For 20 years, a Tennessee baby thief kidnapped more than 5,000 children from the streets, hospitals, and shanty towns of Memphis. Now, 70 years later, survivors of her 'house of horrors' are confronting the past.

submitted by TheWebOfSlime from (insider.com)

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[–]Tiwaking 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I wish I hadnt had read this. What a monster.

Shutting the Children's Home Society down may have cast it into obscurity, but by then the home had already permanently changed the lives of more than 5,000 children. The unimaginable horror of the place still reverberates today not because many of the children were orphaned or abused but because they were stolen.

Stealing kids and selling them :(

For more than 20 years, Tann ran the Tennessee Children's Home Society, where she and an elaborate network of coconspirators kidnapped and abused children to sell them off to wealthy adoptive parents at a steep profit.

Apparently it was around $900 per child, which is about $14000 in todays worthless money.

Her favorite scheme was to drive through impoverished neighborhoods, picking out the prettiest children, then offer them rides in her shiny black luxury car. Once the children were in, they usually never saw their families again.

Even today, these kids still dont know who their real parents are. They would need a DNA test.

In the 1900s and 1910s, formalized adoptions were fairly rare, but in the 1920s adoption began to be marketed as a shortcut to societal improvement. According to one ad from the National Home Finding Society, adopting would "reduce divorces, banditry, murder, and control births, fill all the churches and do real missionary work at home and abroad, exchanging immigrants for Americans and stopping some of the road leading to war."

[–]TheWebOfSlime[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Human trafficking research is a dark rabbit hole.