Eugene Register-Guard

By Haleigh Kochanski

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A Pennsylvania family has sued Eugene-based nonprofit Holt International Children’s Services, the largest international adoption agency in the world, alleging they were coerced into adopting a child from Thailand with severe psychiatric and behavioral health needs.

The adoption has led to unethical treatment of the child and ongoing emotional distress, financial loss and liabilities for the family related to the child’s medical care and treatments, the suit alleges.

The 58-page civil com­plaint, ini­tially filed on Sept. 5, 2025, in Pennsylvania, was assigned to U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Mustafa T. Kas­ubhai in Eugene on July 22. Plaintiffs in the case are Ben­jamin Irwin and Angela Colas­anti, who are demand­ing Holt “pay for its abuse and exploit­a­tion,” breach of duty, and dis­reg­ard for the child’s best interests.

The Irwin-Colas­anti fam­ily claim because they’ve received so little sup­port from Holt Inter­na­tional, they’ve had to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the child, who was sed­ated with Ben­adryl when she was brought to the United States in 2023. The fam­ily says they have endured numer­ous emer­gen­cies, hos­pit­al­iz­a­tions, daily viol­ent out­bursts and are now aware of pre­vi­ously undis­closed, expens­ive med­ical and psy­chi­at­ric dia­gnoses, accord­ing to the law­suit.

Those dia­gnoses include Turner Syn­drome, Hyper­lip­idemia, atten­tion defi­cit hyper­activ­ity dis­order (ADHD), Intel­lec­tual and Devel­op­mental Dis­ab­il­ity (IDD), an anxi­ety dis­order, primary lan­guage dis­rup­tion, resolved lat­ent tuber­cu­losis infec­tion and H Pylori infec­tion, react­ive attach­ment dis­order and Hashimoto’s.

“Right now, a child from Thai­l­and is stuck in a res­id­en­tial treat­ment facil­ity in Lang­horne, Pennsylvania, 9,000 miles from the place she was born,” the com­plaint says. “She has been there for 21 months. There is no plan for her dis­charges, place­ment or long-term care.”

The Irwin-Colas­anti fam­ily says the law­suit’s alleg­a­tions are com­mon prac­tices that other fam­il­ies adopt­ing through Holt Inter­na­tional have exper­i­enced. Per the com­plaint, mul­tiple fam­il­ies across the U.S. attemp­ted to adopt a child through Holt, only to later dis­cover the child had severe med­ical, psy­cho­lo­gical and beha­vi­oral com­plic­a­tions that Holt mis­rep­res­en­ted or failed to dis­close.

Irwin and Colas­anti say they feel a moral, per­sonal and eth­ical respons­ib­il­ity to act in the best interest of the child. By fil­ing the law­suit, they hope for proper inter­ven­tions, treat­ment and place­ment that leads the child to a safe and peace­ful life.

Her ‘last hope’: Child exhib­its con­cern­ing beha­vi­ors in Thai­l­and

To facil­it­ate its inter­na­tional adop­tion busi­ness, Holt estab­lishes, con­trols and col­lab­or­ates with numer­ous for­eign organ­iz­a­tions to identify or obtain inform­a­tion about pro­spect­ive adopt­ive chil­dren. One such entity is the Holt Sahathai Found­a­tion (HSF) in Thai­l­and, which provides ser­vices to impov­er­ished and under­served chil­dren in Thai­l­and, includ­ing foster care, edu­ca­tion and wel­fare ser­vices, accord­ing to the law­suit.

After sub­mit­ting an applic­a­tion for adop­tion with Holt Inter­na­tional in 2021, Irwin and Colas­anti were matched with a then 7-year-old girl, referred to in court doc­u­ments as “K.R.,” who was avail­able for adop­tion through the Holt Thai­l­and Spe­cial Needs Pro­gram. Holt described the chil­dren in the pro­gram as hav­ing “minor to mod­er­ate phys­ical or devel­op­mental needs.”

K.R. resided at the Songkhla Chil­dren’s Home, a gov­ern­ment-run orphan­age in Songkhla in south­ern Thai­l­and. She was vis­ited by both HSF and Holt staff before being made avail­able for adop­tion through the spe­cial needs pro­gram. HSF staff said K.R. had ADHD, which improved with med­ic­a­tion. They also claimed she had a stable, good tem­per, and had no his­tory of phys­ical alter­ca­tions with friends while on med­ic­a­tion. The suit alleges that was later determ­ined to be false.

