The article also emphasizes that the US government, both federal and state, offers virtually no help to the parents and highlights a case where the parents where threatened with prosecution because they couldn't handle a child that had physically hurt one of their other children.
There is plenty of blame to go around, unfortunately, but it really highlights the almost complete lack of mental health care available in the US and the lack of help for parents who have very damaged children, whether adopted or not.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/317/u...
About 2 years ago I was watching a documentary about china-to-america adoptions on japanese television. While the point was never explicitly raised, the viewer could not help but notice that most or all of the children up for adoption - no interested chinese parents having being found - were, and there's no nice way to say this, quite physically unattractive, developmentally challenged, or both.
The program showed American couples arriving to claim their new family member and I was struck by how unwitting they seemed. I got the impression they simply did not have enough experience with asian children to realise that their adoptive child had, to put it brutally, a pretty poor genotype, with a host of physical and behavioural ramifications.
I've seen multiple people now talk about how unprepared the adoptive parents seemed to be. From my view, this is the minority. We are currently at the end of our stay and are at a hotel with maybe 10-15 other families. Every one we've spoken to were very prepared and knew what they were getting into.
As for the kids - don't get me wrong, plenty were healthy; but they did not conform to normal asian notions of physical attractiveness. The unavoidable conclusion was that the chinese adoptive parents, who had first choice, cared greatly about this factor, whereas the americans either couldn't tell or didn't care.
Yes they would lie. Shortcuts are taken at every step, bribes are paid. [Well I speak about the situation 10 years ago]. So some shadiness and cutting corners happens form both ends. American parents know they are paying bribes and cutting corners in the "process". I know of a case 10 years ago. They snuck the baby out of Russia by bribing. Bribed officials and people all through the chain. I was told there would not be another way. That child turnout to have issues. Not as severe but it sure put a tremendous strain on that family.
Anyway back to lies. I don't know if Russia or those other countries have laws to only give severely challenged kids to US parents. I think many orphanages do that individually because they think those children would have a better chance at a good life in America. Americans (at least a decade ago, when I was able to better compare) were seen as having unlimited resources and big hearts. They were the only ones who would adopt children with those issues. And by enlarge American families felt (feel?) the same, they feel they can provide and take care of a child with special needs. Some are aware of what they are getting into but many, don't but think they can handle it. That is when it becomes very dangerous.
Children would be vastly worse, I'm sure.
When I went to go adopt a cat with my fiancé, the SF SPCA were so upfront about known problems with the cats they had that I was surprised because it wasn't something I had really considered. We ended up adopting a cat from SF Animal Care & Control in the end since the SPCA had no more younger-than-5-years cats to adopt that day. SF ACC (and I assume SF SPCA too) not only test for health and behavioral issues before even making pets available for adoption, but also keep track of day to day behavior and are upfront about everything they found out while they've had the cat. It wouldn't be in anyone's benefit to make someone adopt a pet without learning of major, discoverable problems anyway, since the cats would be back for adoption soon if it was that bad.
Anyway, we found the sweetest 2 year old cat that had been abandoned by her owner that had nothing bad about her except that she doesn't like other cats and that she had been around at the shelter for a couple months because nobody wanted an "older" cat to adopt. She loves to just sit around and preen herself, and occasionally knocks our mice over or sits in front of our computers or on our laptops asking for treats. Life is so much better with her around, no idea what we would have done without her or with a different cat, and we were also of the "we really want to get kittens, maybe we should check breeders" mindset thankfully changed by an SPCA volunteer that gave us a heads up about the ACC shelter across the street. Maybe you can find a cat like her too instead of getting a kitten from a breeder :)
You should be able to set aside a few months to deal with any issues the dog has, like anxiety or other behavioral issues, and to dial in the diet and routines like walks. The shelter should be able to help with some of this. Taking this time is similar to dealing with a puppy.
I know you wrote about cats, but I felt a need to chime in about adopting companion animals from a shelter instead of going to a breeder. Adoption from a shelter is a perfectly good option, and it's a way to do some animal a favor, maybe saving its life.
So one can argue it starts with ignorance. People think raising a child is a walk in the park, playing baseball outside on the front lawn, going to football practice and all the nice stuff people see on TV.
From there it moves on to lies. Overseas adoption agencies can be very shady. They want to close the deal. They will hide and paper over medical histories.
Then once a child with severe psychological issues (some which manifest themselves 6 or more months later only), become apparent. The despair starts to take hold. Then someone knows someone who heard about his online "marketplace" and so on. It puts an idea in their head.
Then, a loophole in the law is used. The idea behind having laws to transfer guardianship is to get kids to stay with family members and to keep them out of trouble if say immediate parents create an unsafe environment. Unfortunately that same provision the way it is written allow pretty quick transfer of guardianship and it is exploited in this case.
I would want to believe some of these children end up in home that try to help them, parents who know how to handle such issues better, but unfortunately quite often that is a market for predators looking for victim. The article has a few disturbing details on that, I won't reiterate here.