Leslie Merriam is the father of Dale Merriam who in turn is married to Shannon Bodin, the couple who were "adopting" Emily without any papers or legal process in Wisconsin in April 2003.
Merriam was convicted in 1992 of several counts of sexually assaulting children and was incarcerated, served 5 years on probation and is a lifetime registrant on the Wisconsin Sex Offenders Register.
I spoke with Merriam myself in 2003 and he confirmed that he was looking after Emily and his son and daughter-in-law were adopting her - I reported this to the WI police but they simply told me that I was harassing Emily's mother and her family and they warned me to cease calling her family - they never interviewed Merriam or checked what was happening.
I then hired a private detective, Paul Holden of Dragon Management to interview Merriam and this confirmed the "babyswitch" adoption arrangement together with the fact that Merriam had been looking after Emily a scant two months after she had been taken from the UK.
The police reports from Wisconsin indicate that the mother, Sheila Kay Fuith, was claiming that the State Department and the US Embassy London had helped her to remove Emily from the UK because I was abusive - a condition was made by the State Department that I was not to know where Emily was in the United States.
When this was subsequently investigated by Florida Department of Children & Families, Investigator Roberta Miranda claimed Emily being placed with Merriam was "protective custody arrangement" - presumably to protect Emily from me, by giving her to a child sex offender !