Irwin and Colas­anti claim they made clear to Holt Inter­na­tional they could not accept a child that exhib­ited dan­ger­ous beha­vi­ors because they didn’t have the resources, skills or capa­city to care for a child with such needs. They decided to move for­ward with the adop­tion based on Holt’s descrip­tion of K.R. and signed a Fam­ily Ser­vice Plan.

In the event of dis­rup­tion of the adop­tion and place­ment pro­cess, Holt would assume cus­tody of the child and facil­it­ate the pro­vi­sion of child­care or any other social ser­vice pending an altern­at­ive place­ment, accord­ing to the ser­vice plan.

Irwin and Colas­anti were approved to adopt K.R. on June 18, 2021.

They signed a place­ment agree­ment that expressly stated Holt would explore other types of place­ments and resources for the child, includ­ing foster and insti­tu­tional care. Holt, however, is not licensed to provide foster care or insti­tu­tional care ser­vices in Pennsylvania. Irwin and Colas­anti say they were unaware of this when they entered into the place­ment agree­ment.

After years of wait­ing, Irwin, Colas­anti and their adop­ted daugh­ter from China traveled to Thai­l­and to meet their new fam­ily mem­ber in April 2023. However, Holt mis­rep­res­en­ted and dis­tor­ted key inform­a­tion about K.R. con­cern­ing her med­ical, psy­cho­lo­gical and beha­vi­oral com­plic­a­tions, the com­plaint says.

Within the first few weeks while still in Thai­l­and, the fam­ily says K.R. attemp­ted to strangle Irwin and Colas­anti, attemp­ted to jump from an 11-story hotel bal­cony, des­troyed prop­erty, attemp­ted to run away, and repeatedly engaged in self-harm by banging her head against fur­niture. Her beha­vior became so dan­ger­ous she needed to be phys­ic­ally restrained by Holt social work­ers.

Holt employ­ees allegedly instruc­ted the fam­ily to ignore K.R.’s beha­vior and down­played the sever­ity of her situ­ation. They told the fam­ily they were K.R.’s “last chance” and “only hope.” They also told the fam­ily that should they refuse to take K.R. with them to the U.S., she would have to return to the Songkhla Chil­dren’s Home Orphan­age, which the fam­ily believed to be a dan­ger­ous, unsan­it­ary, abus­ive and pred­at­ory envir­on­ment for chil­dren.

“Holt repeatedly pres­sured and coerced adopt­ive fam­il­ies into final­iz­ing their adop­tions before offer­ing help and resources,” the law­suit alleges.

Self-harm, mul­tiple hos­pit­al­iz­a­tions and no sup­port

Irwin and Colas­anti arrived in Pennsylvania on May 12, 2023. Over the course of two days, K.R.’s aggres­sion and viol­ence, both toward her­self and the fam­ily, escal­ated. She was hos­pit­al­ized at the Chil­dren’s Hos­pital of Phil­adelphia where she remained until May 25.

Accord­ing to the com­plaint, Irwin and Colas­anti ini­ti­ated dis­cus­sions with Holt about altern­at­ive place­ment options for K.R. Holt began internal con­ver­sa­tions con­cern­ing the poten­tial repat­ri­ation of K.R. to Thai­l­and around the same time.

K.R.’s beha­vi­ors worsened at the hos­pital and she was dia­gnosed with lat­ent tuber­cu­losis, which meant she couldn’t be dis­charged to a shortterm psy­chi­at­ric facil­ity due to the vir­al­ity of the infec­tion and had to go home with the fam­ily. Hos­pital staff advised the fam­ily to con­tact a local crisis unit if K.R.’s situ­ation con­tin­ued to escal­ate. However, because there was no plan estab­lished for K.R’s long-term care, they learned there was no avail­able local crisis unit or cen­ter in their area. This mean they either had to call 911 in a crisis or cycle from one med­ical dis­charge to the next.

K.R. lived in the fam­ily’s home from May 25 to June 23 and had sev­eral beha­vi­oral and psy­chi­at­ric out­bursts. She allegedly hit, kicked and bit fam­ily mem­bers, threw fur­niture, sought weapons, urin­ated inside the home, attacked fam­ily mem­bers while they were asleep, attemp­ted to push a fam­ily mem­ber down a flight of stairs and ran out into the street in an attempt to escape.

