Angel Studios’s box office hit, “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” is based on a true story and a lesson the world needs to hear. Possum Trot is a town in Texas that is the location of a life-changing story for families.
“Sound of Hope” tells the 1996 story of Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, a small church led by Rev. W.C. Martin, played by Demetrius Grosse, and his wife, Donna Martin, played by Nika King. The Martins began an initiative to adopt the most difficult-to-place children in their local foster care system. Together, 22 families in the congregation adopted 77 East Texas children.
The large number of children still in need of adoption today makes the conversation about what happened at Possum Trot, Texas, just as important as when it first occurred.
According to the United States Administration for Children & Families (ACF), around 109,000 children were waiting to be adopted in 2022. However, only 53,700 children were adopted that year through public child welfare agency involvement.
While recent years have seen a decrease in children waiting for adoption, the significant presence of children in need of families cannot be denied. “Sound of Hope” has continued the fight for children that the people of Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church began fighting decades ago.
The phenomenon of Possum Trot was unique in both the number of children adopted and the selection of children. In the movie, the Martins specifically request the “ones that nobody wants,” encouraging their community to adopt the children in the foster system who have experienced struggles with adoption.
These struggles can come from factors such as behavior and age. Some children, through their experiences with their parents and previous foster families, tend to act out or respond negatively to their trauma. In addition, it is often less likely for older children to be adopted.
A report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) stated that around 45% of children were adopted under the age of one, but only 20% of adoptions involved children over five. An example of this in “Sound of Hope” is the Martins’ third adoption.
Terri was adopted as a young teenager and was reported to have been neglected and sexually abused. Her response to this abuse was strange and dangerous.
She resorted to pretending she was a cat to imagine that she was not the person who was abandoned and abused. She was also found with a knife in her room at the Martins because she worried they would not protect her.
Terri is not an outlier.
According to the ASPE report, around 44% of children adopted from the foster system were found to have experienced some kind of physical abuse. About half experienced emotional abuse and 21% were victims of sexual abuse.
Observing these children’s responses to their new homes and experiences with their prior families proves the saying that “every child deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a child.” Every child deserves a family they can come home to with tears or laughter, one that will care for and reassure them. The broken world has made this seem like a luxury for some children.
“Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” calls attention to the fight happening in many children’s lives around the United States.
Within the film, Angel Studios allows viewers to see some of the children represented in the film as they live now. They are alive and flourishing.
And they still come home to visit their parents in Possum Trot.
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Johnna Ryan is a rising sophomore at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She is pursuing a major in English and a minor in Creative Writing, with plans to expand her graduate studies into Classics . She is an aspiring author and novelist, and a currently published poet. She is the Summer 2024 Ernest C. Hynds Jr. intern at Good Faith Media
