I had always appreciated the little signs that children trusted and liked me. But, unfortunately, like nearly every oldest child, I took my little sisters and brothers for granted. Sometimes, just when they wanted to be around me, I would push them away and tell them to stop bothering me. I wasn't eager to jump to their assistance with anything, always saying that they should learn to fend for themselves. But on those occasions when I got along with them, I enjoyed those little signs- like when Jordan* would knock on my door to ask if maybe, that day, I could help him with his reading. Or when one of the kids would pick me when given a choice between my dad or me as a writing tutor. Or when Kelly would ask if I could pull a tick off of her puppy, instead of going to my parents. Or when Madeline and Wendy called home from a field trip and asked to talk to me first. I could go on and on, but I think I've gotten my point across. These little signs showed that they trusted me, and that made me feel really good. I had also always had a soft spot for Jordan. He was our first adoption. At the age of 20 months, he was barely walking when he got off the plane with my dad at the San Diego International Airport. He was very apprehensive and wary of everyone at his welcome party, and wouldn't let anyone pick him up. That is, until I went to fill his bottle with water, and he followed me. After studying me for several minutes, he held up his arms to be picked up. I was overjoyed! Since then, it's always been Jordan who was truly my favorite.

Jordan fit in wonderfully with our family. The day after he arrived, he was ever the little ham, posing for photographs wearing his tiny sunglasses and new pajamas. He immediately became an integrated family member. He would order people around, and everyone did as was ordered, with a touch of amusement at the tiny little man telling them what to do. When he didn't get his way, he resorted to biting his opponent. People we met were completely amazed that he hadn't been with us since birth, he was so well adjusted! He loved all of his extended family, and was loved right back, 100 times more. After Jordan had lived with us for 3 weeks, we packed up our belongings and moved to New Jersey. My dads company was shutting down its San Diego office and moving the employees to New Jersey. We left San Diego and drove to Los Angeles, where we stayed for an extended weekend at my Grandfather's house, saying our last goodbyes to the extended family. Then my moms best friend, who had helped us out a lot with Jordan's adoption, joined us. My dad went back to San Diego to supervise the furniture moving, and we drove to her house, just outside of San Fransisco. After a week at her house, we flew to New Jersey from San Fransisco International. My dad joined us about a week later. After a month of living in a hotel and two months with my moms aunt and uncle, we bought an old farmhouse and moved in. Ben was the next adoption, arriving 5 months after we settled in our new home. We originally took him in as an international foster child. He was a bit of a terror... he wouldn't let anyone hug him. He kicked and beat up the animals, had horrible night terrors and would wake up every hour banging his head and screaming. He would walk away with anybody who so much as smiled at him. We struggled through the first 3 or 4 months, and then he was fitting in pretty well- the night terrors had stopped, we could hug him, and he was learning to be gentle to the pets. We decided that we would like to adopt him. By October 1993 he was legally adopted. During this entire time, we were also going through another international adoption- two, actually. We were adopting two boys, Michael and Chris, from Romania. They were each a few months younger than me, and not related to each other, but when they found out that they were being adopted together, they became friends. More like allies, actually. They became a team, dependant on each other to get by in their rough environment, with Chris as the "brains" of the operation and Michael providing legs, as Chris had a paralyzed foot that severely limited his mobility. They had lived in an asylum for "unsalvageable" children in the mountains of Romania since the age of 3 years. Basically these institutions were created as a place to keep unwanted children until they died of "natural" causes. These institutions were almost literally Hell on Earth. Under the rule of Nicholai Ceaucescu, the communist dictator of Romania, laws were put into place, requiring every woman medically able to have 5 children, and outlawing birth control and abortions. He must have been hoping to increase the size and power of Romania, but what happened instead was it became a poverty-stricken country, and hundreds of newborns were abandoned every day. These babies lived in orphanages until around the age of 4 or 5, sometimes more and sometimes less. Usually the young mothers dropped them off saying they would be back someday, when they were able to support them. Most of the time they were never heard from again. The orphanages could only support so many children, and eventually they were all overcrowded. That's when the institutions, known as Camin Spitals, came into wide use. When the "unsalvageable children"... i.e. the children of minority races, children with physical handicaps, or those who were mentally retarded... grew to be about 3 years old, they were shipped to a Camin Spital. There they were under the supervision of "nurses" who were actually local farm women with no experience raising children. The kids were kept naked in cold cement rooms, locked in by a chain link fence from floor to ceiling, with a padlocked gate that only the attendants could open. In most rooms there was no toilet that the children had access to, and the rooms were so crowded that they could only relieve themselves on each other. Twice a day a bucket of mush, presumably oatmeal, or some other food such as bread that was sometimes weeks old, served with watery cabbage soup, was slopped into the room, where the children fought like wild animals to get their share. They were constantly covered with flies, and were often too weak or discouraged to shoo them away. When the children were bathed, it was basically to the extent of being herded in groups through a stream of cold water from a hose, or, in the case of the younger ones, dipped one after another into the same tub of filthy, unheated water. Lice ran rampant, and the nurses regulary shaved the children's heads, using primitive electric razors with blades so dull that the children's weak, unnourished hair would clog it, and the nurses would tug, sometimes so hard that pieces of the children's scalp would rip away with the hair. The children were punished in ways almost unimaginable to Westerners. They would be beaten, literally flogged, with belts, whips, even two-by-fours. Countless children who have come out of these institutions have told of being injected as a punishment, and one American doctor who worked in a Camin Spital found a long needlie with a sharp barb on the end of it, which would explain the reason these children shriek with fear at the sight of a syringe. Nearly all the children were sexually abused, some brutally raped by the drunken guards who patrolled the hallways late at night. Many of the "nurses" and guards would beat the children for their own sick pleasure. All of this was exposed in early 1990 on TV documetaries. The Romanians were quite embarrassed about having their dark secrets exposed, and worked to improve the situations in Camin Spitals. The chain link fences were replaced with clear plexiglass, and the gates opened so that the children were free to wander through their wards. Holland sent many teams of trained nurses, and set up classrooms, infirmaries, play areas, and bedrooms. For the first