By Josh Rosenthal

WASHINGTON - A Damascus woman is accused of abusing her six adopted children in a case that stretches back years.

Lora Loethen now faces more than a dozen charges, including child abuse, assault, and neglect.

"It’s a big deal. It’s horrible," said Debbie Feinstein, who’s the chief of the Special Victim’s Unit for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. "Hopefully we’re going to bring this woman to justice."

In court documents, prosecutors said an investigation into Loethen began in March, when one of Loethen’s kids told a friend’s parent that "she did not feel safe going home." The child would later tell police "that Loethen has been abusing and beating her since she came into this country approximately seven years ago."

by James Brierton

Van Erick Custodio, a Belmont man convicted of killing a 6-week-old boy he was in the process of adopting, accepted a plea deal in court Tuesday.

Custodio will spend between 23 and 28 years in prison for the April death of Lucas Birchim. He was charged with felony child abuse for the severe bodily injury he caused the boy. He was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.

On April 1, first responders went to the home on Prancer Lane. They found Birchim suffering from cardiac arrest. Birchim was taken to the hospital where he later succumbed to injuries caused by the abuse.

Custodio was arrested on April 11 in York County, South Carolina and was extradited back to Gaston County, where he had been held on a half-a-million-dollar bond. 

The owner was granted a new license in March, five years after her first license was revoked.

By Paighten Harkins

A Utah adoption agency owner who lost her license in 2018 after state regulators discovered “repeated and chronic violations” of state law — including some a judge called “potentially criminal” — has received a new license and opened another adoption agency.

Some parents who adopted children through Denise Garza’s previous agency, Heart and Soul Adoptions, are concerned that state regulators gave Garza a second chance, and feel that doing so compromises the safety of birth mothers, adoptive parents and the children being placed with new families.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the licensing office that regulates child-placing agencies, said in an emailed statement that, “The DHHS Office of Licensing reviewed the new application along with the applicant’s past/historical record with the agency including past violations.”

By Amanda Gokee

CONCORD, N.H. —The 8-by-8 basement room where Olivia Atkocaitis was confined for much of her childhood only got worse as time went on. She watched as curtains over one of the basement windows were replaced with chicken wire, the bed she slept on removed as a punishment, the door locked from the outside and alarmed.

For Olivia, it felt like captivity. Her older brother Kaleb called it a jail cell. And those with the power to free her did not, both siblings said.

It started in 2004, when Olivia was adopted from China as a 14-month-old by a New Boston family that already had three biological children: Nick, Kaleb, and Rose. Kaleb, who was 8 at the time, said the adoption was confusing to the kids because their parents were already allegedly abusing them.

In 2011, when he was 15, Kaleb reached a breaking point. After a fight with his father, he ran away from home and reported his parents to New Boston police for abusing him and Olivia. In a 23-page interview with police, he told them Olivia was locked in a basement room for “a few hours to weeks” and that their mom had hit Olivia in the face “with closed and open fists” and had also pushed her down the stairs.

Joel Koskan on Tuesday was sentenced to serve a decade in prison after pleading guilty to incest charges.

By Hunter Dunteman

PIERRE — Failed South Dakota Senate candidate Joel Koskan was sentenced to a decade in prison on Tuesday, April 11, on two counts of incest.

The 44-year-old Wood, South Dakota, resident appeared in a Hughes County courtroom on Tuesday for what had originally been a case involving one count of child abuse. In the hearing, Koskan pleaded guilty to two counts of incest.

Judge Margo Northrup sentenced Koskan to 10 years in prison, with no time suspended.

Carolyn and John Jackson were convicted in 2015 on multiple counts of child endangerment in the abuse of their adopted children.

Vianella Burns,Patch Staff

MORRIS COUNTY, NJ — A former Army Major and his wife, who were previously convicted in a child abuse case, have been granted a third appeal and will be resentenced before a different district court judge, according to US Attorney Philip R. Sellinger.

