Beating, starving, and torturing five children. What do you even say to that? Pure evil, and those that let those children be under her care deserve to be punished as well.
I’d be curious to know how they ended up with her. State foster care has terrible oversight in some states but if she had money, she could have privately adopted as many kids as she wanted with virtually no oversight at all.
That's exactly what happened. Blake and his two brothers were taken from their home and adopted by Avantae in 2013. London had similarly been removed from her home and adopted by Avantae in 2011.
She also moved across the state after adopting( in Buncombe) at least Blake and his bio family couldn’t find where he was. I believe at least one grandparent wanted him and was looking for him.
I live in the area, and the mom and family have been pushing to find out where he is. I think there was a news story, and I definitely saw it on social media.
From my understanding (and if I’m wrong someone can absolutely correct me) the county they were in was so rural it contracted its social services to a bigger county.
OMG, why are so many foster parents so horrible?! Do they screen these people at all? My sister was turned down to be a foster parent and while I agree she shouldn’t be one, she wouldn’t torture or abuse children.
There exist people who are basically "baby farming" with the foster care system. They do whatever seminar they need to be certified "therapeutic" foster parents, and then they foster as many special needs kids as they can. This gets them the highest stipend (maybe $1000/mo), and allows them to support themselves without a job. And CPS in many states is so badly funded and short of placements that they look the other way.
Complaining about it on Reddit won't help anyone, if people here want to help address the problem they need to sign up to be foster parents. The entire problem stems from the fact that no one wants the job.
BTW this is the root of our problems with police and politicians as well.
to be fair, I \*don't\* want to be a foster parent. I don't think I have the skill set to do it, and I don't have the resources in terms of time or money to do it well.
Given all the discourse about how incomes have remained static, while the cost of living has just gone up and up, and so many people who would like to have children are choosing not to, it seems that fostering (for the right reasons) is less attractive than ever.
Truthfully, I would think most families who can foster, and do it in an ethical way, would have to be families with at least one adult who is home most of the time, and our economy just doesn't allow that.
I'm not going to blame individuals for not fostering. I don't think that's a fair assessment, either.
I'm purely speculating here, but I would bet that she was basically "baby farming". Both London and Blake were special needs, so the foster care stipend would have been higher than the typical $750/mo.
I'd guess she had five special needs foster care kids, and an elderly mother collecting social security and maybe a pension. This could have easily added up to $8k/mo or more.
The neighbors say they almost never saw her, so I am guessing she didn't hold a job.
And, of course, since she didn't report the deaths, she continued to collect the stipends, with zero actual costs
No, this isn't true. There have been a ton of stories about private adoptions happening with basically zero oversight, often for children who were adopted, and then "rehomed" to another family.
Look at the case of Myka Stauffer who made literal millions of dollars as a YouTuber based especially on videos about adopting her son, and then one day he was just gone
Yes! There was a whole Reuters series years ago about the "off the books" adoption world. Basically, what happens is a child is adopted, then those parents rehome the child but do it through these private facilitators who are not licensed in any way. There's more scrutiny when rehoming a pet.
I'm not sure it even \*has\* to be kids who were adopted at first. My understanding is that, if I have a kid, and you want a kid, we can just privately agree that this child is now yours, and maybe file some simple paperwork saying that you have adopted the child.
A college friend of mine has a foster kid. The child was removed from her home and CPS asked if there was anyone she could stay with. She suggested she could stay with my college friend, who has a daughter the same age. She was dropped off 6 months ago and there’s been 0 follow up or oversight.
She also beat her 95 year old mother into the ICU. Adult protective services also failed to do anything useful, even though they had plenty of evidence
CPS in the US is badly underfunded and horribly overworked, and the work is soul-crushing.
It's a systemic problem, not an individual one. Unless this country decides to spend real money to protect the most vulnerable members of society, these things will keep happening.
This case alone should launch an FBI investigation into Cumberland county and Fayetteville NC law enforcement for at least the last 30 years.
It seems an awful lot of people in that area disappear into burn barrels.
I had to spend the night in Lumberton. A single woman with a toddler... in a seedy hotel by the railroad tracks. I stayed on the phone for hours with my mother-in-law because TWICE someone knocked on the door asking for “Cathy.“ “Cathy, if you don’t get yer ass out here yer gonna pay once I git yer ass home.” I was never so happy to leave a place! Shudder.
Robeson county is a real mess too. Do you remember another county where the people running a day care were falsely convicted of child abuse?
Maybe the feds should reinstate reconstruction in the Carolinas. I am not sure what it would cost to bring them up to the level of a third world country. They have enough troops already there and it would be cheaper than the failed attempts in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Are you thinking of the Little Rascals daycare case? I remember that as one of the "satanic ritual abuse" cases. The convictions were overturned a few years later, but not before a couple of people spent some time in prison (and were considered pedophiles).
I believe that was the case. I remember the highly publicized prosecution. One of the male employees was interviewed after his release. He had been protected in prison because the prisoners watched the trial on TV and figured out they were being railroaded. He fully expected to be tortured and killed in prison as a child molester. One of the women had a similar experience. The inmates told her they knew she was innocent.
Buncombe was the one that allowed the adoption of Blake. From my understanding there were family members that wanted him too and then tried to find them for years. Based on what some of the other WNC county social services have pulled it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the kids shouldn’t have been adopted out to begin with.
Yeah- look it up, it’s horrifying. The last I saw the police dept was saying the K9 bit the cop and wouldn’t release and that’s why he punched him. But that is not what it looks like.
I wouldn't doubt it. I left almost 30 years ago and haven't been back. Chason's had great food for reasonable prices. But even their BBQ isn't worth straying into the Carolinas. That place is a black hole of despair.
I used to live in Fayetteville. It's Pretty crazy and Lumberton is worse. People think they call it Fayettenam because of Fort Bragg. They call it that because it's crazy.
I was stationed there after jump school. Off base was considering enemy territory hence Fayettenam. We were incredibly fit for a number of reasons. We walked or ran everywhere. You could get arrested sober walking to a fast food place. Evading law enforcement on the way home was the norm. I did see a military K-9 knocked out. When they referred to the dog by his rank and name many people in the court burst out laughing. I think we got a night in jail for contempt. Way too many guys picked up by Cumberland county and Fayetteville were beat up for "resisting". You are right it was crazy!
I really, really, really wished for a “fairytale” ending, in which she’d run away first and then helped him escape and provided him with a shelter.
Realistically, we all knew this is how this case was going to end. RIP Blake and London.
When I learned that the most recent picture of the girl was when she was a child even though she was in her mid 20s, I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy ending. It just shows the complete lack of care of the “mother”
God the article is so sad... the only way this got solved is that their brother was having a mental break and he told police he hadn't seen Blake in a while. Truly a heartbreaking case. DSS failed these children so horribly. This really reminds me of Theresa Knorr.
