Chinese adoptee suing adoptive parents who she says kept her in basement

A teenage Chinese adoptee is suing her adoptive parents in New Hampshire claiming they beat her, starved her and treated her like a slave. She is also suing the police and other local agencies.

According to The Mirror, Olivia Atkocaitis, who is now 19, says her adoptive parents Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis locked her in an eight-by-eight-foot basement. She was only allowed out to give Denise massages and complete other chores.

Olivia was adopted by Thomas and Denise in when she was a baby and came to their New Hampshire home when she was 14-months-old in 2004. WMUR reports that she alleges the abuse began when she was 3-years-old.

Olivia is also suing the New Hampshire police, the child protection system, an adoption agency and the school district for failing to protect her. According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, her lawsuit states that police came into contact with the Atkocaitis family six times between 2006 and 2017.

In 2011, one of Olivia’s siblings told a school counselor that she had been whipped and pushed down the stairs, The Mirror reports. The lawsuit says that police went to the family home and photographed where Olivia was kept. The sibling who reported the abuse was taken away from the home but Olivia remained.

“Her life was a nightmare, in that she was treated in the most vile fashion,” Mike Lewis, Olivia’s lawyer, told WMUR. “And as the lawsuit indicates, the people who should have protected her didn’t. And it’s shocking.”

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