Police: Adoptees suffered for years

The adoptive mother pleaded innocent to the charges.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) — Adoption is supposed to be a refuge for parentless children, but for Stephen Wells it was a house of horrors.

Since his adoption roughly 15 years ago, Wells says, he has been attacked with a stick and a can of evaporated milk. He says he was handcuffed and tied up and forced to sleep on a cold tile floor in a locked hallway, where he soiled himself.

Scars mark his wrists from years of restraints. Police say he was denied education, medical care and food, and basically spent his entire life indoors. His home was his prison.

Wells’ account surfaced in recently released court documents and interviews that provide a fuller picture of Judith Leekin, the woman at the center of what authorities call a lucrative adoption scheme that stretched from New York City’s Jamaica, Queens, neighborhood to South Florida.

Leekin, 62, and originally from Trinidad, used intimidation and violence to control her 11 adopted children for years while earning a staggering $1.26 million in adoptive subsidies, police said.

She has been charged with multiple counts of abuse and could face up to 190 years in prison.

Leekin has pleaded innocent and denies the allegations.

Still a mystery

Much about Leekin remains a mystery. She had two Florida driver’s licenses under different last names, along with two Social Security numbers. She had at least seven known aliases.

Investigators have been slowly trying to piece together her life, dating back to her time in Queens, when, according to records, her adoption plan was probably hatched and perfected.

Authorities believe she used four aliases to adopt the 11 children in New York City from 1988 to 1996. She adopted only special-needs children, the ones who brought the highest subsidies — up to $55 a day, according to the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.

After the last adoption, in 1998, Leekin moved to Florida with the kids. Not much later, a rookie child welfare worker came close to catching Leekin after a tip that she was abusing the children.

Leekin denied any abuse allegations, hid the children and fled.

Her children, now ranging in age from 15 to 27, suffered in silence and fear.

According to accounts given to police, she would threaten to shoot the children or cut off their heads if they revealed her secrets, and once told the children she’d served five years in prison for shooting a woman in the head.

To evade interlopers, Leekin constructed an elaborate surveillance system, which allowed her to keep watch on a closed-circuit monitor, police said.

Leekin also created fake report cards to document the children’s progress in school, allowing her to keep ACS at bay, according to court papers.

The abuse went on for years until, police say, she abandoned 18-year-old daughter Tracey Wells at a store in St. Petersburg, 200 miles from home. That led to a search of Leekin’s house and the eventual discovery of the other kids. Nine are in Florida state care.

A 10th youngster, a 19-year-old, was discovered living homeless elsewhere in the state. He remains on his own. He said Leekin abandoned him in 2004.