But [Kate Thompson’s] view began to change a few months later when Serene called to say they were sending CeCe’s brother, Isaiah, then 13, back to Liberia. Serene had caught him watching her in the shower.
The Thompsons begged them to reconsider, to send Isaiah to counseling instead. They also called Children’s Services, which, according to Kate, warned the Allisons that it could be illegal to repatriate Isaiah. But Sam and Serene sent him off anyway. “They told me, ‘If we told people about what you did, they’d put you in jail,’” Isaiah told me later. “I felt so bad, I didn’t even care.”
When Isaiah and his escort, a man Sam knew, arrived in Monrovia, they found the orphanage closed. The escort left him instead with a pastor who cared for street children. Isaiah begged the man not to leave him behind. He had only a backpack of clothes and $40—and his green card would expire in six months if he remained in Liberia. He spent three weeks scavenging for food, until his great aunt found out he was in Liberia and brought him home to River Cess, a desolate coastal outpost where he could no longer understand the Kru language his cousins spoke. Isaiah felt safe, at least, but food was scarce, and he took to sleeping most of the day to escape his hunger. He also contracted malaria, as did a five-year-old cousin, who died one night by his side. “To stop myself from crying,” he told me, “I would think that what I did was really bad, and this is the least I can do.”
Frantic, Kate and Roger Thompson eventually tracked down Isaiah in River Cess and brought him back to Atlanta. Shortly before they did, the Allisons emailed Isaiah in care of Acres of Hope, assuring him that they had forgiven him, as well as the Thompsons, “for this interference…Remember the beautiful times we had together, remember we loved you always. No one can ever take away the truth of what really happened here.”
Oh my god.