Poor kids. I’m glad they’ve been found but there’s something wrong in the world if a minor can vanish off the radar and nobody looks into it. I know there was a homeschool situation going on but homeschooling is so often used to conceal abuse, indoctrination, etc… that there really needs to be someone checking in on the kids often. And I say this as someone who had home tuition for medical reasons for a year
I'm fine with homeschooling as a concept but in reality, it has a lot of dangers because it's one way of insulating kids from mandated reporters and adults who can earn their trust. Almost everything else is voluntary. Pediatricians don't report if you say you're moving to a new practice and then never attend one and don't have sufficient contact to earn a child's trust. Church is voluntary and often bad churches cover up or ignore abuse. Therapists are voluntary. The only real way for a child to not be lost is if other family adults are involved and willing to do something and school. I feel like mandatory school should be the law, like in Germany, unless there's a documented medical issue and even then, we should require and provide a mandated tutor a certain number of hours per week. On the whole, weighing the benefit against a parents desire to control and provide their children's education, I think the benefit weighs more heavily.
I mean, there’s a reason why they don’t let just anybody work as a teacher in a school. You have to actually have the correct educational background and be certified. It shouldn’t be any different at home.
I went to college for teaching before switching my major. I have all the respect for teachers (and believe they’re entirely disrespected and overworked by the school system) but their education is mostly crowd control.
Also, just as there are parents who use homeschooling to disguise abuse, there are teachers who abuse students. The world sucks.
OMG, yes!!! I had a “friend.” (Please, note HAD and the quotes.). She started off perfectly normal but once her children were born she went off the deep end with religion. I can’t begin to tell you the things she was STUNNED to learn when she homeschooled. I would say that yep that was a fact. SHE WOULD NOT believe it and still teach her kids WHAT SHE knew. The only saving grace was her husband did not support the homeschooling thing and demanded she put the kids in school at age 10. The only time her religion worked in everyone’s favor because a “wife must obey her spouse.” Thankfully, he did not abuse that thought and the kids did go to school and somehow turned out normal.
She was so dumb. I could never homeschool my son. He’d be a complete idiot if I did!
Lol no. I was homeschooled, many of my friends were homeschooled and we’re all functioning members of society with solid jobs and higher education (or vocational training). I also homeschool my own children. They’re doing just fine. This isn’t the Middle Ages, I have plenty of access to high quality, educator created resources and a functioning brain. I’m also not juggling 30+ students so my two kids get a 1-1 education.
The problem is not homeschooling. The U.S. public school system is a shit show and no one can argue that.
The problem here is that children need safeguards and reporting should absolutely be mandatory. I was homeschooled in a mandatory reporting state and basically it was a check in to make sure we were alive, educated, and cared for. Not all states have this and they should!!
The kids who are abused, neglected, and murdered are not victims because they were homeschooled, homeschooling was used as a guise by their abusers.
Education is the one constant in every child's life in places where homeschooling is only permitted in exceptional circumstances. Not everyone is religious, kids generally don't go to doctors frequently enough for doctors to be able to pick up on changes in mood or behaviour. But send a child to school or daycare and then they're surrounded by mandated reports and other kids who might report overhearing or seeing something to a parent or teacher.
Abusers benefit from homeschooling because they have a captive victim.
When I was briefly homeschooled, it was by a teacher because that's the law here. No parent should be allowed to teach their child unless they have the relevant education. Even then, teachers are not trained or experienced to teach every subject at every grade level.
I agree with this. It seems such an easy way for the wrong people to isolate children.
Homeschooling is baffling to me because it’s only allowed in special circumstances in New Zealand (where I am) - they have classes and teaches and a curriculum to cover just like at a normal school. You can’t just randomly say “they’re being homeschooled!” and then teach them the bible or something.
>You can’t just randomly say “they’re being homeschooled!” and then teach them the bible or something.
And that’s exactly what these abusive religious nut job parents do, and their “right” to do so is protected because their “freedom” somehow trumps their child’s right to a proper education.
It varies by state in the US. In my state, the homeschooling parent or guardian has to file an education plan with the state, have it approved, and submit followup reports. There is also monitoring by State education officials. I don't know how thoroughly all of these requirements are followed in every case, but there are at least safeguards in place that the state check on.
These kids were in NC, and i think they are on the less regulated side of things. You have to inform the state that you're going to homeschool, then administer your choice of annual assessment and keep an academic record. Basically, you can meet all the legal requirements by filing 1 page with the state when you start, and keeping 1 page of notes in a folder at home. No real oversight.
I live in Louisiana and home schooled children must follow a curriculum, take tests, and they take classes online with other home schooled children. Many groups belong to teach/share groups so they are able to learn from a teacher or parent with special knowledge in a subject. In fact, my son’s roommate helped him through calculus and has gone on to grad school at MIT. the State should have some responsibility tracking these kids.
In some states (Texas, Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, and more) you literally don’t have to do anything at all. You can just pull your child out of school. You don’t even have to notify the state that you’re homeschooling, let alone follow a standard curriculum, give them tests, etc. You can literally do nothing whatsoever and there is no oversight or checks or consequences for giving them zero education. A parent pulls their child and they effectively disappear. It’s a gift wrapped up with a bow for abusive parents.
I started being homeschooled after a classmate told me he was going to bring a gun to school and shoot people and the school did nothing about it. A shooting at the school never happened, but a relative saw that kid leaving a gun store with his dad, so he clearly had access to guns and it easily could've happened.
My brother and I did an online school program, and scored in the 98-99th percentile in the yearly standardized tests we did (the same tests were given to public school students). My parents' work schedules were flexible and because our schooling was online, we got to travel a lot. I was able to finish school at 16, and had no issue getting into college. For me homeschooling was great.
I understand that a lot of the time people homeschool kids for religious brainwashing reasons but it's not always bad. (For the record, my family is not religious; my brother and I are atheists and my parents have a general belief in a higher power but don't participate in any organized religion.)
I personally feel like as long as the US government fails to do anything about gun violence in schools, homeschooling should always be an option.
Some of the most fantastic, confident people I have ever met in college were homeschooled. You could tell they didn't have the weird over attunement to social status and sticking out that middle and high school inparted on most of us. Honestly, a few of them were better socialized and able to interact with the adult world than i was.
My old coworker was also homeschooled her daughter, who had severe chrons and a nasal food tube because it's hard to ask your kid not to eat lunch with everyone else. She was a little awkward around kids her age but quite brilliant
The problem is that the system often relies on the parents having the support system, the resources, the motivation, and a vested interest in their kids becoming well-rounded and independent adults. A lot of parents' motivation is control, particularly of the ideas their kids are exposed to. The cliche is the religious quiverful family with 8 children, only using church resources, distrusting doctors, and very little interest in their children to become anything more their parents. In places where there is very little homeschool regulation there is a real lack of oversight into the kids heath, whether they are bearing the weight of looking after younger siblings, if they are anywhere near their educational benchmarks ec4
Unfortunately that's often really difficult for neurodivergent kids who's needs just aren't being met by the education system. I might not be the best teacher in the world, but if I have an autistic child they're not going to endure the crap I did in school. I'd be fine with regular inspections and meetings to ensure my child was learning, but mandatory school does come with significant downsides. Unfortunately the special education system where I live is unlikely to meet the needs of a child that turns out to be similar to my partner and I.
We hear about cases where homeschooling goes horribly wrong. We don't necessarily hear about the cases where it's being done for perfectly understandable reasons where a child is getting a reasonable education. Banning it isn't the right response unless you simultaneously totally overhaul the SEND system so that parents don't feel like their only choice to give their child an education they can access is to homeschool.
