List of international adoption scandals
The following is a partial list, by year, of notable incidents or reports of international adoption scandals,[1][2] [3][4] [5] adoption corruption, child harvesting, baby-stealing, legal violations in international adoption, or adoption agency corruption (see child laundering; child trafficking:[6][7] "In the United States international adoptions are a big business, where a large number of private international adoption agencies are paid on average $30,000 a time to find a child for hopeful parents."[8]
2010
- United States and Russia - "Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems." [9][10]
- United States and Russia - Russian officials called for a suspension of adoptions to U.S. parents after a Pennsylvania couple were charged for beating to death their adoptive child from Russia. According to a Russian official, the concern was tied to the 15 or 16 deaths of adopted children from Russia in the last several years.[11]
- New Life Children’s Refuge case. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, ten Baptist missionaries are arrested and charged with kidnapping. The group had gathered 33 children in devastated areas and intended to move them to a temporary orphanage in the Dominican Republic. The missionaries did not have proper authorization to take the children out of Haiti. It later became clear that most of the children were not orphaned.
2009
- China - "Six government officials in southwest China have been punished over an orphanage scandal when three children were taken away from their families who could not afford fines for violating family planning regulations. The orphanage sent the children overseas for adoption from 2004 to 2006, a Guizhou-based newspaper reported today."[12]
- Samoa - Four Sentenced in Scheme, prosecutors say adoption agency tricked Samoan parents into giving their own children up for adoption[13]
- Ethiopia - Canadian Broadcasting Company reports Canadian families "claim that CAFAC has informed them their child is an orphan when the parents in fact exist... (and) that sometimes the children's ages are wildly off and the health of these kids varies greatly from what they have been told before travelling to Addis Ababa to pick them up."[14] Andrew Goeghegan reports that "At least 70 adoption agencies have set up business in Ethiopia. Almost half are unregistered, but there’s scant regulation anyway and fraud and deception are rife. Some agencies actively recruit children in a process known as harvesting.[15] This has prompted on Dutch agency to stop adoptions from Ethiopia "as a result recent reports about abuse of the system by the government in Ethiopia and local adoption agencies. Research done by the adoption agency, shows that the information about the children on file does not match with their actual back ground. In several cases the mothers of the children were still alive, while being listed as deceased."[16]
- Vietnam - "A court in northern Vietnam has put 16 people on trial for allegedly selling more than 250 babies for foreign adoption. The head of two social welfare centres in Nam Dinh province as well as several doctors and nurses at village clinics went on trial yesterday, said Dang Viet Hung, the chief judge at the court hearing the case. The defendants are charged with "abuse of power and authority" and could face prison terms of five to 10 years." [17]
2007
2005
- Samoa - Samoa rushes through legislation "to tighten up on foreign adoptions following the death of a child who had been in the care of an American agency..." one year after "a One News investigation revealed Samoan parents had put their children up for adoption with the organisation Focus On Children, not realising they would never see them again. Parents thought the children would stay in America only for their education and that the adoption was not permanent."[22]
2004
- Samoa - One News reveals Samoan parents put their children up for adoption with the organisation Focus On Children thinking the children would stay in America only for their education and that the adoption was not permanent and they would likely never see their children again.[22]
2003
- UNICEF releases report on child trafficking/child laundering in Africa.[23]
- England - Judge attacks social worker over international adoption scandal. "The lid was lifted on the "evil and exploitative" business of international adoption yesterday when a High Court judge attacked a British freelance social worker for allowing a blacklisted family to buy a baby from a couple in the United States...But before her first birthday she was placed at the mercy of the courts after her "new" parents, who were barred from adoption in Britain by conventional means, split and her adoptive mother committed suicide."[24]
2001
- In December 2001, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service halts adoptions from Cambodia. Richard Cross, the lead investigator for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “accused officials at the highest level of government of complicity of scams involving hundreds of babies and millions of dollars.”[25] He was also "the lead federal investigator for the prosecution of Lauryn Galindo for visa fraud and money laundering involved in Cambodian adoptions, estimated that most of the 800 adoptions Galindo facilitated were fraudulent--either based on fraudulent paperwork, coerced/induced/recruited relinquishments, babies bought, identities of the children switched, etc."[26] This followed investigations by a local human rights group and the Phnom Penh Post exposing baby-buying and abduction through Lauren Galindo's adoption operations, as well as others. In 2004, Galindo pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and also ordered to forfeit more than $1.4 million in property in Hawaii.[27]