Irwin and Colas­anti say due to K.R.’s beha­vior, “safety in the home became a full-time oper­a­tion.”

They added double locks to all interior doors and triple locks to all exter­ior doors. Redund­ant locks were also added to all win­dows. Irwin was forced to take short-term leave from work because of the fre­quent dis­rup­tions in the house­hold and their older daugh­ter had to be gran­ted an exemp­tion by her high school due to her inab­il­ity to com­plete courses neces­sary to gradu­ate.

Regard­less of the fam­ily’s troubles, Holt did noth­ing, the law­suit alleges. The organ­iz­a­tion’s first post-place­ment visit to the fam­ily’s home was sched­uled for June 23. After observing K.R.’s extreme beha­vi­ors, Holt’s agent advised she be hos­pit­al­ized again. K.R. was checked into the chil­dren’s hos­pital for a second time.

“As pre­vi­ously dis­cussed, our fam­ily intends to dis­rupt the adop­tion of K.R. from Thai­l­and,” Irwin and Colas­anti wrote in a let­ter to Holt on June 28. “We have done, and will con­tinue to do, all that we can to help K.R. gain pos­it­ive momentum for a change in the tra­ject­ory of her life.”

On July 6, Holt provided the fam­ily with a draft “Dis­rup­tion Ser­vices Agree­ment,” but the suit says an employee advised them not to sign it. The agree­ment would have required Irwin and Colas­anti to “pay all costs of tem­por­ary foster care” for K.R. and included no place­ment plan for the child, the suit alleges.

The fam­ily then draf­ted let­ters to the Thai Red Cross Soci­ety’s Chil­dren’s Vil­lage, the U.S. Depart­ment of State and Thai­l­and Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Youth request­ing K.R. be repat­ri­ated, which Holt determ­ined at the time to be in the child’s best interest, but Holt never for­war­ded the let­ters, the com­plaint says.

K.R. was for­cibly dis­charged under sed­a­tion from the chil­dren’s hos­pital on Aug. 11. The hos­pital threatened Irwin and Colas­anti with crim­inal charges should they choose to not take the child, des­pite her increas­ing psy­chi­at­ric con­di­tion, the suit says. The

Chester County Office of Chil­dren, Youth and Fam­il­ies also refused to inter­vene, stat­ing dir­ectly to Holt it was the organ­iz­a­tion’s respons­ib­il­ity to provide sup­port.

K.R. was then trans­por­ted nearly two hours away to Lehigh Val­ley Health Net­work’s Emer­gency Psy­chi­at­ric Depart­ment, her third hos­pit­al­iz­a­tion. Upon her arrival, K.R. allegedly attacked hos­pital staff and other patients. She was restrained with straps, sed­ated fully and placed in a locked emer­gency unit.

Over the course of three days, Lehigh Val­ley phys­i­cians told the fam­ily that K.R.’s beha­vi­ors and needs were bey­ond their hos­pital’s cap­ab­il­it­ies. K.R. was dis­charged again on Aug. 14. The fam­ily drove roughly five hours across Pennsylvania to take K.R. to West­ern Psy­chi­at­ric Hos­pital (WPH) in Pitt­s­burgh. K.R. was again placed in a locked emer­gency unit, accord­ing to the com­plaint. She required fre­quent restraint, seclu­sion and res­cue med­ic­a­tions. She also con­tin­ued to attack doc­tors, nurses, secur­ity guards and other hos­pital patients, the suit says.

“Cru­cially, it was around this time that Plaintiffs were informed by a WPH psy­chi­at­rist that this level of beha­vior and dys­reg­u­la­tion was K.R.’s baseline con­di­tion,” the com­plaint says. The fam­ily was told K.R.’s beha­vi­ors could be con­trolled in an incred­ibly restrict­ive envir­on­ment. They were told by phys­i­cians to stop vis­it­ing K.R. for sev­eral months.

While at WPH, K.R. was dia­gnosed with Turner Syn­drome, a rare genetic con­di­tion in which a female does not have the usual pair of X chro­mo­somes, on Nov. 26. Dur­ing her roughly four-month stay at the hos­pital, K.R. was referred to addi­tional health­care pro­viders and res­id­en­tial treat­ment facil­it­ies across Pennsylvania until repat­ri­ation could be executed by Holt. All refused.