In 2021, John E. Jackson and Carolyn Jackson received their third sentences for their roles in abusing and neglecting adopted children over a five-year period.

According to authorities, Carolyn received a 40-month prison sentence, and her husband was given an 18-month home confinement sentence.

NICHOLAS KATZBAN   Morristown Daily Record

A Morris County couple convicted of multiple abuses against their adopted children have had their sentences overruled for the third time by federal appellate judges who found that the lower court had mishandled prior proceedings.

After the latest appeal by U.S. attorneys, who once again challenged the penalties leveled against Carolyn and John Jackson for the pair's 2015 child abuse convictions, a 3rd Circuit panel determined that the sentencing judge failed to consider the children's injuries, and it vacated the couple's penalties in total.

Although a date has not yet been determined, the appellate judges ordered the new sentences to be decided by a new judge, who would not be prejudiced by previous interpretations of the evidence.

Carolyn and John Jackson were arrested in 2013 when one of their biological children reported a pattern of brutality and torment inflicted on their adopted siblings, all of whom were less than 4 years old and developmentally delayed.

By David Propper

An Idaho couple convicted of starving their adopted daughter before she went into cardiac arrest won’t serve any prison time for the sickening crime, a judge reportedly ruled last week.

Byron and Gwendalyn Buthman were slapped with four years of probation and 300 hours of community service last Tuesday by Judge Darla Williamson, who ruled that jail time would hurt the four adoptive kids they still have.

The judge additionally withheld judgment, which means if the couple follows the rules of probation their conviction could be vacated — a ruling that led to some gasps in the courtroom, the Idaho Statesman reported.

The pair were convicted in June 2022 for mistreating the young girl and they were each previously in jail for one day and were credited with time served.

Alex Brizee

A Kuna couple who starved their then-5-year-old adoptive daughter to the point that she had a heart attack will not spend any time in prison after an Ada County judge sentenced them to probation.

Fourth District Senior Judge Darla Williamson placed Gwendalyn and Byron Buthman on probation for four years, according to a news release from the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, and ordered them to complete 300 hours of community service apiece. Ada County prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence “due to the seriousness of the offenses.”

The abuse and neglect of the girl, identified by the initials E.B. in court records, occurred between October 2015 and March 2018, according to those records. The girl was between 3 and 6 when she lived with the Buthmans and was forced to eat a vegetable protein powder, isolated from the rest of her family and made to sleep in a laundry room — sometimes without a mattress, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

In October 2017, E.B. had a heart attack as a result of “extreme malnourishment” and being forced to go outside wearing only a diaper, according to the release. While E.B. survived and is now “thriving,” prosecutors said the “abuse continued even after the cardiac arrest event.”

BY RICHARD BARTH

Roxanna Asgarian’s powerful new book, “We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America” spotlights one of child welfare services’ most  correctable deficiencies. When foster care adoptions began, the general belief was that adopted families should be treated like birth families and basically left alone, with the not insignificant exception of receiving adoption subsidies. Some families even refused adoption subsidies because they viewed them as stigmatizing. That view arose from an earlier period when most adoptions were closed, secret and invisible.  

We have come a long way in opening up adoptions, but are still held back by a fear of recognizing adoptive families as needing something different or more than other families. But they do.  

Although it’s always risky to make policy from rare cases like that of Jen and Sarah Hart — the couple who killed their six adopted children in 2018 —  general research on filicide shows that children who live with non-biological parents (e.g., step-parents or partners unrelated to the child) are at greater risk of murder than children living with biological parents. This may apply less to foster and adoptive parents (who must pass background checks and home studies), but as the Harts’ murders suggest, cannot be ignored.  

More than forty years of foster-care adoption work leaves an undeniable impression that families who adopt children from foster care have significant difficulties and challenges — and that they should not face them alone. Nor should the adopted children go without any recognition of their elevated risk of poor outcome — albeit not often expressed as child fatalities, but often including stays in residential care and other displacements from the home.