time the children had toys available, and wore clothing, and slept in real beds. It all seemed to be a great improvement. The Dutch nurses trained the Romanian women, and then gradually provided less and less supervision as the Romanians learned how to be more patient with the children and how to take care of them. For the first time, there were educational activities and games for the children to take part in. The Dutch teams had set up large foam pads and rugs on the floor, to create a safe place for the children to dance and play, and during play time, the room was filled with music, and there were activities for the children to participate in. Indoor plumbing was installed. Though it was primitive, simply a pipe sticking out of the floor as a toilet, it was a huge change from before. Weekends were a different picture. On weekends, all nurses, Romanian and Dutch alike, went home, and the guards were left in charge of the children. To prevent any problems, the children were heavily drugged, so that they would sit around like vegetables until the staff returned on Monday. Nights were also different. After the Dutch nurses went home at night, the night staff patrolled the bedrooms. They would inject rowdy children with sedatives, and often nighttime was when the guards snuck in to rape them. The Spitals were still overcrowded, and the children slept two, sometimes three to a bed, on sheets soaked with urine because they were beaten if they got up to use the toilet. Nights could be terrifying in the Camin Spitals. When the Camin Spitals were exposed, thousands of Westerners flocked to Romania to rescue these children. Most sought toddlers in orphanages, but many also went to the Camin Spitals in the north, searching for specific children who had captured their hearts on television programs. When they got to the Camin Spitals, they were appalled at the conditions the children were in, and worked as hard as they were able to get their kids out fast. Many parents volunteered their time in the Spitals, playing with the children, cleaning, feeding, and many other things. The children were always charming, swarming around the American newcomers, asking if they would bring them to America. The children offered to share their food and toys, and at dance time, all would tug on the Americans' hands to have a turn dancing. When it finally came time for each visitor to take their child home, the other children cried, begging, "Take me to America too!" Something that you never heard about was the hidden risks that these children had. Of course there were the obvious possibilities- Hepatitis, HIV, Aids, parasites, malnutrition, mental retardation... but the biggest problem, the problem you never heard about, was something called Attachment Disorder. Attachment Disorder, or AD, is a problem that easily stays hidden. It is usually caused by abuse or neglect in the first two years of life. This is also a problem that many children in the US foster care system have, but it is almost an entirely different disorder. Children in foster care here have usually bonded with an adult, sometimes several times, and had that trust broken repeatedly by abuse or neglect. The children who grew up in orphanages and Camin Spitals never had the chance to healthily bond to someone in the first place. As they grew up in the orphanages, staffed to the bare minimum, they were kept two or three to each metal crib. They were fed irregularly, and had diaper changings only once or twice a day. When they cried, there was no response. The babies learned not to express their needs. They didn't cry from hunger or discomfort. They learned just to live with hunger, and if a wet diaper got too uncomfortable, they figured out how to take it off by themselves. They learned that they could only depend on themselves to have their needs met. As they got over, they totally put a wall around their hearts. These children actually CANNOT form healthy, trusting bonds with other people. They generally use other people to get what they need. They become expert manipulators. That is exactly what happened to the children in the Camin Spitals. The ones who didn't die within a year of coming to the institution, became experts at manipulation. They were charming and sweet, trying to become staff favorites. The ones who were looked upon by the staff as "the good ones" were rarely punished, and almost always got the better of every deal. Most of these favorites were rewarded by getting extra helpings of food, their own bed, or their own clothes that no-one else could take, but some of them got even higher ranks and were allowed to stay up late with the night shift nurses while the other children were terrorized in their beds, or allowed to sit in the office with the secretary during the day. These children were the outgoing ones, the ones whom the staff was eager to show off to visiting Westerners because they would sing praises about the nurses. Adoption agency officials who came by were enchanted with these children, and automatically photographed them to be posted in adoption newsletters as "Waiting Children." The other children, the ones who were bruised and terrified, the ones who were raped and beaten, were hiding in the shadows, never noticed by visitors. These children were never adopted. It was the manipulators who were brought to America. I'm not saying it was impossible for these children to fit in and work with an adoptive family, even to partially turn their lives around and start healing. But many of them had major problems. When Chris and Michael finally joined our family, after our untiring efforts over 4 years, they seemed to settle right in. Chris was definitely the more intelligent one. He was also very good looking, friendly, and charming. He started speaking English within days, becoming fluent in less than a year. He quickly made friends, girls in a club that he joined, and flirted tirelessly with them. He was speeding along in his schoolwork and started to learn to read and write. Michael had more problems. He had been one of the less favored children in the Camin Spital, and had not learned many of the skills that Chris had mastered. Michael had never even held a pencil in his hand, whereas Chris knew the alphabet, numbers, and how to spell his name upon arrival. Michael also ate like a vacuum cleaner, several times choking on the food he shoved in his mouth using his fingers as much as the fork and knife, and spilling food on the floor, table, and his lap. He seemed eager to learn, but during schoolwork hours he would drop pencils, spill paint, draw on the furniture, intentionally scribble up his numbers while laughing, distract the other kids, and generally was exhausting to work with, especially when compared to Chris, who could sit for hours trying to read, and writing letters and numbers over and over again in his notebook. It got to the point where Chris would do his work with the rest of us during the day while Michael played, and then he would work one-on-one with my dad at night. Michael also had a lot of behavioral problems, which actually got worse as time went on. He could be very cruel to animals. It seemed like it was impossible for him to walk across a room without pulling on some dog's fur or stepping on someones tail. He was very destructive, and combined with the fact that he lied about EVERYTHING, he could be very frustrating to be around. We could walk into a room where he would have a toy in his lap that had been meticulously picked apart. We would say, "Michael, why did you break that toy?" He would smile and say, "I didn't break the toy. Chris broke it." He didn't feed his pet fish, all the while assuring us that he was feeding it twice a day. When the fish died, he denied that it was dead. Finally he admitted that it was dead, and when asked how it died, he said, "Jordan killed it."