On Dec. 5, K.R. was trans­por­ted by ambu­lance to Woods Ser­vices, a res­id­en­tial treat­ment facil­ity in Lang­horne, Pennsylvania, which agreed to tem­por­ar­ily house the child until she could be repat­ri­ated to Thai­l­and. She remained at the facil­ity, as of the Septem­ber 2025 fil­ing, in an envir­on­ment not con­du­cive to short or long-term care.

Mean­while, the Thai gov­ern­ment told Holt the only pos­sible repat­ri­ation plan avail­able to K.R. was her return to Songkhla Orphan­age, a place the fam­ily says Holt rep­res­ent­at­ives knew to be an abus­ive and hos­tile envir­on­ment for kids.

A phys­i­cian at the chil­dren’s hos­pital told Irwin and Colas­anti she could not eth­ic­ally recom­mend K.R.’s repat­ri­ation due to her acute and highly spe­cial­ized med­ical needs, includ­ing hor­mone ther­apy, growth hor­mone and spe­cial­ized life­time med­ical man­age­ment care.

They also told the fam­ily K.R. was at risk of a poten­tially fatal car­diac event due to her Turner Syn­drome dia­gnosis, which requires life-long mon­it­or­ing.

On Feb. 21, 2024, Holt offi­cially with­drew its request for K.R. to be repat­ri­ated.

Accord­ing to the com­plaint, K.R.’s place­ment at Woods is fun­ded by Com­munity Care Beha­vi­oral Health, a Medi­caid man­age­ment agency, amount­ing to at least $30,000 per month. The fund­ing for her care was set to expire on Nov. 23, 2025.

“At the time of this com­plaint, Holt still has not per­formed any dir­ect assess­ment of K.R., nor has it determ­ined her avail­able place­ment options or eval­u­ated her best interest in any way or at any time,” the com­plaint says. To the fam­ily’s know­ledge, Holt has fired all employ­ees who were dir­ectly involved in pla­cing K.R. or they have resigned.

On Aug. 1, 2025, under threat of lit­ig­a­tion, Holt filed an applic­a­tion for a Private Depend­ency Peti­tion for K.R. in Chester County. Those pro­ceed­ings were ongo­ing when the law­suit was filed.

Holt con­tends fam­ily still fin­an­cially respons­ible for K.R.

The Irwin-Colas­anti fam­ily is seek­ing declar­at­ory judge­ment regard­ing the nature of fin­an­cial oblig­a­tions for K.R.’s care. Irwin and Colas­anti argue their fin­an­cial oblig­a­tions under the Place­ment Agree­ment with respect to K.R. con­cluded as of the date they “dis­rup­ted” the adop­tion pro­cess, while Holt con­tends the fam­ily remains fin­an­cially respons­ible for the child.

In alleging inten­tional or fraud­u­lent mis­rep­res­ent­a­tion and non-dis­clos­ure, the fam­ily seeks com­pens­at­ory dam­ages in excess of $75,000, pun­it­ive dam­ages and costs of attor­ney’s fees. Due to emo­tional dis­tress, the Irwin­Colas­anti fam­ily has been forced to con­sult with and be treated by sev­eral phys­i­cians and men­tal health care pro­viders, res­ult­ing in at least $25,000 worth of expenses and a loss of income around $150,000. The fam­ily alleges Holt also breached con­tract on sev­eral occa­sions, viol­ated the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Prac­tices and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion law, which pro­hib­its “any per­son” from employ­ing “unfair or decept­ive acts of prac­tices,” and were neg­li­gent in fail­ing to provide the fam­ily with truth­ful, com­plete, and accur­ate inform­a­tion regard­ing K.R. and her past.

The Register-Guard has reached out to Holt Inter­na­tional for com­ment but did not receive a response as of this art­icle’s pub­lic­a­tion.

A. Spen­cer Osborne said their law firm, Phil­adelphia-based Mont­gomery, McCraken, Walker and Rhoads LLP, will con­tinue to rep­res­ent Irwin and Colas­anti in the Ore­gon case. Because lit­ig­a­tion remains pending, attor­neys declined to com­ment on K.R.’s place­ment, con­di­tion or other mat­ters bey­ond the alleg­a­tions set forth in the com­plaint.

More from reporter:

RG reporter Haleigh Kochanski breaks down the history of Holt International

Register-Guard reporter Haleigh Kochanski breaks down the history of Holt International, a nonprofit international adoption agency based in Eugene.

Video here.