When “Forever” Isn’t Forever: Fighting for Abandoned Adoptees with Themis Youth Law & Advocacy
Our work centers on children abandoned after adoption, many of whom are sent to unlicensed, abusive facilities or left to fend for themselves on the streets.
By Dawn J. Post
For The Real Adoptee Moxie | Guest Contributor
Some adoptees are cut out of the family portrait quietly. No court case, no headlines, no warning. They are left in hospitals, airports, so-called treatment facilities, parking lots, and group homes. They are kicked out and in homeless shelters, couch surfing or on the streets. They are given away and told they will have a new family.
We call them abandoned adoptees.
They are the children promised forever, then dropped without recourse. Children raised to believe adoption would be their second chance, only to learn that family was conditional.
And far too often, no one steps in.
Who We Are
Themis Youth Law & Advocacy was founded to fill the silence and take action. Named after the Greek goddess of justice, Themis is a trauma-informed legal and advocacy initiative focused on children and youth who have been discarded by the very systems that promised to protect them.
Our work centers on children abandoned after adoption, many of whom are sent to unlicensed, abusive facilities or left to fend for themselves on the streets. These are not hypothetical harms. These are real children and young adults, with real names, facing very real dangers.
We're here to fight for them. In courtrooms, at legislatures, and through public pressure.
What We’re Fighting
At Themis, we’ve seen it all:
● Adoptees dumped across state lines with no oversight, no plan, and no follow-up. Often into facilities where foster youth are legally barred for safety reasons.
● Children placed in residential centers with known abuse histories. Some still operating without proper licensing, transparency, or trauma-informed care.
● Adoption subsidies quietly paid out to families who’ve already abandoned the child, even as that child lives in group homes, shelters, or on the street.
● Birth siblings permanently separated because of broken, bureaucratic adoption systems that prioritize paper closures over lifelong connections.
● States looking the other way while counties exploit legal loopholes to place vulnerable youth, especially abandoned adoptees, in institutions known to retraumatize.
And most devastating:
We've seen disabled, transracial, and international adoptees treated as if their pain is paperwork, instead of a call for justice.
This is a human rights issue masquerading as a bureaucratic inconvenience.
And the silence around it is lethal.
Why It Matters to Us — and Should to You
This isn’t just a "child welfare" problem. It's an adoptee justice problem.
For too long, the focus has been on getting children into adoptive homes, with little to no oversight of what happens after. And when adoptive parents abandon them, they often face no consequence. The child? They’re left with another trauma, another disruption, and usually, no legal path forward.
We believe that’s unacceptable.
And we know many of you reading this have lived some version of that story.
When Forever Isn’t Forever: Stories from the Frontlines
Ana was adopted from Kazakhstan when she was about four years old, along with her sister. Ana doesn’t remember her birth name or the village she came from. What she does remember is what happened after she arrived in America: the hope of forever didn’t last long.
As she got older, Ana started to show signs of trauma. The kind that’s common for internationally adopted children who’ve survived early neglect and institutional care. But instead of receiving support or therapy, Ana was gradually pushed out of her adoptive home. At just 12 years old, she was placed in short-term “respite” homes. Then, at 13, she was sent to an overseas facility. After three months in isolation, Ana was told that her adoptive parents no longer wanted her, and the program was her new parent.
Ana spent her teen years isolated from the world in an unlicensed, unregulated program far from any safety net. There was no focus on education, no trauma-informed care. Just survival.
Now 20, Ana is trying to rebuild her life from the ground up. She’s working on her GED and trying to recover from years of exploitation and trauma. She’s also struggling to stay housed after losing her job. A job that brought up flashbacks and emotional pain from her years in institutional care. She never got a driver’s license. She missed out on the rites of passage most teens experience. Her adoptive family has long since disappeared.
Ana’s story isn’t unique. It’s part of a pattern. One where adopted kids are discarded when they show signs of pain, and then sent to for-profit facilities that hide behind the language of “treatment” and “therapy” while doing neither. These places leave scars, not healing.
But Ana is still here. Still standing. Still fighting for her future.
Robin was adopted from foster care in the U.S., then later abandoned by her adoptive family and sent overseas to an unregulated, abusive institution. While there, she endured years of emotional and physical harm, with no oversight or intervention.
Upon aging out, Robin was sent back to the U.S. with no support. Just a one-way ticket to Florida. She faced unstable housing and trauma-related health concerns. In the face of systemic abandonment and lack of safe options, she exchanged sexual acts for shelter and food for over a year. Robin was hesitant about trusting traditional homeless shelters given the abuse she suffered in institutional care.
