“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” family accused of ditching adopted kids
A reality show made their dreams come true, but for five adopted children it quickly turned into a nightmare.
In 2011, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” featured the Fridays, a North Carolina family that had recently adopted five siblings ranging from elementary to high school age.
James and Devonda Friday applied to the ABC reality series because they couldn’t fit their seven children -- including the five siblings -- in their modest home, which was replaced with a 4,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom house in December 2011 for an episode that aired the next year.
But now, nearly five years later, the two oldest adopted children are accusing the parents of kicking them out after the new house was built, according to North Carolina’s WSOC.
Eldest brother Chris Friday, a teenager at the time, was sent to a group home a few months after the taping, while sister Kamaya Friday, now 19, was sent to a different group home. Their three younger siblings were out of the house within the year, and the five siblings are now in different homes, they said.
“I loved them like they were my real parents,” Chris said. “What they did to us was just wrong.”
Kamaya said she plans to change her last name now. “You gave me away. Parents don’t do that,” she said.
Their adoptive father, however, insisted that the two older children wanted to leave. “Listen, no one kicked Chris or Kamaya out of the home,” James said. James and his wife, Devonda, had fostered nearly 30 children for the 10 years before they adopted Chris and his siblings.
Chris said that looking back, he always knew “it was all about the money, from the first day.”