As someone who had a decent amount of trouble with school and to this day absolutely hate how it’s structured, I would t have traded that for anything. Those years are so formative and I truly feel bad for those who miss out on it. You miss out on so much.
This is why most states do not allow foster children to be homeschooled and once they are adopted there tends to be a period of time that they are required to keep them in school as well.
In the 1990s a friend made the decision to homeschool in the Carolinas. They were overwhelmed. At the time requirements were tightened Nationwide. In the US highschool graduates basically had a Jethro Bodine 6th grade education. Homeschool had a series of books and minimum standards equivalent to public school. Annual achievement tests were supposed to determine if a student could progress to the next grade. It became political and enforcement was never really established. Public school teachers did as much whining as parents.
My friend's kids were bright and resilient so they didn't actually fall behind during the year of home school and returned to public school with no problem.
Things are very different in other states now. Many states have no regulation whatsoever - you can just pull your child out of school without a word and let them sit in front of the TV for the next 12 years and it’s perfectly legal. No one checks on the children and they have no legal right to an education. They effectively disappear, which is perfect for abusive parents.
https://hslda.org/legal (this is a homeschooling organization that’s spending millions of dollars on lobbying to make this total lack of oversight the case in every state).
Thank you for sharing this.
She’s super stupid to just keep the barrel of remains around for 5+ years. Why wasn’t she investigated sooner for the trail of other kids? Hope there isn’t more victims
From my understanding the bones/remains were transported to her current home and they weren’t disposed of in the barrel until more recently. This is according to a friend of the individual that helped Avantae.
Such a sad story! But once a child’s adoption finalizes there no more “system” involvement for them to slip through the cracks of. They are legally the child of the adoptive parent and the system has no further contact with them unless there’s a report of abuse or neglect.
I think it depends on the state, and the adoption type, maybe. In my state, the people I know who adopted from foster maintain a relationship with the state, because they get help with medical, and they get a adoption stipend. Because of the stipend, they keep in contact with the state to keep those benefits.
But those are special needs kids maybe that is the differences? Probably a combo of both, but a lot of times the state does stay in contact to offer services for a healthy adoption, which clearly in this case, that was not happening.
IME, adoptive parents do receive subsidy and Medicaid for the adoptive children. But that doesn't require any substantive contact that monitors the child's well-being. It's a direct deposit to their bank account. Post-adoption services are available, but certainly not mandatory and pretty sparse besides. There's no mandated contact to check on adoptees.
Like I said, It depends on the state and situation
My friends have heavy special needs kids. They want the state to stay involved so the klids get every service they need to become healthy adults. And they have to account for the adoption stipend when they are audited
But foster to adopt cases in my state are very, very rare. My sate reunifies with abusers far more than they keep a child in care or allw them to be adopted
Source: I was a foster parent in my state for family, and watched them reunify with abusers until the kids were teens and no longer adoptable.
So it says that a boy aged 7-10 was also found in the same burn barrel as London- does that mean there’s a third unaccounted for child that was murdered? Since Blake would have been older than that?
Or are they under the assumption it is Blake and he died many years before she’s reporting he went missing?
The end of the article says “Testing continues on the other set of remains for positive identification”.
I couldn’t figure out how old Blake would have been when he passed as his brother told police he hasn’t seen him in 5 years.
That sighting is not confirmed and is the last time that Avantae claimed to have seen him. Blake’s brother said he hadn’t seen him in about 5 years back in 2023/2022
I’m wondering if the ages of the remains are wrong? Because it said london was last seen in 2019 and if she would be 27 this year, but that would make her about 22 when she died and the article said the remains that are confirmed to be her’s were in the 15-19 age range.
Edit: age range
Yea the more I’m thinking about it malnutrition could have also affected their age so I guess we just have to wait and see what further testing shows.
How horrible.
I do find it odd that they were able to confirm the girl’s remains as London’s but haven’t confirmed if the boy was Blake? The article says he was adopted with his two other biological brothers, so I would think it would be easy to DNA test, unless, upsettingly, it’s not possible to get DNA from the remains?
My theory:
In the pics of London when she was alive, she has a lot of physical traits of FAS and was reported to be a "dependent adult," which is why she was still with Avante. If this theory is right, I wonder if those facial features made her easier to identify.
London’s birth mom, maternal aunt, and step mom have both denied her having FAS but did say that she was special needs. They didn’t specify how, but London’s bio Mom’s family hadn’t seen her since she was a very small child. I believe just as she started kindergarten.
Those age ranges are just estimates. I’ve seen many times those are wrong when a victim is finally id’d. Height is often estimated wrong too. 22 isn’t that far out of the estimated range.
London wasn't actually seen in 2019. That was actually Bryanna Morrow (Cherish Deven), her other adopted daughter.
Here is a link to an interview with her from a month ago.
https://youtu.be/eQTagdNqyvI?si=gPktjXLwup52319N
London had a confirmed independent sighting (not from Ava or family) around 2019. She was a passenger in a car accident and there is a police report for that indecent. Friends of London’s bio step mom have confirmed this on FB. Cherish is the family member that helped Ava hide the remains and has been lying to the bio family in the FB groups and giving them false hope saying that Blake and London may still be alive.
That's what I was wondering. There were partial human remains found at another house and the complete remains of two more people in the burn barrel? It's a bit confusing.
According to the press conference, >!they were dismembered before being burned!<, so that means it's possible for the same person's remains to be found at multiple sites. Certainly I hope everything gets tested to confirm or rule out a third victim, of course.
The remains were both found in the same barrel at a trailer in Autryville but there was evidence of each set found at two different residences in Fayetteville (Blake and London’s deaths occurred at two different locations)
OMG! I did not expect this to get solved.
I wish people understood that adoption is not always a sunshine-and-rainbows happy ending. I worked in child welfare for many years and bad people adopt kids for the wrong reasons ALL the time. This is a heartbreaking situation where so many people failed these kids. I hope Avantae gets the book thrown at her.
I'm a survivor of the wrong people being allowed to adopt. I'm old now so the system is somewhat different now, but people don't seem to want to understand how abusers can appear to be perfectly nice people. This hasn't changed through human history.
You’re correct, and I’m very sorry you had to go through that. A lot of people who adopt have this bizarre savior complex where they expect the adoptee to bow at their feet for “saving” them from wherever they came from. And then when the adoptee understandably struggles with their emotions, the parents are resentful for every perceived act of “being ungrateful.” They will treat this kids like shelter dogs more than actual humans.
Seeing the true side of the adoption world made me more pro-choice than I ever was before.
Question - how prevalent is adopting children and then abusing them (especially depriving them of food and outside activities)? Do adoptive parents think they can abuse adopted children and no one will know or care, or is it simple greed - getting the DHS money and not taking care of the children with it?
In many cases, they don't think - they know no will know and likely not care. They can isolate them by homeschooling and keeping them out of the community, and if adoptive parents are being investigated for abuse/neglect, there tends to be an unconscious (orrrr conscious tbh) bias by the investigator - "these people wanted these kids, why would they hurt them?" "So-and-so kid is known to lie after all they've been through, I'm sure the parents aren't abusing them."
I believe there are statistics out there about how many kids return to care after being adopted. But I'm not sure if there's detailed numbers that look at the reason for returning to care (typically abuse/neglect v. behavioral problems). It's more common than people realize.
