Adopted. Abandoned. But not forgotten.

Dawn J. Post works in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, home of Atlantis Leadership Academy.

I am a children’s rights attorney based in New York City. For over a decade I have advocated for youth who no longer live with their adoptive parents — what I call broken adoptions — and raised awareness about adoption subsidy misuse. 

In March 2024, Chelsea Maldonado, a survivor of Tranquility Bay in Jamaica, contacted me about Atlantis Leadership Academy, also in Jamaica. The Jamaican government had abruptly removed teenage boys from the American-owned facility due to allegations of severe abuse and neglect.

Maldonado is a consultant and researcher for Paris Hilton’s charitable arm 11:11 Media Impact, created in response to the abuse and neglect Hilton suffered as a teenager in institutional care. 

I traveled to Jamaica on my dime to offer my expertise in child welfare to authorities and to advocate for the boys pro bono. Three of the boys who had been removed were adopted and their families were allegedly not planning for their return to the U.S.

As I approached the foster care facility where the boys were staying, the glaring sun beat down on two armed guards who sat on a picnic table as they waved my driver and me to the side. Their presence contrasted sharply with the colorful painting on the main building and the bright, green soccer field. The extra security was deemed necessary because wealthy, white parents had allegedly made plans to kidnap the boys to return them to the U.S. by boat through a teen transporter. Affronted that the Jamaican government requested that they cooperate with a home study to facilitate their child’s return, they had located the youngsters via drone.

Adoption stereotypes persist

As reported by USA Today in 2022, in a first-of-its kind data analysis and investigation, for tens of thousands of children in the U.S., their “forever family” doesn’t last long. Specifically, investigative journalists found that 12 adoptions out of foster care break every day. But even this number is an underrepresentation, as, during the period that USA Today reviewed, caseworkers were not mandated to capture broken adoptions as a data point. Nonetheless, the numbers that were captured are alarming.  

I am ashamed to say that despite my research and work on foster youth being placed in for-profit behavioral health facilities that also house so-called troubled teens, I failed to realize how many teens, adopted internationally and domestically, are a part of that same population. Not a lot of data exists, but the very few studies that do have shown that adopted children are disproportionately represented in residential treatment programs and wilderness camps in the U.S. One found that despite representing 2% of the total population, adopted youth make up 25%-30% of the total population in these facilities. 

Paris Hilton testifies at the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means hearing on “Strengthening Child Welfare and Protecting America’s Children” on June 26, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Hilton spoke in support of reauthorizing a federal program for children in foster care. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

I anticipated that there would be a lot of red tape, based on my experience in child welfare. But I had no idea that all my efforts during the subsequent three weeks contacting advocates, individual state child welfare and juvenile systems, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Administration of Children and Families, and the Children’s Bureau, would yield so few results, particularly since all the boys had been system involved in some fashion before their placement in Jamaica. 

As a result, the three adopted boys, who happened to be the only ones of color, were placed in the permanent custody of Jamaica.     

Unfortunately, stereotypes persist that adopted children and youth are irredeemable because they are too damaged or suffer from reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The myth of RAD has taken over the narrative as children are pathologized as “kids without conscience” who are simply “violent, dangerous, at-risk, and risky.”  

Alarmingly, there is another facility in Jamaica that has approximately 170 youth, Youth of Vision Academy (YOVA), and claims to specialize in RAD. 

Who might want them?

According to director Noel Reid, the majority are adopted from foster care in the United States. Three members of YOVA’s leadership, including Reid, have ties to a private school in West Virginia called Miracle Meadows that was shut down based on allegations of torture of children in its care. They were identified in the underlying investigations of the civil lawsuits which resulted in settlements of more than $100 million, according to law firms that represented the West Virginia survivors. 

Miracle Meadows, a Christian boarding school in Salem, West Virginia, was shut down in 2014 after multiple allegations of abuse of students. (Forbes Law Offices courtesy photo via West Virginia Watch)

Survivors of YOVA have reported abuse and neglect reminiscent of the abuse and neglect suffered not only at Miracle Meadows but what the boys suffered at ALA. It’s unclear what will happen because any protective action against YOVA would pose a national emergency for Jamaica when the ALA boys have already used up much-needed resources. (Reid has labeled the allegations of abuse at YOVA as “false narratives,” according to Loop News in Jamaica.) 

