He asked that a public defender be appointed to lead Lovato’s appeal because the former Colorado Department of Transportation worker is now “indigent.”

11 comments:

Robin said...

One of the (many) things that has always bothered me about adoption is this blind spot about adoptive parents. Whenever anyone mentions adoption it is with the underlying assumption that APs always provide a loving, stable and financially secure home. No one ever seems to question whether all PAPs have wonderful characters and how without knowing them or knowing them for only a short time it can be ascertained that they will be better parents than the child's natural parents.

Mirah Riben said...

Adoption is swathed in mystery & myth...romanticized and believed to be a "win-win" rescue mission. Adoptive parents are exalted as saviors even when 90+% of them adopt for purely SELFISH reasons - it is about what they want not to help humanity proven by the tens of thousands of children in foster care who COULD be adopted and are ignored.

On top of this, it is a mega-BILLOn dollar industry so those handing over the kids could care less about properly vetting PAPS! Their only concern is if they can afford the price tag.

The quintessential case is that of Masha Alan who was placed in the home of a pedophile who had no room or even a separate bed for the child! And the agency responsible is still in business!

Anonymous said...

In some of these cases the adoptive parents appear to have adopted from the foster care system.

Unless an adoption is contested, it doesn't matter whether the adoptive parents would be better parents since the birth/natural parents have decided not to parent.

Also, adoptive parents do have to submit home studies, natural parents do not. There are plenty of examples of natural parents abusing and even killing their children.

Mirah Riben said...

So, some adopted from foster care. So what? Does that entitle them to abuse the children entrusted to them? Do the children deserve to be abused because they were is foster care first?

It doesn't matter? It matters plenty to the kids being abused! What is wrong with you?

And I guess you did not read the previous comment. People like Matthew Mancuso who adopted Masha Alan adopt all the time with no real valid home study - at best it's a runner stamp, done after the child is in the home and paid for by the adopter. In the case of Masha there was NONE!

And, even the most stringent home studies do not weed out all the abuse that occurs in adoptive families.

Yes, natural parents abuse too. But that's one of the reasons we have adoption! It' supposed to be the fix, not a perpetuation or a beginning of new abuse.

BOTTOM LINE: Adoptive parents do not obtain children by accident. They try really hard and often pay lots of money. It is INEXCUSABLE, dispicable and abhorrent for them to take the trust placed in them and abuse it and the innocent child they promised - and went of their way - to care for!

I feel very sorry for you r anyone else who does not get it.

Anonymous said...

I thought the main purpose of adoption was to provide homes for children who's birth parents did not want to raise them and children for would be parents who cannot have their own biological children.

It is inexcusable and abhorrent for any person to abuse a child (or any other human being for that matter).

I suspect the percentage of adoptees who are abused is lower than non-adoptees because there are at least some checks on suitability and the parents are often very motivated.

Children adopted out of the foster care system typically don't cost any money at all and the PAPs are vetted by social workers they are not paying for. That said, the social workers may be so motivated to get these children adopted that they overlook red flags.

Mirah Riben said...

Yes, the intended purpose of adoptionis to find SAFE homes for childrem who are orphans or whos eparent are unable or unwilling to provide them with a safe home.

No, it is NOT to provide adults with children. Read the quotes from the UN at the top of this page.

What you "suspect" is likely untrue, however. Despite the multitude of abuses that occur in adoptive homes, like all abuse a lot more goes unreported. Fact is that no one is tracking it just as no one is researching the percentage of adoptive parents who divorce as compared with the nat'l. av., or the number of adoptees who commit suicide compared to non-adoptees. What we do know is that there is a disproportionate number of adoptees in all kinds of facilities fro troubled your and prisons. That puts a strain on marriages.

And the other we know is that there is a higher rate of all kinds of abuse - emotional, physical and sexual - in foster homes. One reason is the absence of kinship taboo. So, it seems logical that the rate of abuse might be similarly higher in adoptive families as the same lack of blood relation is present.

For your final statement, you are half right once again. While it costs next to nothing to adopt from foster care, many of those adoptions are subsidized and there are, unfortunately, sic people who take those kids in foster care and in adoption FOR THE $$. Further, states look to move children quickly out of foster care and into adoptive homes because they get grants from the federal gvt to do so.

Everything about adoption is tied into money....and a lot of it is not pretty, not child-centered at all. It's a business....a multi-billion dollar industry.

Mirah Riben said...

And one more thing. Don't ever assume that just because a child is removed by the state that it was for valid reasons. And don't assume that every mother who relinquished did so because she really wanted to or was unable to be a parent. There are pressures and coercion because there is a demand for babies to adopt.

Anonymous said...

Wow...anonymous you are so uneducated about the abuses that occur in adoption. I, among many of my adopted peers, was brutally abused by the people who adopted me.

The reality is that abuse is MORE prevalent in adoptive "families" than non-adoptive families.

-Mara

Anonymous said...

What the UN thinks the purpose of adoption is and what this who adopt think the purpose is may not be the same.

Can you point to any studies that back up your claims about the prevalence of abuse in adoptive homes. Preferrably ones that break out infant adoption from the adoption of older children from the foster care system or foreign orphanages.

Mirah Riben said...

Please see my comment dated: October 4, 2011 7:43 PM

"Despite the multitude of abuses that occur in adoptive homes, like all abuse a lot more goes unreported. Fact is that no one is tracking it just as no one is researching the percentage of adoptive parents who divorce as compared with the nat'l. av., or the number of adoptees who commit suicide compared to non-adoptees. What we do know is that there is a disproportionate number of adoptees in all kinds of facilities for troubled youth and prisons. That puts a strain on marriages.

"And the other we know is that there is a higher rate of all kinds of abuse - emotional, physical and sexual - in foster homes. One reason is the absence of kinship taboo. So, it seems logical that the rate of abuse might be similarly higher in adoptive families as the same lack of blood relation is present."

WISH we had studies and data. No one cares enough or, to be more precise, those who profit from the redistribution of children directly and indirectly - and their lobbyists - do not fund studies that would show the truth.

There are BIG BUCKS in adoption and those of us who work to reform it cannot fight that. With adoption sealed, it is impossible to do the research on our own without the cooperation of adoption agencies.

I wrote of this problem - lack of accurate studies - and the need for more research in all these areas in my 1988 book. But NOTHING!

Mirah Riben said...

And, yes. Those who adopt and those who ant to feel 'entitled' to children. That's the problem. They create a demand that is too often filled by child traffickers, exploitation, coercion and corruption. No demand, no kidnapping to meet the demand!

No moral ethical culture would presume that anyone owes their child to another because they WANT one! Instead, we PRETEND that adoption is child-centered and is rescuing children.

RussiaToday Apr 29, 2010 on Russian Adoption Freeze

Russi Today: America television Interview 4/16/10 Regarding the Return of Artyem, 7, to Russia alone

RT: Russia-America TV Interview 3/10

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