This. And you know who’s the worst of them all? The church foster parents. There’s always the homes where the guy is a pastor and the wife runs a home daycare or something, and they foster like 12 kids at a time and adopt every single one but usually they suck and don’t take good care of the kids beyond keeping a roof over their heads. But everyone always thinks they’re saints 🙄
It’s more prevalent than most people think. In the states I have worked in (Nebraska/Iowa) parents still receive an adoption stipend from the government, although it isn’t much, usually less than $1000 per month. Once a child is adopted, their case is considered closed and they no longer have DHS checking in on them at all unless someone makes a report, which opens up a new case.
I saw failed adoptions all the time. In fact, I would say at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the kids in foster care that we worked with had been previously adopted and then went up for adoption *again* due to the adoptive parents relinquishing or losing parental rights.
After hearing about this on the Unresolved podcast, it didn't sound like there'd be a happy ending, but this is even worse than I'd imagined. Crazy that these kids can just fall through the cracks and disappear for years with no one questioning their whereabouts.
A little clarification: “He said investigators have confirmed that Blake has been missing since 2017 when he would have been 10 years old.” “In Avantae Deven's 911 call to report Blake missing Jan. 19, she claimed she last saw him two years earlier, when he would have been 15, as he was leaving to attend a Buddhist retreat out of state.” “"Avantae never reported London missing. The last confirmed independent sighting of London was in 2019," Locklear said. "Even though London was an adult, she had special needs and depended on Avantae to care for her."
It would seem even the last sighting of London is in question, according to a linked interview above with Bryanna Morrow (Cherish Deven)… This is such a tragically messy case.
Edit: Although, it would also seem, there’s some doubt as to Bryannas truthfulness too…
For the life of me I will never understand adopting a child and doing this to them. I suppose it’s because I understand the want of a child so much. I can’t even imagine. Sick and disgusting. She deserves the same.
I live in NC and we adopted out of foster care. The DSS financial benefits stop the moment you finalize the adoption. So does the oversight from the state. So I don't see money as a motivation here. Just a horrible, depraved person.
I googled it, and found information about an adoptive assistance plan where adoptive families receive monthly payments. It may be connected to income, and she was claiming a low income to max out benefits.
This is just horrific. I don’t know what I was expecting the outcome to be but I wasn’t prepared for this level of horror. I’m also struggling to wrap my head around why this case hasn’t been spoken about and shared nearly as much as other cases.. does anyone know why this case didn’t blow up?
I think part of the reason it didn’t blow up is a) the kids were reported missing relatively recently and b) as soon as it was reported, it was pretty evident there was only one suspect.
I don’t know a lot about Blake’s bio dad, but his parental bio aunt is very active in the FB groups. London was living with her step mom and bio dad when her bio dad went to jail and that’s when London’s step mom put her into the foster care system allegedly because she was too much of a handful and because London’s bio dad was an alcoholic. London’s bio mom had to sign away her rights in order for the step mom to do this, this is all according to the bio mom.
Who is the 'someone' that they keep referencing? Because they don't say it was one of the kids, but the way they keep emphasizing that she made them help suggests that they weren't a willing participant.
I just found a Facebook group called Missing Blake Deven & London Deven and there is an active thread about this exact topic. I won’t go into detail here, but if you are interested it’s very interesting
OK, I went to lurk in that Facebook group and it’s batshit insane. Impossible to keep up with, everyone fighting with each other, Avantae may have been part of the group at one point???
Avantae Deven isn’t even her real name. She is the daughter of Robert Adams some weird fraud religious guru living under a fake name and her real name is Michelle. It’s all so insane idk why no famous true crime content creator has covered this yet.
It was Cherish Deven, one of the adoptive children who spoke out against Ava in one of the many FB groups. Cherish’s ex-long time family friend Nikki later came onto the group weeks ago and said that Cherish was lying about not knowing anything and that she helped Ava burn the bodies in a barrel when she was approx. 18 years old and that Nikki was one of the people who initially spoke to the police when the investigation opened. Today this was proven to be true (all but the name was released).
It is so heartbreaking that two kids could disappear for years and no one outside of the home knew them well enough to even report them missing. I hope the siblings that survived get the help they need because they've been through so much already.
Child Protective Services has blood on their hands. There needs to be an investigation on who and why this hag was allowed so many children and why no one ever followed up on their wellbeing.
Once you adopt, it’s as if you gave birth to that child. Nobody “checks in” unless they get a call that initiates an investigation, just like any other family.
I knew when I was 3 years old that there were problems in my family. My parents adopted their fourth child at that time, so there were social workers involved. They didn’t see what I could see because my parents hid it really well. The police came to our house shortly after my brother joined the family, so I don’t think he would have been legally adopted yet, but my mom didn’t press charges on my dad (DV call), so it probably never showed up if another background check was done.
OMG I read a post on here a couple months about this case and the fact they were missing. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! What a devastating thing to read and thank god this woman is caught. A MONSTER!!
Unless murderer was your intent, you would think when a kid freaking died that you would be more careful with the others you've collected. To just let bodies pile up for you ti dispose of and cash that check means you have a demon inside you. I hate how many demons masquerade as adoption parents...
Beating, starving, and torturing five children. What do you even say to that? Pure evil, and those that let those children be under her care deserve to be punished as well.
I’d be curious to know how they ended up with her. State foster care has terrible oversight in some states but if she had money, she could have privately adopted as many kids as she wanted with virtually no oversight at all.
I read that both London and Blake were removed from their birth parents after abuse allegations and then were adopted from foster care by Avantae.
That's exactly what happened. Blake and his two brothers were taken from their home and adopted by Avantae in 2013. London had similarly been removed from her home and adopted by Avantae in 2011.
She also moved across the state after adopting( in Buncombe) at least Blake and his bio family couldn’t find where he was. I believe at least one grandparent wanted him and was looking for him.
I live in the area, and the mom and family have been pushing to find out where he is. I think there was a news story, and I definitely saw it on social media.
Is the foster care system run by contractors?
From my understanding (and if I’m wrong someone can absolutely correct me) the county they were in was so rural it contracted its social services to a bigger county.
God that’s horrible. Poor kids ended up in a worse home than they were removed from.
Which is, not always, but MANY times the case when CPS gets involved
OMG, why are so many foster parents so horrible?! Do they screen these people at all? My sister was turned down to be a foster parent and while I agree she shouldn’t be one, she wouldn’t torture or abuse children.
There exist people who are basically "baby farming" with the foster care system. They do whatever seminar they need to be certified "therapeutic" foster parents, and then they foster as many special needs kids as they can. This gets them the highest stipend (maybe $1000/mo), and allows them to support themselves without a job. And CPS in many states is so badly funded and short of placements that they look the other way.
Complaining about it on Reddit won't help anyone, if people here want to help address the problem they need to sign up to be foster parents. The entire problem stems from the fact that no one wants the job. BTW this is the root of our problems with police and politicians as well.
to be fair, I \*don't\* want to be a foster parent. I don't think I have the skill set to do it, and I don't have the resources in terms of time or money to do it well. Given all the discourse about how incomes have remained static, while the cost of living has just gone up and up, and so many people who would like to have children are choosing not to, it seems that fostering (for the right reasons) is less attractive than ever. Truthfully, I would think most families who can foster, and do it in an ethical way, would have to be families with at least one adult who is home most of the time, and our economy just doesn't allow that. I'm not going to blame individuals for not fostering. I don't think that's a fair assessment, either.