Randall “Randy” Cook, the owner of ALA, who according to past reporting was formerly affiliated with The Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP) that was recently profiled on Netflix’s “The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping,” exploited RAD and other stereotypes. In an email following the teens’ removal, he claimed: “Our open communication, goodwill and active engagement is continuing to make its way through the Parish and shine light on the fact that we have some historically challenging young men that enabled ‘well intended’ Government Officials. Again, in both Governments. I do not believe 1 of our families have not been put in a situation with your Son that they intentionally and aggressively manipulated available levers to them, to both be in control and to harm or punish you, as a Parent and regardless to any possible damage to the family unit.” 

Then-Gov. Matt Bevin and his now estranged wife Glenna Bevin talked on KET in 2017 about their experiences with adoption. (Screenshot)

One of those sons, “Noah,” was that of former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin who had been adopted from Ethiopia. And he was one of the boys that I brought hopefully good news when I traveled to the foster care facility where most of them were placed. Pseudonyms have been used for Noah and the other boys to protect their privacy.

I last saw them following their third court appearance, which only one parent attended. We stood together in the blazing sunshine of the dusty parking lot outside the courthouse next to the police station’s impound lot filled with burned-out vehicles. Many already had known that their parents didn’t want them back, and if they didn’t, they had just learned so in court from local attorneys hired by their parents who said as much to the judge. Including Noah’s parents. In the brief time that the boys had before boarding the bus back, they gave me names and locations of people who might care about them. Might want them. Even if their parents didn’t.   

Cottage industry dupes desperate parents, caters to those with ‘buyer’s remorse’

Tarah Fleischman, whose son, Logan, was removed from ALA said that one of the “success stories” that ALA shared with prospective parents was about it warehousing an adopted youth until he was 18, dropping him off in Miami with some money, and telling him never to contact his adoptive parents again. In my subsequent interviews with the boys, they added that they were told by staff that this youth had been shot and they could end up just like him. 

When I first met the boys, Noah was the one I was most concerned about. After they all signed retainers for free legal services and support, I met with each of them individually, and in some cases, I was able to Facetime their parents or proposed guardians. For some, it was the first time they had contact with anyone from their prior lives. 

His eyes glassy, Noah was in disbelief when I told him that I had been successful. He told me that his adoptive mother claimed that the proposed guardian Noah had selected would never want him, which only reinforced the negative statements made at the facility, that the boys were all worthless and no one would ever believe them. For the first time, I saw him smile, no, not just smile, beam, as he joined the call.  

ALA is part of a cottage industry that dupes desperate parents into entrusting institutions with the care of their vulnerable children and caters to other parents (biological or adoptive) who simply have no interest in actually parenting their child, those who seemingly have “buyer’s remorse” over their decision to become parents of a particular child — of a teen like Noah who believes that he had been adopted to be part of a rainbow-family photo-op. 

What next?

Ultimately, as the Sunday Times of London reported, this “is a story about an American industry exploiting Jamaican trust, high unemployment, low wages and under-resourced state scrutiny for American parents who want their children to effectively disappear.” 

Noah is back in the U.S. Even though Jamaica has limited resources, arguably the country has shown “greater diligence towards these foreign children’s welfare than their own U.S. state authorities have displayed.”  However, it appears that the government’s patience has run its course as they have continued to house the last adopted teen from Michigan, abandoned not just by his adoptive parents, but the state and federal systems that have been repeatedly contacted regarding his situation. 

As of the time of this publication, Emmanuel  is scheduled to fly into Miami with the apparent hope that the Florida Department of Children and Families will bring him into care at the port of entry. The alternative?  The parents have signed over guardianship to a well-known figure in the troubled teen industry who wrote a strong letter in support of ALA and its staff following the boys’ removal.

Emmanuel complains, “I’ve called the CPS people in Michigan so many times [and] they said they would help but [they’ve] done nothing for me.” He hopes that Florida will take him in. “I would love to be placed in a group home or transitional placement in foster care so I can [have resources] when I turn 18.”  Including education. Because Emmanuel hasn’t received one for at least two years.

Adopted. Abandoned. But not forgotten as I and other advocates continued to advocate for not only a safe placement for Emmanuel back in the U.S. but for other youth in and outside of the country placed in institutional care which prioritizes profit over treatment and care.