He was also self-abusive. He would sit intently picking a hole in the top of his hand or in his lip. This especially happened when he was sent to his room for a time-out. He also had constant problems with "accidents" which we found out are actually a form of self-abuse in some children, especially children suffering from the previously mentioned Attachment Disorder. He would go outside for five minutes and come in with a swelling lump on his forehead or a cut knee. He found out that this was a great way to turn people against each other too. I would ask him about the lump on his head, and he would insist that he didn't know how he got it. My mom would ask him about it and he would say, "I fell down." But when my dad would question him about the same lump, he would say, "Mom hit me." This nearly always got my parents into an argument, and it was a long time before they realized that every time they argued about anything, Michael would be over in the corner, watching everything with a look of joy. He started doing this much more frequently, and actually making things up out of thin air. He would run to my dad screaming "Dad! Dad! Kelly broke a toy!" For a long time, the accused party would automatically receive a punishment such as a time-out or writing sentances, as Michael smirked with delight at the thought of his getting someone else in trouble. Eventually though, he started doing it just a little too frequently, and his his accusations were proven to be lies when he would say that Ben broke a glass when Ben was in another room with Wendy at the time, or some other similar situation. But he even lied in these scenarios, saying, "But I didn't see him break it. Chris TOLD me that Ben broke it." Michael spent a lot of time playing with Ben and Jordan in the living room. Sometimes for 2 to 3 hours at a time, they would quietly put puzzles together or play card games. We thought nothing of these quiet times, actually grateful that Michael had found something creative to do and wasn't terrorizing the cats or breaking something. But our relief was short-lived, when we found out was that what was really going on was that Michael was whispering to the little boys about life in the Camin Spitals, and that if they didn't do what he wanted when he wanted it, as far as telling lies with him and such, that he would see to it that the police came to get them and took them to Camin Spitals. He also said that the police would take them away and beat them until they bled. Jordan and Ben never told us about these stories. We only found out one day when I walked past and heard what he was saying to them.

