An investigation into America’s underground market for adopted children. Using online forums like Yahoo and Facebook groups, parents often advertise their unwanted children—who have a tendency to have been adopted abroad and have special needs—and give custody rights to strangers in a practice called “private re-homing,” which has little or no government regulation:

“As the Puchallas drove away, Melissa sobbed. She calls the decision ‘the hardest thing we’ve ever done in our lives.’ Quita still can’t reconcile it. ‘How would you give me up when you brought me to be yours?’ she asks.

“In the days that followed, two puppies scampered through the trailer, gifts from the Easons to Quita. The dogs lifted the teenager’s spirits, but they weren’t housebroken and no one cleaned up after them. No one did the dishes, either, or the laundry.

“More troubling, Quita says, was that the Easons took her into their bed: ‘They call me in there to sleep … to lay in the bed with them.’ In bed, “Nicole used to be naked and stuff. It was not right to me.'”