2010 Year in Review

By Carrie Craft, About.com Guide

• We started the month off with adoptive parents, Nanette and Michael Craver of Pennsylvania finally being charged with first-degree murder for the beating death of their 7-year-old adopted son. Ivan Skorobogatov, renamed Nathaniel Craver was adopted in 2003, from Russia along with his twin sister. He suffered from severe brain trauma and died on August 25 2009. Russian officials reportedly investigated the Craver's adoption and the rumors of a possible temporary moratorium on American parents adopting Russian orphans started. Nathaniel (Ivan) Craver was the 15th Russian adoptee to die in the US by the hands of adoptive parents since 1996.

• Adoptee, Larry Dell didn't know he was an adoptee until he was 60 years old. The truth was discovered by his daughter while cleaning out his parent's apartment, when she came across a legal name change document. Through his YouTube video, Dell offered $1,000 to anyone who could help him reconnect with his birth family. I then started a discussion with readers on how social media like, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube have impacted their adoption journey towards placement, or an adoption reunion.

• I then learned that one of the actors off one of my favorite shows, Modern Family's Ty Burrell, who plays Phil Dunphy, and his wife Holly adopted their first child, a baby girl. Modern Family, even has an adoption connection when characters Mitchell and Cameron, a gay couple, adopted their daughter Lily from China.