We simply tried to find new ways to deal with these problems, and generally just keeping on top of everything he did proved to work. Michael was never alone with Ben and Jordan, or an animal. He didn't get any more pets after his fish died. Basically he never had a chance to mess anything up, and he would go through phases also in which he really seemed to be improving and "getting a clue."

After he and Chris had been here for a year and a half, we found out from a friend of my parents about a young girl from a war torn African country who was in the US foster care system. My parents friend, who ran an adoption agency for African war children, thought that the little girl, Danielle, could really thrive in our family. She had disrupted from her previous adoptive situation after personality conflicts with other family members. My mom flew to the state Danielle was in, and visited with her for several days. During this time Danielle looked at pictures of all of us, memorizing names and faces, and would eagerly look forward to the time every night when my mom called home, so that she could talk to her new sisters and brothers. Two months after this visit, Danielle came to live with us.

She fit right in, and we all got along beautifully. She kept in touch with her therapist, foster mother and sister, and friends from the state she had lived in. We made an album for her of her biological family in Africa, whom she talked a lot about. We even added her biological mothers first name as Danielle's middle name, which would be official when the final adoption papers were processed. That never came to be.

As time went on, Michael got to be harder and harder to deal with. His behavior became increasingly of control. He started telling Ben and Jordan that they should kill my mom and I, specifically by decapitation with an axe. We didn't find out about this until one day when we heard them talking about how they wanted to "cut off mom's head with a axe" when they were serving a time-out in their room.

He also stopped responding to traditional punishments like time-outs. The entire time he was in a time out he would shout down the stairs, "Can I come out yet?" or "I didn't do it!" or else he quietly sat up there and broke things, especially his glasses. When time-outs in his room got too out of control, he started standing in a corner of the dining room where my parents could keep an eye on him. This didn't work either. He would make faces at them when their backs were turned, or yell insults at whoever was in the room, or blatantly refuse to stand in the corner, walking away when he was put there. So they tried spanking him. The first time he was spanked, he was shocked, and his behavior improved for a short time. For a few days, he shaped up at the threat of a spanking. But he quickly started going downhill again. One spanking was upped to two, and two became three, which led to four. Finally my parents realized that it just wasn't working, and they put their heads together to come up with a solution.

They came up with something called "stair-climbing." This was basically meant for him to expend negative energy in a way that was impossible to mess up - simply walking up and down the stairs. His trips up and down were marked by small wooden blocks. My dad would sort out a pile of blocks, and say that Michael had to go up and down "this many times". This way Michael could work at his own pace and, in a way, control his own punishment. He could take all afternoon or be done in 15 minutes, depending on how much he wanted to be out of punishment. He would simply pick up a block, carry it to the top, set it down, and return for another. If he mouthed off or insulted people as he walked, he would get a warning, and if the warning was ignored, a few more blocks were added to the pile. This proved to be the most effective technique so far! It almost seemed like we were finally making a real breakthrough with Michael.

