News From the Future: Child Hoarding May Be Mental Illness

Los Angeles, CA
July 20, 2024
Associated Press

Experts say an obsessive condition they call Adopted Child Hoarding or ACH, more commonly known as Pitt-Jolie syndrome is rare.

But you wouldn’t think that from what hearing from Los Angeles County where authorities are struggling to deal with a third home filled with scores of wild adopted children.

This time, it’s an elderly woman in San Bernadino who has collected perhaps as many as 110 asian, african and indian babies.

Adopted Child Service workers, also called “Child Catchers,” are still positioning traps outside the tumble down cottage in San Bernandino.

Police say they’ve captured 43 feral adopted children near the home so far, but three more wandered the back yard, and neighbors say there are many more.

“It’s the stench that hits you first, an acrid odor of baby urine and feces,” says neighbor Bob Hernandez. “You never really get used to it. But I can’t sell my home and move- no one wants to live here. Its like a freaking African village in the middle of a civil war on this cul-de-sac.”

ACH was first popularized years ago when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were arrested after a highly publicized incident in which over 200 crazed and wild internationally adopted children were removed from their Malibu Estate.

In that now-infamous case, dozens of starving children had resorted to cannibalism inside the feces and urine-filled home they shared with the globe-trotting stars. Mummified remains of Laotian twins were found in the wine celler, and tragically, the bodies of several infants were found frozen and stacked inside the couple’s large walk-in freezer.

When Child Support officials arrived onsite as a response to a complaint from neighbors, they were shocked to find 24 children locked inside cupboards and 16 others hiding in the crawlspaces under the house. Scores of children were treated for wounds, bites, bruises and even broken limbs. Several later succumbed to their injuries at the hospital.

An anthropologist from UCLA was called to the location to document how the children had formed tribal groups and their own languages to compete over the limited territory and available food.

The Malibu home had to be condemned due to the horrifying sanitary conditions.

Jolie was dragged from the home in handcuffs after assaulting several officers, and Pitt was arrested after police found him wide-eyed and mumbling after he had locked himself in the attic.