After months of languishing in an abusive boarding school in Jamaica — where boys said they were beaten, waterboarded, starved and whipped — Michigan teenager Elijah Goldman begged to come home.
But his adoptive parents in Traverse City never came for him: Not even after Jamaican authorities removed him from the American-run school, placed him in a foster home, shut down the school following allegations of abuse and neglect, and arrested and charged four school officials with child abuse.
Rather, Elijah's mom and dad — a wealthy and conservative Christian couple who adopted him from Haiti when he was 11 — left him in Jamaica for another seven months.