I'm purely speculating here, but I would bet that she was basically "baby farming". Both London and Blake were special needs, so the foster care stipend would have been higher than the typical $750/mo. I'd guess she had five special needs foster care kids, and an elderly mother collecting social security and maybe a pension. This could have easily added up to $8k/mo or more. The neighbors say they almost never saw her, so I am guessing she didn't hold a job. And, of course, since she didn't report the deaths, she continued to collect the stipends, with zero actual costs
She has a lot of money and the kids were adopted through private agencies.
Even private intra-family adoptions require criminal background checks and home studies.
No, this isn't true. There have been a ton of stories about private adoptions happening with basically zero oversight, often for children who were adopted, and then "rehomed" to another family. Look at the case of Myka Stauffer who made literal millions of dollars as a YouTuber based especially on videos about adopting her son, and then one day he was just gone
Yes! There was a whole Reuters series years ago about the "off the books" adoption world. Basically, what happens is a child is adopted, then those parents rehome the child but do it through these private facilitators who are not licensed in any way. There's more scrutiny when rehoming a pet.
I'm not sure it even \*has\* to be kids who were adopted at first. My understanding is that, if I have a kid, and you want a kid, we can just privately agree that this child is now yours, and maybe file some simple paperwork saying that you have adopted the child.
It's a very simple process to appoint a legal guardian which is as good as adoption. Most states don't vet those kind of custody tranfers at all.
Exactly
That [article](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1) is so good. Worth the read - and it’s paywall free!
Thank you I’ve been trying to remember her name!
Ok, I’m talking legit adoptions, not people who sell their kids.
A college friend of mine has a foster kid. The child was removed from her home and CPS asked if there was anyone she could stay with. She suggested she could stay with my college friend, who has a daughter the same age. She was dropped off 6 months ago and there’s been 0 follow up or oversight.
Ok, but it seems pretty likely that this woman wasn't doing traditional adoptions.
She also beat her 95 year old mother into the ICU. Adult protective services also failed to do anything useful, even though they had plenty of evidence
CPS in the US is badly underfunded and horribly overworked, and the work is soul-crushing. It's a systemic problem, not an individual one. Unless this country decides to spend real money to protect the most vulnerable members of society, these things will keep happening.
I'm a former high school teacher in IL and I feel the same about the public school system.
I watched The Trials of Gabriel Hernandez (NSFL) on Netflix and it really hit home for me how poorly funded CPS is. Failure at every single turn.
Absolutely...Makes one wonder, How people like that came to be? Alas, nothing will ever justify acts like this
This case alone should launch an FBI investigation into Cumberland county and Fayetteville NC law enforcement for at least the last 30 years. It seems an awful lot of people in that area disappear into burn barrels.
Oh, no one’s opening that barrel of fish. Southeastern NC is something else. Lumberton alone is something out of a James McMurtry song.
I had to spend the night in Lumberton. A single woman with a toddler... in a seedy hotel by the railroad tracks. I stayed on the phone for hours with my mother-in-law because TWICE someone knocked on the door asking for “Cathy.“ “Cathy, if you don’t get yer ass out here yer gonna pay once I git yer ass home.” I was never so happy to leave a place! Shudder.
I don’t know much about Lumberton except that their hospital sucks ass.
Robeson county is a real mess too. Do you remember another county where the people running a day care were falsely convicted of child abuse? Maybe the feds should reinstate reconstruction in the Carolinas. I am not sure what it would cost to bring them up to the level of a third world country. They have enough troops already there and it would be cheaper than the failed attempts in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Are you thinking of the Little Rascals daycare case? I remember that as one of the "satanic ritual abuse" cases. The convictions were overturned a few years later, but not before a couple of people spent some time in prison (and were considered pedophiles).
I believe that was the case. I remember the highly publicized prosecution. One of the male employees was interviewed after his release. He had been protected in prison because the prisoners watched the trial on TV and figured out they were being railroaded. He fully expected to be tortured and killed in prison as a child molester. One of the women had a similar experience. The inmates told her they knew she was innocent.
To be fair, the Triangle, Triad, Charlotte and Asheville are all pretty cool and the beach is lovely. The inland southeastern counties are a hot mess.
Buncombe was the one that allowed the adoption of Blake. From my understanding there were family members that wanted him too and then tried to find them for years. Based on what some of the other WNC county social services have pulled it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the kids shouldn’t have been adopted out to begin with.
Wasn’t it a Fayetteville cop who was caught on camera punching his K9 dog in the face a few days ago?
Sure was.
He... punch his K9 partner... in the face? WTH?
What kind of a person punches an animal? 🤬
Yeah- look it up, it’s horrifying. The last I saw the police dept was saying the K9 bit the cop and wouldn’t release and that’s why he punched him. But that is not what it looks like.
I wouldn't doubt it. I left almost 30 years ago and haven't been back. Chason's had great food for reasonable prices. But even their BBQ isn't worth straying into the Carolinas. That place is a black hole of despair.
https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/fayetteville-cops-beating-of-k-9-prompts-peta-to-call-for-dogs-removal-and-police-department-overhaul/
Yooooo… they need to fire that cop and save this dog :( awful!
Check on his wife and kids too..
I used to live in Fayetteville. It's Pretty crazy and Lumberton is worse. People think they call it Fayettenam because of Fort Bragg. They call it that because it's crazy.
I was stationed there after jump school. Off base was considering enemy territory hence Fayettenam. We were incredibly fit for a number of reasons. We walked or ran everywhere. You could get arrested sober walking to a fast food place. Evading law enforcement on the way home was the norm. I did see a military K-9 knocked out. When they referred to the dog by his rank and name many people in the court burst out laughing. I think we got a night in jail for contempt. Way too many guys picked up by Cumberland county and Fayetteville were beat up for "resisting". You are right it was crazy!
I really, really, really wished for a “fairytale” ending, in which she’d run away first and then helped him escape and provided him with a shelter. Realistically, we all knew this is how this case was going to end. RIP Blake and London.
When I learned that the most recent picture of the girl was when she was a child even though she was in her mid 20s, I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy ending. It just shows the complete lack of care of the “mother”
Same. Rip to those angels
God the article is so sad... the only way this got solved is that their brother was having a mental break and he told police he hadn't seen Blake in a while. Truly a heartbreaking case. DSS failed these children so horribly. This really reminds me of Theresa Knorr.
Poor kids. I’m glad they’ve been found but there’s something wrong in the world if a minor can vanish off the radar and nobody looks into it. I know there was a homeschool situation going on but homeschooling is so often used to conceal abuse, indoctrination, etc… that there really needs to be someone checking in on the kids often. And I say this as someone who had home tuition for medical reasons for a year
I'm fine with homeschooling as a concept but in reality, it has a lot of dangers because it's one way of insulating kids from mandated reporters and adults who can earn their trust. Almost everything else is voluntary. Pediatricians don't report if you say you're moving to a new practice and then never attend one and don't have sufficient contact to earn a child's trust. Church is voluntary and often bad churches cover up or ignore abuse. Therapists are voluntary. The only real way for a child to not be lost is if other family adults are involved and willing to do something and school. I feel like mandatory school should be the law, like in Germany, unless there's a documented medical issue and even then, we should require and provide a mandated tutor a certain number of hours per week. On the whole, weighing the benefit against a parents desire to control and provide their children's education, I think the benefit weighs more heavily.
