When Adoption Goes Wrong

Peggy Hilt adopted Nina, a two year old girls from Russia as an infant. Hilt wanted to be a good mother but every day with Nina was a constant struggle. Whenever Hilt tried to hug or kiss Nina she would pull away. Nina was also physically aggressive with her older sister, who had been adopted from Ukraine and destroyed furniture and possessions.

Things only got worse and Hilt fell into a deep depression. This is when she started drinking heavily, something she'd never done before. Ashamed, she hid her problem from everyone, including her husband.

July 1, 2005, Hilt was packing for a family vacation, drinking beer the whole time and growing increasingly aggravated with Nina's antics. When Hilt caught her reaching into her diaper and smearing feces on the walls and furniture, "a year and a half of frustration came to a head," Hilt says. "I snapped. I felt this uncontrollable rage." Hilt beat Nina relentlessly and shook her as she dragged her upstairs.

The next day Nina stopped breathing. By the time the ambulance got the child to the hospital, she was dead.

Although rare, clinicians say they are seeing more overwhelmed adopting parents that encounter children's unexpected emotional and behavioral problems. It is by no means the childs fault and their behavior can be the result of trauma, mistreatment, malnutrition or institutionalization in their home countries. But even families who request a "healthy" child sometimes go home with a troubled one. Some orphanages or adoption agencies overseas are eager to find homes for difficult children in their care and mislead prospective parents or fail to disclose the full extent of a child's problems or personal history.

Joyce Sterkel runs the Ranch for Kids, a Montana boarding school for disturbed international adoptees. She says she's come to see the parents as well as the kids as victims in these tragic cases. "It's a horrible thing, but I understand how some people end up killing these kids," she says. "They have no empathy, no affection, no love. My heart goes out to these parents because they don't know what to do." Today it houses 25 to 30 kids from all over the country, and has a waiting list.

Many of the children have been bullied or raped while institutionalized or were the children of prostitutes, drug addicts or alcoholics. "I have gotten calls from parents who say the child they adopted has killed the family dog, threatened to kill them, and no one will help them," she says.