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Why We Should Care About AdoptionRehoming
Stefano Montanari 2015/04/28
“A sick thing”. “Human trafficking in children”. “A gaping loophole with life threateningoutcomes”. These are just few of the ways experts, legislators and judges have namedunregulated private transfers of child custody, a practice referred to as re-homing.
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Private re-homing occurs when adoptiveparents transfer the custody of a childbypassing official channels. In such cases,parental authority is transferred with asimple Power of Attorney to non-familymembers.
Very often these people are perfectstrangers whose parenting abilities have notbeen screened by child welfare authoritiesor, worse, have been judged so poor thattheir biological children have been takenaway by child protection services.
According to an investigation published by Reuters in 2013, hundreds of children arevictims of re-homing in the USA every year. 70 percent of them are children adopted fromabroad.
“Rehoming can be an appropriate change of placement for a child if it is done with courtapproval and with home study that look at the needs of the child and the child’s bestinterests,” said Stephen Pennypacker, a senior child welfare expert and current Presidentof the Partnership for Strong Families, in an interview.
However, the problem with private rehoming is that it is not done with that oversight andthe necessary background screening on the prospective placement. “This can lead tosome pretty horrific consequences for children that are moved under thosecircumstances,” Pennypacker said.
One such case happened in Arkansas in 2014, when a six-year-old girl was sexuallyabused by a man who had obtained her custody via a private re-homing procedure. Thecase received intense scrutiny only last February as the media reported that the adoptivefather who gave the little girl away was a state legislator, Justin Harris.
Arkansas has since then passed two laws to prevent this practice, becoming the fifthstate to have regulated it. A few other states are slowly discussing bills to this effect,
while no federal law regulates it.
In a court decision in the State of New York last December, Judge Edward W. McCarty IIIdefined the practice “unmistakably trafficking in children” and called on the Legislature toamend domestic law to prohibit this “unsavory and unsupervised practice”.
This judgment came to no surprise to Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, British ColumbiaRepresentative for Children and Youth. “Rehoming sounds like a positive experience thatis looking at the best interests of the child, but actually it simply transfers a child toanother person without any required review by child welfare, or family judges or otherofficials. So it could be easily a cover for trafficking in children.”
Other child experts echo the concerns about the risks that unregulated re-homing posesto a child’s wellbeing, although they do not consider re-homing as trafficking becauseparents do not move children to exploit them, but to get rid of them. “All under the tabledealing on children’s matters entails risks of exploitation” said Michael Moran, INTERPOLAssistant Director, Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation, in a phone interview.“Unregulated re-homing creates opportunities for sex offenders. If loopholes exist, sexoffenders will use them.”
Reasons that pushes parents to resort to private re-homing vary from case to case. Themost common explanation given by parents engaging in such a practice is that they feeloverwhelmed by the behavioral problems of their adopted children. They also claim thatthe support they receive from child welfare authorities to deal with difficult adoptioncases is inadequate. In another cases, parents may fear to be charged with childabandonment if they seek to transfer the custody to the state. Financial considerationsmay also play a role because certain states accept to take a child under their custodyonly on the condition that parents pay for the child’s care until a new adoption takesplace.
Some state and federal authorities have acknowledged these problems and are trying toaddress them. State legislation has been adopted in Arkansas to strengthen post-adoption services and allow parents to give children back to state’s care if they haveexhausted the available resources – although no definition of what these resources are isprovided. At the federal level, the US President 2016 budget contains a proposal that
would guarantee federal funding for prevention and post-placement services.
Whether such initiatives will suffice to prevent rehoming is an open question, though, inparticular as the practice remains largely lawless in the USA. So far, only five state –Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana and Wisconsin – have adopted legislation toprevent re-homing. Five other states – Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New York and NorthCarolina – are discussing bills to this effect.
“This kind of regulatory void is enormously concerning,” said Jacqueline Bhabha,professor of the practice of health and human rights at Harvard School of Public Health.“Clearly, we need much tighter regulation and more supervising and support to families.”
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Tagged with: adoption, Arkansas, child custody, Child Protection, Child Welfare,children, Colorado, family law, Florida, Harvard School of Public Health, Human Rights,INTERPOL, Jacqueline Bhabha, Judge Edward W. McCarty III, Maine, Maryland, MichaelMoran, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Partnership for Strong Families, re-homing,rehoming, Stephen Pennypacker, trafficking, Wisconsin
About Author
Stefano Montanari
Stefano Montanari is an Italian freelance journalist specialised in human rights. Graduated inHumanities, with a focus on History and International Relations, he obtained an M.A. inInternational Co-operation and Project Design, after which he has been working forinternational organisations promoting human development and human rights. He currentlyworks as head of communications for the Council of Europe Commissioner for HumanRights. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the official
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