In a Q&A with Prism, author Paige Towers discusses a 2008 case of familicide in Iowa that involved the murders of four adopted children from Korea

Paige Towers’ new book, “What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption,” traces the Evangelical origin story of the Holt Adoption Program that facilitated the adoption of hundreds of thousands of Korean children, including Ethan, Seth, Eleanor, and Mira, by Steven Sueppel and his wife Sheryl. In 2008, Sueppel murdered his wife and children in Iowa before dying by suicide. 

I came to the Sueppel’s story with more than curiosity over a true-crime story. 

I’m a Korean American adoptee who organizes at the intersection of reproductive justice and adoption. And my adoptive father—like Sueppel—abused me in our idyllic suburban house while he was seen as a successful, upstanding husband and father. In both cases, no one thought to intervene.

In mainstream adoption narratives, children are first made into objects of pity and charity to warrant our initial family separation, and then we are expected to prove the inherent goodness of the system that displaced us. In the case of Ethan, Seth, Eleanor, and Mira, even in death they are folded back into a story told by someone else that centers the perspective of the adult who abused them: Sueppel’s unraveling, his financial crimes, his religious delusions, and ultimately, his violence. But Sueppel is not an exception. 

Mixed-race adoptees have petitioned the state truth commission for an investigation into the government’s role in perpetuating pureblood racial politics through coercive adoption policies

Cho Young-il, Meeky Woo Flippen, Simon Hokwerda, and Oh Jae-gyeong hold up photos of themselves taken around the time that they were sent abroad for adoption as children. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh)

“Now that I'm 60, I know that life doesn't necessarily get better. I want to tell the child in the photo ‘Even if it's hard, things will get better if you endure,’ but I can’t. Because even if I find my mother and younger brother, I can never get back the 56 years I lost."

The court concluded that the balance of interests clearly lay in favour of respondent Amar and found no error in the orders passed by the lower courts. 

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/if-no-positive-answer-is-found-supreme-court-orders-dna-test-for-closure-in-paternity-case-4022310

MIAMI (AP) — Kyle Adler’s discovery that he was stolen from his Chilean mother as a baby came as a shock, sparking an identity crisis that lasted years and led to a reunion with his biological mother earlier this year.

“It’s been so eye-opening to see who my people are,” Adler said. “I feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care — it’s nice to have a family again.”

Adopted by an American family when he was 9 months old, the 36-year-old is one of thousands of children who were stolen from Chilean families during the 17-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and among hundreds who have been reunited with their birth families thanks to DNA tracing and organizations that are helping Chilean adoptees investigate their pasts. Others are also working toward justice for the families ripped apart.

The American family that adopted Adler in 1990 raised him in an affluent Chicago suburb.

Published 2026-05-28

Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M). Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

A national resource center for adoptees becomes a reality – after revelations about child trafficking and kidnappings.

The government decided this today.

The government's decision to establish an adoption-specific resource center comes far too late and the apology fails. Once again, the government is failing adoptees.

May 28 10:59

Share the article

Night Hillerberg

https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/in-child-missing-cases-proceed-on-presumption-of-kidnapping-supreme-court-issues-directions-to-combat-child-trafficking-535324

AUSTRALIAN INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTEES and THEIR RIGHT TO SEARCH

Overview
Many intercountry adoptees have a great desire and need to access information and reconnect with their biological family, and their country of origin. This can be very difficult for individual adoptees and their families who have little or no knowledge of how to navigate systems overseas and who require professional support and counselling in both Australia and overseas. Australia has facilitated over 10,000 intercountry adoptions since the 1970’s. These adopted people deserve the right to ongoing services. Our aim is to continue to provide professional support to Australian intercountry adoptees to connect with their history and birth families overseas.

 

Were children systematically removed from their parents in East Germany for political reasons? A research consortium funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior has presented new findings on one of the most sensitive questions in coming to terms with the GDR past: The results show how profound these interventions were and what historical consequences they had for affected families between 1945 and 1989.

The results were developed in a three-year study led by the German Institute for Residential Care Research (DIH), in collaboration with partners from the Universities of Düsseldorf, Mainz, and Leipzig, and the Medical School Berlin. The Federal Ministry of the Interior supported the project with approximately one million euros.

The study investigated how the East German state, under the pretext of alleged social or economic "ills," massively intervened in families. Parents and children were separated, often with consequences that continue to affect those involved to this day. The study clearly classifies this practice of East German youth welfare as part of the systemic injustices of the SED dictatorship.

Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt: “Injustice must be clearly recognized and named. Even decades after the end of the SED dictatorship, there are still blind spots. The careful investigation of politically motivated adoptions in the GDR closes an important gap.”

The issue of forced adoptions in East Germany has been discussed since the 1970s . It gained renewed attention in 2018 following a petition from those affected. Subsequently, the German Bundestag, with cross-party support, decided to commission a scholarly investigation and tasked the Federal Ministry of the Interior with the research project.

Warning: this report contains offensive and outdated language referencing racist abuse suffered

Black and mixed heritage adoptees and care-leavers who faced "abhorrent" racism and prejudice during the forced adoption era want their lifelong trauma and suffering to be acknowledged by the church and state.

Between 1949 and 1976 hundreds of thousands of unmarried mothers were forced to put their children up for adoption, simply because they were unmarried.

Mothers of mixed heritage children were told they had no choice and their babies would be "better off" adopted.

The reality was that the adoption and care system at that time deemed them as "un-adoptable" and "undesirable", meaning many grew up in orphanages and children’s home, suffering abuse and neglect.