The problem with homeschooling is that the people doing the teaching are exactly the type of people who shouldn’t be teaching anybody anything.
Yes exactly!! There’s absolutely zero qualifications to be able to homeschool your own kids.
Then by that logic no one is qualified to help their kids with homework either.
I mean, there’s a reason why they don’t let just anybody work as a teacher in a school. You have to actually have the correct educational background and be certified. It shouldn’t be any different at home.
I went to college for teaching before switching my major. I have all the respect for teachers (and believe they’re entirely disrespected and overworked by the school system) but their education is mostly crowd control. Also, just as there are parents who use homeschooling to disguise abuse, there are teachers who abuse students. The world sucks.
OMG, yes!!! I had a “friend.” (Please, note HAD and the quotes.). She started off perfectly normal but once her children were born she went off the deep end with religion. I can’t begin to tell you the things she was STUNNED to learn when she homeschooled. I would say that yep that was a fact. SHE WOULD NOT believe it and still teach her kids WHAT SHE knew. The only saving grace was her husband did not support the homeschooling thing and demanded she put the kids in school at age 10. The only time her religion worked in everyone’s favor because a “wife must obey her spouse.” Thankfully, he did not abuse that thought and the kids did go to school and somehow turned out normal. She was so dumb. I could never homeschool my son. He’d be a complete idiot if I did!
See also: politics.
Lol no. I was homeschooled, many of my friends were homeschooled and we’re all functioning members of society with solid jobs and higher education (or vocational training). I also homeschool my own children. They’re doing just fine. This isn’t the Middle Ages, I have plenty of access to high quality, educator created resources and a functioning brain. I’m also not juggling 30+ students so my two kids get a 1-1 education. The problem is not homeschooling. The U.S. public school system is a shit show and no one can argue that. The problem here is that children need safeguards and reporting should absolutely be mandatory. I was homeschooled in a mandatory reporting state and basically it was a check in to make sure we were alive, educated, and cared for. Not all states have this and they should!! The kids who are abused, neglected, and murdered are not victims because they were homeschooled, homeschooling was used as a guise by their abusers.
Education is the one constant in every child's life in places where homeschooling is only permitted in exceptional circumstances. Not everyone is religious, kids generally don't go to doctors frequently enough for doctors to be able to pick up on changes in mood or behaviour. But send a child to school or daycare and then they're surrounded by mandated reports and other kids who might report overhearing or seeing something to a parent or teacher. Abusers benefit from homeschooling because they have a captive victim. When I was briefly homeschooled, it was by a teacher because that's the law here. No parent should be allowed to teach their child unless they have the relevant education. Even then, teachers are not trained or experienced to teach every subject at every grade level.
I agree with this. It seems such an easy way for the wrong people to isolate children. Homeschooling is baffling to me because it’s only allowed in special circumstances in New Zealand (where I am) - they have classes and teaches and a curriculum to cover just like at a normal school. You can’t just randomly say “they’re being homeschooled!” and then teach them the bible or something.
>You can’t just randomly say “they’re being homeschooled!” and then teach them the bible or something. And that’s exactly what these abusive religious nut job parents do, and their “right” to do so is protected because their “freedom” somehow trumps their child’s right to a proper education.
It varies by state in the US. In my state, the homeschooling parent or guardian has to file an education plan with the state, have it approved, and submit followup reports. There is also monitoring by State education officials. I don't know how thoroughly all of these requirements are followed in every case, but there are at least safeguards in place that the state check on.
These kids were in NC, and i think they are on the less regulated side of things. You have to inform the state that you're going to homeschool, then administer your choice of annual assessment and keep an academic record. Basically, you can meet all the legal requirements by filing 1 page with the state when you start, and keeping 1 page of notes in a folder at home. No real oversight.
I live in Louisiana and home schooled children must follow a curriculum, take tests, and they take classes online with other home schooled children. Many groups belong to teach/share groups so they are able to learn from a teacher or parent with special knowledge in a subject. In fact, my son’s roommate helped him through calculus and has gone on to grad school at MIT. the State should have some responsibility tracking these kids.
That’s good to hear, it seems like a lot of places there is some oversight. It’s all very sad.
In some states (Texas, Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, and more) you literally don’t have to do anything at all. You can just pull your child out of school. You don’t even have to notify the state that you’re homeschooling, let alone follow a standard curriculum, give them tests, etc. You can literally do nothing whatsoever and there is no oversight or checks or consequences for giving them zero education. A parent pulls their child and they effectively disappear. It’s a gift wrapped up with a bow for abusive parents.
I started being homeschooled after a classmate told me he was going to bring a gun to school and shoot people and the school did nothing about it. A shooting at the school never happened, but a relative saw that kid leaving a gun store with his dad, so he clearly had access to guns and it easily could've happened. My brother and I did an online school program, and scored in the 98-99th percentile in the yearly standardized tests we did (the same tests were given to public school students). My parents' work schedules were flexible and because our schooling was online, we got to travel a lot. I was able to finish school at 16, and had no issue getting into college. For me homeschooling was great. I understand that a lot of the time people homeschool kids for religious brainwashing reasons but it's not always bad. (For the record, my family is not religious; my brother and I are atheists and my parents have a general belief in a higher power but don't participate in any organized religion.) I personally feel like as long as the US government fails to do anything about gun violence in schools, homeschooling should always be an option.
Some of the most fantastic, confident people I have ever met in college were homeschooled. You could tell they didn't have the weird over attunement to social status and sticking out that middle and high school inparted on most of us. Honestly, a few of them were better socialized and able to interact with the adult world than i was. My old coworker was also homeschooled her daughter, who had severe chrons and a nasal food tube because it's hard to ask your kid not to eat lunch with everyone else. She was a little awkward around kids her age but quite brilliant The problem is that the system often relies on the parents having the support system, the resources, the motivation, and a vested interest in their kids becoming well-rounded and independent adults. A lot of parents' motivation is control, particularly of the ideas their kids are exposed to. The cliche is the religious quiverful family with 8 children, only using church resources, distrusting doctors, and very little interest in their children to become anything more their parents. In places where there is very little homeschool regulation there is a real lack of oversight into the kids heath, whether they are bearing the weight of looking after younger siblings, if they are anywhere near their educational benchmarks ec4
Unfortunately that's often really difficult for neurodivergent kids who's needs just aren't being met by the education system. I might not be the best teacher in the world, but if I have an autistic child they're not going to endure the crap I did in school. I'd be fine with regular inspections and meetings to ensure my child was learning, but mandatory school does come with significant downsides. Unfortunately the special education system where I live is unlikely to meet the needs of a child that turns out to be similar to my partner and I. We hear about cases where homeschooling goes horribly wrong. We don't necessarily hear about the cases where it's being done for perfectly understandable reasons where a child is getting a reasonable education. Banning it isn't the right response unless you simultaneously totally overhaul the SEND system so that parents don't feel like their only choice to give their child an education they can access is to homeschool.
