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She came across a Today show video from 2007, with wrenching images of emaciated children, confined to cribs in a Serbian mental institution.
Some, like Verity, had Down syndrome.
Devout Christians, Susanna and Joe couldn't imagine that someone like their daughter would be discarded that way. They looked at each other and realized that they, too, wanted to adopt.
Special needs
The world of international adoption is changing. The number of foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families dropped to 9,300 last year, down from 23,000 in 2004.
Some of the decline came after allegations of child-trafficking, or because officials in other countries felt that children were better off in their native lands. No matter the country, certain children have always been available to a family that wants them - those with special needs.
Exact numbers are unavailable, but now, most children adopted from other countries either have some sort of disability or are older children that have suffered psychological neglect, said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York.
Joe Musser plays with daughter Verity, 1, who, like Katie, has Down syndrome. Verity's birth helped lead the Mussers to the decision to adopt.
That's where programs such as the one at Children's Hospital come in.
Doctors review the health records of foreign children awaiting adoption, to prepare parents for what might lie ahead. The records can be scanty, inaccurate, or both. But the doctors have an idea of what to expect, depending on the country: parasites, fetal alcohol syndrome, missed vaccinations.
Many of the problems are minor by U.S. standards. Yet for kids with severe needs, program medical director Susan Friedman knows it can be a lot to handle. She does not want parents to adopt out of pity. And if they decide not to adopt, she tells them it is OK.
When Susanna and Joe went to the hospital last year, their minds already were made up.
The girl they had chosen to adopt lived in an orphanage in the city of Pleven, in northern Bulgaria. The couple had found Katie's picture on an adoption-agency website and knew at once.
"It was like paging through a yearbook full of faces of strangers and suddenly coming across the face of my own child," Susanna said later.
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