Lawsuit: Chinese Adoptee Sues Adoptive parents UPDATED now Bittersweet Justice

“A Chinese-born girl ended up a slave to a New Boston family who adopted her and subjected her to years of confinement, beatings, starvation and forced labor, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in a New Hampshire court.

The 70-page suit names the parents as defendants but also targets New Hampshire’s child protection system, New Boston police, a nonprofit Massachusetts adoption agency and the local school district.

It claimed those agencies ignored the girl’s situation — in part because she was a minority child — and kept her with an abusive family.

“In my view, the state permitted slavery to exist in its jurisdiction, and the state did nothing about this,” said Michael Lewis, a Concord lawyer representing Olivia Atkocaitis, who is now 19.

The lawsuit alleges that Atkocaitis was denied her rights under the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery shortly after the Civil War.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in Merrimack County Superior Court. Most of the organizations named in the lawsuit either did not reply to requests for comment or did not provide a substantive response.

The parents previously pleaded guilty to related charges.

According to the lawsuit, Atkocaitis’ parents, Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis, locked her in an 8-by-8 foot room in the basement of their four-bedroom, 4,300-square-foot home. The home sits on 27 acres adjacent to a state forest.

The lawsuit refers to the room as a dungeon, and the only window was secured with chicken wire.

Olivia was let out to massage Denise Atkocaitis and do other chores, including caring for farm animals and clearing their manure, the suit reads. She attended school for only one day, while the Atkocaitises’ three biological children attended public schools.

Olivia used a bucket for a toilet, and the smell pervaded the house, her siblings told school officials.

“When Olivia attempted to escape, as she did repeatedly as a child, local police hunted her down, reprimanded her for escaping, and returned her to servitude. During her last effort at escape, the police used dogs to track her,” the suit reads.

The lawsuit alleges racism and sexism on the part of agencies that came into contact with the girl.

For example, in 2011 a teenaged sibling reported to a school counselor that Olivia had been whipped, starved and pushed down stairs. She was 8 at the time.

The school notified New Boston police, who went to the home and photographed Olivia’s room. They also notified the state Division for Children, Youth and Families, which moved the teen out of the home but left Olivia.

“It did not offer the same protections to Olivia, a younger child, a girl, a racial and ethnic minority, even after Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis admitted to police that they had locked her in a basement dungeon,” the lawsuit reads.

After her 2018 escape, officials brought charges against the Atkocaitis couple.

Denise Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to a felony criminal restraint and avoided any prison time. Thomas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment and received a minimal jail sentence, according to the lawsuit.

News media at the time of their indictment reported the couple had kept the girl confined to a basement room.

According to the lawsuit, the Atkocaitises no longer live in New Hampshire. His address lists an apartment in Auburn, Maine; she lives in Byron, Georgia. According to town records, they sold their home on Helena Drive for $445,000 in October 2019.

The lawsuit faults the placement agency, Wide Horizons for Children.

In a pre-placement investigation, one of the Atkocaitis children reported being beaten by a belt by their father. Wide Horizons reported to DCYF, according to the lawsuit. The state agency never investigated, and 10 months later reported no valid complaints against the couple.

Wide Horizons’ last contact with the Atkocaitises was in May 2005, when the agency did a post-placement inspection. It described the couple as “devoted to their children, and they are raising them in a loving, Christian home, where each child is thriving.”

The lawsuit is one of several filed in recent years challenging DCYF and the state’s system for protecting children.

“We are reviewing the filing and will respond as appropriate in court in the ordinary course of litigation,” reads an email sent by Michael Garrity, a spokesman for Attorney General John Formella.

Besides the 13th Amendment violations, the lawsuit claims deprivations of due process, equal protection, citizenship rights, failure to provide an education, breach of fiduciary duties, false imprisonment and discrimination.”

Lawsuit: Girl adopted from China suffered slavery in NH

[Yahoo News 1/30/23 by Mark Hayward,The New Hampshire Union Leader]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“A woman who claims her adoptive parents kept her in a basement dungeon in New Boston shared her story in court Tuesday. In her lawsuit, Olivia Griffin asked for nearly $30 million to help rebuild her life. After hearing Griffin’s testimony, the judge approved the damages.

“When News 9 first broke the story of the case in 2018, her name was Olivia Atkocaitis, but the first thing she clarified for the judge Tuesday was that she now uses the last name “Griffin.” She spoke about the pain her old name carries.

“Being told for 15 years that your life is not worth living, and any time you do something wrong, you were told 110 ways you should kill yourself. I don’t think I’m ever going to recover from that,” she said. “I was conditioned to not think that I was worth anything.”

Griffin was adopted from China at 14 months old. She said that for 15 years, she was kept in a room in the basement by Denise and Thomas Atkocaitis. Neither were in the courtroom Tuesday, but they have both pleaded guilty to criminal charges connected to the case.

homas Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor of endangering the welfare of a child and served six months in jail. Denise Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to one felony charge of restraint and served no jail time.

Court documents describe Griffin’s living conditions as a dungeon or jail and point to a previous criminal prosecutor saying that Olivia was kept in conditions that he wouldn’t keep his dog in.

“If I did anything wrong, it would result in a beating. So I tried really hard to be good.” Griffin said.

She said she tried to escape multiple times but was repeatedly returned to the same family. She said she wasn’t in school from the first through the eighth grade.

Griffin testified she was tied to a metal column with a dog leash, subjected to racism and starved or force-fed until she vomited. She was fed things like peanut butter sandwiches with apple cider vinegar on the bread.

“She would tell me that she wishes China would just blow up, and she wishes she could ship me back there when it happened,” she said.

In 2018, she finally escaped by digging herself out of the basement.

“I have been villainized my whole life,” Griffin said. “So, I can’t explain to you the trauma I’ll have for the rest of my life, but if you can think of the worst thing that has ever happened to you in your life, having to relive that and then having it happen every day, that is what it felt like.”

The judge approved $29.5 million in damages. New Hampshire officials said the state previously settled with Griffin for $800,000.

Griffin said that despite the pain she has felt and will feel, she is now striving to help other children in similar situations.”

Woman who says she suffered years of abuse at hands of adoptive parents awarded nearly $30M
[WMUR 7/9/25 by Arielle Mitropoulos]