Once Robin contacted Themis, we sought to secure her a safe placement but faced repeated roadblocks. Child welfare in her home state of Arizona refused to provide post-adoption services or support because she wasn’t adopted as a teenager. We searched for shelter beds all over the country and, after one was found, relocated Robin. But she was evicted from without notice, due process, or alternative support due to a prior vaping incident from a different facility.
This retraumatizing rejection underscores the systemic gaps for adoptees abandoned by both their families and the systems meant to care for them. Robin, like many, was treated as disposable with lasting repercussions on her willingness to seek help and her overall sense of safety and stability,
Her story is not an outlier. It is a brutal example of what happens when compassion fatigue, bureaucratic inflexibility, and a lack of trauma-informed care converge, and why reforms are urgently needed.
A Call to Action
If this work resonates with you, we invite you to join us.
✅ Follow and share Themis on social media to help break the silence.
✅ Support our direct legal advocacy. Donations go toward emergency housing, food, and legal services for children discarded post-adoption.
✅ Write your legislators. Push for reform in adoption subsidy laws and post-adoption oversight.
✅ If you’re a survivor, lawyer, or advocate - connect with us. Your voice and expertise matter, and we need assistance all over the country.
Most importantly: keep speaking. Keep telling the truth. It’s how systems start to crack.
Themis Youth Law & Advocacy exists because too many children were told that forever meant something it didn’t. We are here to fight for a world where it finally does.
Why I endorse Dawn J. Post and Themis Youth Law & Advocacy:
As an adult adoptee who has spent over 15 years in the trenches, advocating, listening, and witnessing firsthand the devastating aftermath of failed adoptions, I stand behind Dawn J. Post and the mission of Themis with every fiber of my being. The crisis she outlines is not abstract. It is the lived reality for far too many adoptees, especially intercountry adoptees, who are cast aside without identity, citizenship, resources, or recourse. I have met these survivors. I’ve seen the statistics. And I’ve mourned too many who never made it off the streets.
This movement is not only necessary, but also urgent. Adoptees are being discarded, retraumatized, and left to die in silence. They’ve been tossed to the wolves, abandoned by the very people and systems who promised to love them. This epidemic of abandonment is a major reason why adoptees are grossly overrepresented in prisons, jails, psychiatric institutions, and so-called “treatment” and mental health facilities.
The troubled teen industry is overflowing with discarded adoptees, many of whom were sent away simply for showing signs of grief, loss, and trauma. This is not a coincidence; it is systemic failure. Themis dares to name the injustice and fight it head-on. That’s why I support this work. Because no adoptee should ever be promised forever, only to be discarded with nothing.
We are done being silent.
Please consider reading the articles below and doing the research to learn more about this epidemic. Consider donating to Themis Youth Law & Advocacy.
I see you; I feel your pain for all the adoptees who feel forgotten, lost, and alone. Please don’t give up, and know you aren’t alone in feeling like you do.
If you are a USA adoptee experiencing a mental health crisis, please take immediate steps to ensure your safety. Contact a licensed mental health professional or text #988 for immediate assistance.
For adoptees around the globe, please reach out to The Mental Health Helplines: International Global Help Hotline Directory here.
I have compiled a list of recommended resources for adoptees and advocates. It can be found here: Recommended Resources for Adult Adoptees and Adoption Advocates.
Thank you for reading and for supporting me and my work.
Understanding is Love,
Pamela A. Karanova
Here are a few articles I recommend reading:
Adoptions Dirty Little Dumping Ground by Pamela A. Karanova
100 Heartfelt Transracial Adoptee Quotes that Honor the Truth of Adoption by Pamela A. Karanova & 100 Transracial Adoptees Worldwide
When Adoptees Know Loss Before We Know Love by Pamela A. Karanova
When Society is Uninformed On Separation Trauma, Education is Essential by Pamela A. Karanova
Thirty Things to Consider Before Adopting from An Adult Adoptee Perspective by Pamela A. Karanova
I’m Adopted, HELP ME by Pamela A. Karanova
Adoption Hasn’t Touched Me. It’s Ruthlessly Kicked My Ass by Pamela A. Karanova
Head Logic Won't Heal a Broken Heart: Emotional Gaslighting & Why Emotions Matter in Adoptee Grief & Loss by Pamela A. Karanova
Adopted and in the Dark: The Medical History Crisis No One Talks About by Pamela A. Karanova
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This is so important and extremely upsetting. Thank you for sharing this.