A US YouTuber recently announced her family 'rehomed' a 4-year-old boy allegedly suffering autism after he was adopted from China three years ago, which has outraged some online commentators. The Chinese civil affairs authority of the boy's home region said it would confirm the case.
Myka Stauffer, a YouTuber influencer, and her husband James have sent Huxley, an orphan with special needs the couple had adopted in October 2017 from Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, to adoption agencies.
"From the updates we've gotten from the adoption agency [it's] like they were able to place him in what they felt was literally the perfect match," Myka Stauffer said in tears in a Tuesday video on her personal YouTube channel, which had 716,000 subscribers as of press time.
Twitter user posts to accuse Myka Stauffer
James Stauffer said in the video that "When Huxley came home there was a lot more special needs that we weren't aware of, in that we were not told."
But the employee in Guangxi noted that before adoption, the civil affairs department would truthfully provide documents about the children's condition. "We will not hide the real conditions… If the adoptees found they could not accept, they should not adopt."
Videos on the family's vlog channel, Stauffer Life, have all been removed as of press time. Apart from Huxley, the couple has four biological children.
Huxley's disappearance and being sent away outraged netizens who have been following his stories, as well as those in China. The family has also gained fame in China after their videos being posted on Chinese video platforms.
"Does this mean Huxley been abandoned another time? He was so small and had been trying so hard to progress… I had thought the parents could accompany him forever," a Bilibili netizen said.
Americans adopted 81,637 children from the Chinese mainland from 1999 to 2018, according to the Bureau of Consular Affairs under the US Department of State. Among them, 84.5% are female.