Suit says adopted boy’s abusive past undisclosed

Couple claim teen from China raped their two other sons

An Indiana couple have sued a Centennial adoption agency, claiming the teen boy they brought home from China had an undisclosed history of sexual trauma and raped their two younger children.

The couple brought the civil lawsuit against Chinese Children Adoption International of Centennial on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Denver for themselves and on behalf of two Chinese boys, the lawsuit said.

The Denver Post is withholding the couple’s names to protect the identity of juvenile sexual assault victims.

The couple are asking for an unspecified amount of money and a judge’s order ensuring the adoption agency follow courtordered protocols that keep families and children safe, according to the lawsuit filed by Indianapolis attorneys Jonathan Little, Derrick Morgan and Annemarie Alonso.

“We have great empathy for the family that brought this suit, but we strongly and categorically deny the allegations,” said the Rev. Joshua Zhong, the Chinese Children Adoption International co-founder and president. “We expect a full vindication through the courts. We stand behind our decades-strong reputation as a professional and ethical nonprofit having served thousands of families and children here and in China.”

The Terre Haute, Ind., couple began adopting Chinese children after their six children reached adulthood, the lawsuit said. They adopted a boy identified as N in 2014 through Bethany Christian Services.

In 2015, they adopted a boy they believed was 12 through the Centennial agency. But at the time, the Chinese orphan was at least 15 or 16 years of age, the lawsuit said. He was identified as L in the lawsuit.

Within a month after L’s adoption, the couple’s first boy started showing signs of a problem, including a loss of appetite and hair loss, the lawsuit said.

In 2016, the couple used the Centennial agency to adopt a third boy, age 5, who was identified in court records as J. J would awake screaming and crying, and N would run into his parents’ room every night, the lawsuit said.

J complained of pains in the buttocks, but at first the couple believed the pain was from cigarette burns he had received while being abused in a Chinese orphanage, the lawsuit said.

The adoptive parents discovered that L’s alarm went off every night at 3 a.m., when he would then “rape his adoptive brothers.” He admitted doing so, the lawsuit said.

The parents took L to a behavioral health center, where the teen told his therapist that he had strong sexual urges he could not control and would abuse boys again if given the chance. L was charged with two counts of sexual battery and sent to a Terre Haute juvenile detention center, the lawsuit said.

When the parents contacted Chinese Children Adoption agency about L’s crimes, an employee denied knowing about his sexual history and said he was 12, the lawsuit said. The agency should have known he was three to five years older, the lawsuit said.

“CCAI also knew or should have known that the orphanage minor child L was adopted from had a reputation for prostituting the children in its care to adults,” the lawsuit said.

An Indiana counseling agency confirmed that L had a long history of sexually abusing multiple children at the time he was adopted, the lawsuit said. He told a therapist that at the age of 5 or 6 he had been removed from foster care for sexually acting out with another child. He also said he was sexually active with children and adults since the age of 11 in China, the lawsuit said.

Because of extreme financial and emotional pressures linked to the sexual abuse, the adoptive parents sold their house at a loss and moved to Washington state. They also lost their health care business, the lawsuit said.

Both N and J have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and an attachment disorder, the lawsuit said.

Zhong, the adoption agency’s founder, earned a theological doctorate at the University of Denver in 1989 and formed CCAI in Denver in 1992, CCAI’s website said.

CCAI was ranked by the Chinese government as the No. 1 adoption agency in the world in 2011, and by 2012 had placed 11,000 Chinese orphans into U.S. homes, the website said. CCAI now has adoption offices in Florida, Texas, Wyoming, Kentucky and Georgia, it said.