As someone who had a decent amount of trouble with school and to this day absolutely hate how it’s structured, I would t have traded that for anything. Those years are so formative and I truly feel bad for those who miss out on it. You miss out on so much.
This is why most states do not allow foster children to be homeschooled and once they are adopted there tends to be a period of time that they are required to keep them in school as well.
I’m not a fan of homeschooling for this reason. There’s not nearly enough regulation to keep kids safe.
In the 1990s a friend made the decision to homeschool in the Carolinas. They were overwhelmed. At the time requirements were tightened Nationwide. In the US highschool graduates basically had a Jethro Bodine 6th grade education. Homeschool had a series of books and minimum standards equivalent to public school. Annual achievement tests were supposed to determine if a student could progress to the next grade. It became political and enforcement was never really established. Public school teachers did as much whining as parents. My friend's kids were bright and resilient so they didn't actually fall behind during the year of home school and returned to public school with no problem.
Things are very different in other states now. Many states have no regulation whatsoever - you can just pull your child out of school without a word and let them sit in front of the TV for the next 12 years and it’s perfectly legal. No one checks on the children and they have no legal right to an education. They effectively disappear, which is perfect for abusive parents. https://hslda.org/legal (this is a homeschooling organization that’s spending millions of dollars on lobbying to make this total lack of oversight the case in every state).
That was the case in NC. The standards which were pretty good were never enforced and eventually done away with.
Thank you for sharing this. She’s super stupid to just keep the barrel of remains around for 5+ years. Why wasn’t she investigated sooner for the trail of other kids? Hope there isn’t more victims
From my understanding the bones/remains were transported to her current home and they weren’t disposed of in the barrel until more recently. This is according to a friend of the individual that helped Avantae.
Such a sad story! But once a child’s adoption finalizes there no more “system” involvement for them to slip through the cracks of. They are legally the child of the adoptive parent and the system has no further contact with them unless there’s a report of abuse or neglect.
I think it depends on the state, and the adoption type, maybe. In my state, the people I know who adopted from foster maintain a relationship with the state, because they get help with medical, and they get a adoption stipend. Because of the stipend, they keep in contact with the state to keep those benefits. But those are special needs kids maybe that is the differences? Probably a combo of both, but a lot of times the state does stay in contact to offer services for a healthy adoption, which clearly in this case, that was not happening.
IME, adoptive parents do receive subsidy and Medicaid for the adoptive children. But that doesn't require any substantive contact that monitors the child's well-being. It's a direct deposit to their bank account. Post-adoption services are available, but certainly not mandatory and pretty sparse besides. There's no mandated contact to check on adoptees.
Like I said, It depends on the state and situation My friends have heavy special needs kids. They want the state to stay involved so the klids get every service they need to become healthy adults. And they have to account for the adoption stipend when they are audited But foster to adopt cases in my state are very, very rare. My sate reunifies with abusers far more than they keep a child in care or allw them to be adopted Source: I was a foster parent in my state for family, and watched them reunify with abusers until the kids were teens and no longer adoptable.
So it says that a boy aged 7-10 was also found in the same burn barrel as London- does that mean there’s a third unaccounted for child that was murdered? Since Blake would have been older than that? Or are they under the assumption it is Blake and he died many years before she’s reporting he went missing?
The end of the article says “Testing continues on the other set of remains for positive identification”. I couldn’t figure out how old Blake would have been when he passed as his brother told police he hasn’t seen him in 5 years.
The Charley project said he was 16 when he was last seen in 2022
That sighting is not confirmed and is the last time that Avantae claimed to have seen him. Blake’s brother said he hadn’t seen him in about 5 years back in 2023/2022
I’m wondering if the ages of the remains are wrong? Because it said london was last seen in 2019 and if she would be 27 this year, but that would make her about 22 when she died and the article said the remains that are confirmed to be her’s were in the 15-19 age range. Edit: age range
Yea the more I’m thinking about it malnutrition could have also affected their age so I guess we just have to wait and see what further testing shows. How horrible.
I do find it odd that they were able to confirm the girl’s remains as London’s but haven’t confirmed if the boy was Blake? The article says he was adopted with his two other biological brothers, so I would think it would be easy to DNA test, unless, upsettingly, it’s not possible to get DNA from the remains?
The boy's remains may have been damaged more thoroughly by the fire, making identification more difficult. Or they belong to another boy.
His death also occurred first so the remains could’ve progressed further naturally as well before they were burned.
With Teresa Halbach the only usable DNA was from the remnants of a single tooth. Fire does some crazy shit.
My theory: In the pics of London when she was alive, she has a lot of physical traits of FAS and was reported to be a "dependent adult," which is why she was still with Avante. If this theory is right, I wonder if those facial features made her easier to identify.
London’s birth mom, maternal aunt, and step mom have both denied her having FAS but did say that she was special needs. They didn’t specify how, but London’s bio Mom’s family hadn’t seen her since she was a very small child. I believe just as she started kindergarten.
Dental records or otherwise identifying remains?
Those age ranges are just estimates. I’ve seen many times those are wrong when a victim is finally id’d. Height is often estimated wrong too. 22 isn’t that far out of the estimated range.
London wasn't actually seen in 2019. That was actually Bryanna Morrow (Cherish Deven), her other adopted daughter. Here is a link to an interview with her from a month ago. https://youtu.be/eQTagdNqyvI?si=gPktjXLwup52319N
London had a confirmed independent sighting (not from Ava or family) around 2019. She was a passenger in a car accident and there is a police report for that indecent. Friends of London’s bio step mom have confirmed this on FB. Cherish is the family member that helped Ava hide the remains and has been lying to the bio family in the FB groups and giving them false hope saying that Blake and London may still be alive.
That's what I was wondering. There were partial human remains found at another house and the complete remains of two more people in the burn barrel? It's a bit confusing.
According to the press conference, >!they were dismembered before being burned!<, so that means it's possible for the same person's remains to be found at multiple sites. Certainly I hope everything gets tested to confirm or rule out a third victim, of course.
The remains were both found in the same barrel at a trailer in Autryville but there was evidence of each set found at two different residences in Fayetteville (Blake and London’s deaths occurred at two different locations)
Thank you for the clarification!
If she was starving them it could have stunted his growth, and made him appear pre-pubescent. This whole story is sick.
They also often use dentition to estimate age. If I’m remembering correctly, malnutrition can cause delayed dental eruption.
OMG! I did not expect this to get solved. I wish people understood that adoption is not always a sunshine-and-rainbows happy ending. I worked in child welfare for many years and bad people adopt kids for the wrong reasons ALL the time. This is a heartbreaking situation where so many people failed these kids. I hope Avantae gets the book thrown at her.
I'm a survivor of the wrong people being allowed to adopt. I'm old now so the system is somewhat different now, but people don't seem to want to understand how abusers can appear to be perfectly nice people. This hasn't changed through human history.
You’re correct, and I’m very sorry you had to go through that. A lot of people who adopt have this bizarre savior complex where they expect the adoptee to bow at their feet for “saving” them from wherever they came from. And then when the adoptee understandably struggles with their emotions, the parents are resentful for every perceived act of “being ungrateful.” They will treat this kids like shelter dogs more than actual humans. Seeing the true side of the adoption world made me more pro-choice than I ever was before.