But on the other hand...

While Michael was finally making progress, the other boys, so stressed by Michael's recent behavior, started acting out. Ben and Jordan started pooping in their drawers, closet, and toy boxes, and Jordan especially would wake up in the middle of the night and pee on the floor. More than once Jordan peed on Ben's bed during the day, or would pee on the floor and use Ben's pillow to mop it up. My parents tried natural consequences - you pee on the floor, you mop the floor. You poop in your drawer, you wash the clothes in the bathtub. But these consequences didn't work. Eventually peeing on the floor and pooping in the closet became standing in the middle of the room, fully clothed, and going in their pants. They also started the crazy lying. Once Jordan was confronted about the pee in his underwear, and he actually said, "Ben did that."

Chris started lying too, although not as constantly or extremely as Michael. Basically his acting out consisted of verbal abuse to other family members.

For all three boys, time-outs or removal of TV privileges as punishments had always worked. But as Michael became more out of control, these forms of discipline had less and less effect on Chris, Ben, and Jordan. Spanking was also attempted with them, and like with Michael, it failed. SO when my parents saw the success they were having with the stair-climbing with Michael, they decided to try it with the other boys. And it worked.

All in all, Ben had to do the stair-climbing once, Jordan twice, Chris twice, and Michael only five or six times.

One day, a day I will never forget as long as I live, Chris was climbing the stairs because of his constant verbal abuse on the rest of the family. He was mouthing off the whole time he climbed, and had a lot of extra blocks added to his pile. He was getting more and more provoked, and after he had a rest, things exploded. He picked up the largest block in the pile, which was about 3 feet by 4 inches, and started waving it at my mom while yelling insults in her face and saying that he was going to go back to Romania because they were so much nicer over there. My mom took him outside to calm down, and he started running for the road, where he very probably could have been hit; it's a busy two-lane highway. Realizing that he was literally out of control, and could be in a very dangerous situation, she grabbed his shoulders and did her best to hold him back; a difficult task, as he was nearly her height and weight, and seemed to have aquired superhuman strength in his rage. He tried to break away but she hung on, and he collapsed onto the patio, violently kicking and shouting. This lasted a good 10 minutes, and then he finally started to calm down. During the entire ordeal he had scratched his face and lips on the ground, and an earring had been partially torn from his ear, but other than that he was, surprisingly, unharmed. My mom, who had by then been joined by my dad, got him into a fenced area just off the porch.

Immediately then a police car pulled into the driveway. The cop got out of the car and asked my parents what was going on. They told him that everything was under control. "It doesn't look like that to me," he replied. Bending down to Chris, who was sitting on the ground, he asked him, "What happened?"

Chris paused, and then looked at the cop. "Mom hit me," he replied.

If it hadn't been for this false accusation, we would still be a family. But after these words came out of Chris's mouth, more cops were called in, who in turn called in social workers from Child Protective Services. They swarmed in and kept us up until 3:30 in the morning, and didn't let our parents to come to us. My mom was allowed to come up once, and was followed by two officers. I sat upstairs with all of my sisters and brothers except Michael and Chris, who were downstairs with the police. We were all terrified. At around one in the morning, we were brought downstairs one at a time to be questioned by social workers, and then sent back up, only to wait to find out what was going to happen. At one point we watched an ambulance arrive, and saw Chris and Michael get in. Chris was walking just fine, and cracking jokes with the paramedics officers. He had a huge smile on his face and seemed to be having the time of his life. My dad followed, and they all drove away.

At 3:30 the social workers finally left, and only two police officers remained. My mom was allowed to come upstairs again. She got everyone to bed, and then told me that she had called a close family friend, who was going to come stay with us for a while. She said that she was having to go with the police, but not to worry, that she'd be home soon. I felt reassured that everything was going to be okay.

The next morning I was awakened around seven by Danielle. She ran up the stairs and into my room, yelling that "they" were going to take her away. I had no idea what was going on, but I assured her that no-one was taking her away, and told her to go up and stay with Madeline. I went downstairs, where one glance at my mothers friend told me that everything Danielle had told me was true. I don't even remember what she said to me. I later found out that my parents had been charged with abuse and arrested, after the first cop on the scene made a report stating that he had witnessed Chris being beaten by my mother in the front yard. Sadly we have found out that these false accusations on police reports are far too common. My parents were coerced into signing relinquishment papers for all 5 adopted children. They had been told that they WOULD sign the papers, or else the social workers would get a court order to have us ALL removed and "you will have a hell of a time getting them back".

