r/news • u/FreeChickenDinner • 4d ago

West Virginia couple charged with trafficking their adopted Black children to be used as ‘slaves,’ authorities allege

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/us/west-virginia-adopted-black-children-slaves-reaj/index.html
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u/Fun-Improvement-3299 4d ago

How are these type of people allowed to adopt kids. I hear so many stories of how difficult the adoption process is and I just don’t get how this type of personality makes it through the vetting process

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u/Omeluum 3d ago

I hear so many stories of how difficult the adoption process is

You're hearing stories from people trying to adopt babies or toddlers (without major disabilities), which is the vast VAST majority of people trying to adopt kids, that's why.

Baby adoption is a big for-profit business in the US with a low "supply" of available kids so agencies can afford to be very picky with candidates while also charing tens of thousands of dollars.

Large siblings groups of older kids like the ones from the article on the other hand usually come from foster care and/or "rehoming" situations.

Foster care is extremely underfunded and there simply are not enough families willing to foster - especially to foster multiple kids to keep siblings together (in this case 5?), to foster teenagers and older kids with "baggage"/trauma, and kids with disabilities. In a lot of places even the group homes are so full, they resort to sending foster kids to "troubled teen" camps (one of those foster kids recently died from the abuse there), have them sleep on the floor in the office, or even have them sitting in jail or mental institutions for weeks because there is nowhere else for them to go. There are usually requirements like background checks and a course to attend for foster parents but once they're approved, they will send the kids to just about anyone who has a bed for them.

And then there's the private "rehoming" that has literally 0 oversight. Other adoptive parents who got sick of their adopted kids, usually older kids from international adoptions or foster care with resulting trauma and again kids with disabilities, will post them in private groups on social media like Facebook. Then literally anyone who wants can "adopt" them, the agreement is just between the two families and maybe with some legal paperwork. No third party from the state or an agency is involved to run any checks on that.