He contacted a New Jersey adoption agency requesting information on 5-year-old Caucasian girls, and chose Masha from a videotape. Meanwhile, 41-year-old Matthew Mancuso, a divorced father in Pennsylvania, was looking for a little girl to adopt. Soon after recovering from her traumatic ordeal, Masha was sent to an orphanage where she prayed that a good family would come to rescue her. Her own mother tried to kill her when she was only 4 years old by stabbing her in the back of the neck with a kitchen knife.
She was born in southern Russia to an alcoholic mother and a father she never knew. At 13 years old, Masha has already survived the unthinkable.