I remember trying to keep from crying as I assured Ben, Jordan, and Danielle that it would only be for a couple of days, until everything was okay with Chris. I helped Danielle pack her bag. She chose her favorite stuffed animals while I picked warm clothes, remembering that it was still cold at that time of year. Just as I was zipping up her bag, she told me to wait. She rummaged through her box of treasures and found the photo album we had made her, when she lived in the foster home before coming to live with us. "So I can remember you guys," she said tearfully. She asked me to write our phone number on a piece of paper so that she could call us that night. She never made that call.

The social workers arrived for Ben, Jordan, and Danielle during our breakfast of scrambled eggs, which I was pushing around my plate in an attempt at looking like I was eating. They seemed to swoop into the house like hawks swoop down on their prey. "Ready to go, guys?" the man bellowed toward Ben and Jordan, as Jordan held tightly on to my hand. Danielle burst into tears again, and started hugging and kissing the other girls goodbye, whispering, "I'll miss you!" to each one. At my urging, Jordan and Ben dutifully hugged everyone, dazed, as they didn't understand what was happening. As I reached out for Ben to kiss him goodbye, the female social worker took his arm and walked him outside. I tightly hugged Jordon, crying into his shoulder. The social workers almost had to pull him away from me. Danielle was still crying, and as they walked to the driveway, Madeline, Wendy, and Kelly went to cry in the kitchen, and my mothers friend and I went to the side window where we could see the driveway.

They all turned and waved before getting in the car, and as they drove away, Danielle pressed her face against the window, still crying, as the car disappeared out of sight. I also pressed my face against the glass, trying almost to reach through it to her. As they drove out of sight, my mothers friend took me by the shoulders and we hugged, crying, for a long time. I finally broke away, saying that I needed to call my grandmother. She patted my shoulder comfortingly as I walked away, and then went to comfort my sisters.

That was a year ago. All my brothers and my sister are still in foster care. The allegations against my parents seem to keep changing, and all the while my siblings are each a year older. I've seen Danielle and Michael once each since then, Chris twice, and Ben and Jordan 10 times. It was my choice to only see Michael once. It's very stressful for me to be with him. I would like to visit Chris, and apparantly he would like to visit me, but CPS won't let me have any more visits with Chris and without Michael. They say that it's too stressful on Michael to be left behind.

Since they were taken away, we found out about Attachment Disorder and realized that Michael has all but one symptom on the extensive list of symptoms. Ben also has many symptoms, and Chris has about half the list. My parents have been saying over and over again that the kids have AD, but the therapists working on our case don't take this possibility into consideration. So far everything they have authorized has been the opposite of what they should have done, such as moving them from foster home to foster home, and allowing them to go on a long vacation to Florida with one foster family.

I think of my brothers and sister every day and miss them more than words can say. The worst part of this tragedy is that my parents are anything BUT child abusers. They are caring, wonderful people who would do anything for their children. The reason we are homeschooled is because my parents wanted us to have better educations than the ones we would receive in public schools. They have always been there for us, and have always been supportive of what we wanted, even to extremes. When I dyed my hair blue and pierced my nose, they supported me the whole time! How many other kids can say that? They've nearly driven me the distance to the moon and back with all my activities. They have an open-door policy with all of my friends. As long as my parents know my friend's parents, they can come visit for any length of time. They spent hundreds of dollars enrolling me in a theeater program when I wanted to try acting. They also nurture our compassion for other creatures; I have volunteered at soup kitchens, pet adoption days, D.A.R.E. events, Special Olympics, and food panties, and this summer I am going on my first Habitat for Humanity trip with my youth group. They are wonderful people, and I don't know why CPS can't see that. I also don't understand why they don't listen to my sisters and I, who have said over and over again that my parents are not child abusers. When parents are accused of abuse, isn't it the children of those parents who should first be listened to?

*NOTE* I wrote this story when the kids were still in foster care. Since then "Jordan" and "Ben" have come home for good. "Danielle", "Michael", and "Chris" are still in foster care and will probably never come back.