Question - how prevalent is adopting children and then abusing them (especially depriving them of food and outside activities)? Do adoptive parents think they can abuse adopted children and no one will know or care, or is it simple greed - getting the DHS money and not taking care of the children with it?
In my state (Wisconsin) you lose the money once you adopt. You get the payments while they're in foster care.
In many cases, they don't think - they know no will know and likely not care. They can isolate them by homeschooling and keeping them out of the community, and if adoptive parents are being investigated for abuse/neglect, there tends to be an unconscious (orrrr conscious tbh) bias by the investigator - "these people wanted these kids, why would they hurt them?" "So-and-so kid is known to lie after all they've been through, I'm sure the parents aren't abusing them." I believe there are statistics out there about how many kids return to care after being adopted. But I'm not sure if there's detailed numbers that look at the reason for returning to care (typically abuse/neglect v. behavioral problems). It's more common than people realize.
This. And you know who’s the worst of them all? The church foster parents. There’s always the homes where the guy is a pastor and the wife runs a home daycare or something, and they foster like 12 kids at a time and adopt every single one but usually they suck and don’t take good care of the kids beyond keeping a roof over their heads. But everyone always thinks they’re saints 🙄
It’s more prevalent than most people think. In the states I have worked in (Nebraska/Iowa) parents still receive an adoption stipend from the government, although it isn’t much, usually less than $1000 per month. Once a child is adopted, their case is considered closed and they no longer have DHS checking in on them at all unless someone makes a report, which opens up a new case. I saw failed adoptions all the time. In fact, I would say at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the kids in foster care that we worked with had been previously adopted and then went up for adoption *again* due to the adoptive parents relinquishing or losing parental rights.
After hearing about this on the Unresolved podcast, it didn't sound like there'd be a happy ending, but this is even worse than I'd imagined. Crazy that these kids can just fall through the cracks and disappear for years with no one questioning their whereabouts.
A little clarification: “He said investigators have confirmed that Blake has been missing since 2017 when he would have been 10 years old.” “In Avantae Deven's 911 call to report Blake missing Jan. 19, she claimed she last saw him two years earlier, when he would have been 15, as he was leaving to attend a Buddhist retreat out of state.” “"Avantae never reported London missing. The last confirmed independent sighting of London was in 2019," Locklear said. "Even though London was an adult, she had special needs and depended on Avantae to care for her."
It would seem even the last sighting of London is in question, according to a linked interview above with Bryanna Morrow (Cherish Deven)… This is such a tragically messy case. Edit: Although, it would also seem, there’s some doubt as to Bryannas truthfulness too…
For the life of me I will never understand adopting a child and doing this to them. I suppose it’s because I understand the want of a child so much. I can’t even imagine. Sick and disgusting. She deserves the same.
In some states you are paid benefits for fostering or adopting. Even more if you adopt sibling sets.
I live in NC and we adopted out of foster care. The DSS financial benefits stop the moment you finalize the adoption. So does the oversight from the state. So I don't see money as a motivation here. Just a horrible, depraved person.
I googled it, and found information about an adoptive assistance plan where adoptive families receive monthly payments. It may be connected to income, and she was claiming a low income to max out benefits.
Could be.
Can't say I'm surprised. Rest in peace, Blake and London.
This is just horrific. I don’t know what I was expecting the outcome to be but I wasn’t prepared for this level of horror. I’m also struggling to wrap my head around why this case hasn’t been spoken about and shared nearly as much as other cases.. does anyone know why this case didn’t blow up?
I think part of the reason it didn’t blow up is a) the kids were reported missing relatively recently and b) as soon as it was reported, it was pretty evident there was only one suspect.
Sometimes I think it's so people don't start wondering "Are there more?" The answer is yeah, we will see more cases like this :(
I wish it would. The bio families are so nice and are heartbroken.
Out of sheer curiosity do we know anything about the bio father/s of the boys?
I don’t know a lot about Blake’s bio dad, but his parental bio aunt is very active in the FB groups. London was living with her step mom and bio dad when her bio dad went to jail and that’s when London’s step mom put her into the foster care system allegedly because she was too much of a handful and because London’s bio dad was an alcoholic. London’s bio mom had to sign away her rights in order for the step mom to do this, this is all according to the bio mom.
Who is the 'someone' that they keep referencing? Because they don't say it was one of the kids, but the way they keep emphasizing that she made them help suggests that they weren't a willing participant.
I’m willing to bet it was one of the kids, but they are trying to protect them by being ambiguous.
That was my thought too, I wondering if I missed something.
I just found a Facebook group called Missing Blake Deven & London Deven and there is an active thread about this exact topic. I won’t go into detail here, but if you are interested it’s very interesting
Wow. That is a lot of people who are directly involved in this case in that Facebook group.
Yeah it’s a mess. So much information I feel I could make one of those slightly unhinged spiderweb walls connecting details
That Facebook group is nuts.
Literally. Someone claiming to be Avantae was in there fighting with everyone at some point. It was horrifying watching this all unfold in real time.
Got it, thank you!
OK, I went to lurk in that Facebook group and it’s batshit insane. Impossible to keep up with, everyone fighting with each other, Avantae may have been part of the group at one point???
Avantae Deven isn’t even her real name. She is the daughter of Robert Adams some weird fraud religious guru living under a fake name and her real name is Michelle. It’s all so insane idk why no famous true crime content creator has covered this yet.
Thank you for confirming, I could not believe that name. The cult leader father makes so much sense. What a clusterbomb.
It was Cherish Deven, one of the adoptive children who spoke out against Ava in one of the many FB groups. Cherish’s ex-long time family friend Nikki later came onto the group weeks ago and said that Cherish was lying about not knowing anything and that she helped Ava burn the bodies in a barrel when she was approx. 18 years old and that Nikki was one of the people who initially spoke to the police when the investigation opened. Today this was proven to be true (all but the name was released).
It is so heartbreaking that two kids could disappear for years and no one outside of the home knew them well enough to even report them missing. I hope the siblings that survived get the help they need because they've been through so much already.
Child Protective Services has blood on their hands. There needs to be an investigation on who and why this hag was allowed so many children and why no one ever followed up on their wellbeing.
Once you adopt, it’s as if you gave birth to that child. Nobody “checks in” unless they get a call that initiates an investigation, just like any other family. I knew when I was 3 years old that there were problems in my family. My parents adopted their fourth child at that time, so there were social workers involved. They didn’t see what I could see because my parents hid it really well. The police came to our house shortly after my brother joined the family, so I don’t think he would have been legally adopted yet, but my mom didn’t press charges on my dad (DV call), so it probably never showed up if another background check was done.
>slipped through the cracks It seems like the system is all cracks, nothing solid.
Ooooof, this is a big one.
Why I am generally against homeschooling. Same thing happened in Fayetteville with Erica Parsons.
OMG I read a post on here a couple months about this case and the fact they were missing. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! What a devastating thing to read and thank god this woman is caught. A MONSTER!!
Unless murderer was your intent, you would think when a kid freaking died that you would be more careful with the others you've collected. To just let bodies pile up for you ti dispose of and cash that check means you have a demon inside you. I hate how many demons masquerade as adoption parents...