2000
- The United Nations issues PROTOCOL TO PREVENT, SUPPRESS AND PUNISH TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, ESPECIALLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, SUPPLEMENTING THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION AGAINST TRANSNATIONALORGANIZED CRIME[28]
1999
- India - Andhra Pradesh - "[T]he scandal broke in March and April of 1999, and once again involved Sanjeeva Rao and his orphanage, ASD. This time, another individual, Peter Subbaiah, who ran the Good Samaritan Evangelical and Social Welfare Association, was also implicated. The primary accusation concerned buying babies from a tribal group called the Lambada. The Lambada were a traditionally nomadic people, now settled into hamlets (called tandas) and surviving primarily through subsistence farming and farm labor, often under conditions of severe poverty. The Lambada had previously practiced the custom of a bride price, but had adopted the culturally predominant Indian dowry system, which requires the family of the bride to pay a substantial sum to the groom’s family in order to arrange her marriage. In addition, the Lambada were said to believe that the third, sixth, and ninth child was, if a girl, “inauspicious.” They were allegedly prone both to female infanticide, and also to selling, for very modest sums, some of their female infants. Press accounts in India referred to their “fair complexion” as making them more attractive to foreign parents, although it is not clear whether this reflected Indian, rather than American, prejudices. The 1999 scandals began with the arrest of two women who were alleged to be acting as scouts or intermediaries in the purchase of children. Although some reports styled these women as “social workers,” they were charged with buying Lambada infants for relatively small sums ($15 to $45), and then receiving significantly larger sums ($220 to $440) from the orphanages for the children. Press reports indicated that the orphanages received $2000 to $3000 for each child placed in intercountry adoption. As a result of the 1999 scandals, Sanjeeva Rao and Peter Subbaiah were arrested and placed in prison." [29][30]
1995-1996
- India - "The Andhra Pradesh adoption scandals focused on suspicions of irregularities in an orphanage called Action for Social Development. Children whose adoptions had been held up by the American embassy were granted visas and allowed to travel to the United States.[31]
1994
References
- ^ David M. Smolin,Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children, also published by the Wayne Law Review.
- ^ David M. Smoin, Unpublished: Child Laundering As Exploitation: Applying Anti-Trafficking Norms to Intercountry Adoption Under the Coming Hague Regime
- ^ David M. Smolin, The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance of the Indian Adoption Scandals, Seton Hall Law Review
- ^ [1] Adopting Internationally Website
- ^ David M. Smolin, Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking, Valparaiso Law Review [2]
- ^ http://www.adoptinginternationally.com/whattodo.php
- ^ http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/index.html
- ^ http://www.ethiopianreview.com/news/6641
- ^ http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EVNE780&show_article=1 Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US, By NATALIYA VASILYEVA and KRISTIN M. HALL Associated Press Writers
- ^ http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/how-to-prevent-adoption-disasters/
- ^ http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/03/nathaniel_craver_is_15th_or_16.html, Russian officials call for suspension of adoptions to U.S. parents after death of Dillsburg-area boy,By LARA BRENCKLE, The Patriot-News,March 05, 2010, 12:00AM
- ^ http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2009/200907/20090703/article_406276.htm
- ^ ["http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6958072&page=1 Four Sentenced in Scheme to 'Adopt' Samoan Kids--Prosecutors: Adoption Agency Tricked Samoan Parents Into Giving Children Up for Adoption," Beth Tribolet, Teri Whitcraft and Scott Michels, ABC News Law & Justice Unit, February 26, 2009.]
- ^ http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/03/19/f-ethiopia-adoption.html
- ^ http://www.ethiopianreview.com/news/6641
- ^ http://www.ethiopianreview.com/news/6790
- ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/16-on-trial-for-selling-babies-for-adoption-1791716.html
- ^ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1657355,00.html
- ^ http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pbnAM/cache/offonce?entryId=14927
- ^ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10350968.htm
- ^ http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pbnAM/cache/offonce?entryId=14958
- ^ a b "Death prompts Samoan adoption change". One News. June 27, 2005. http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411424/594334/. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
- ^ http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/insight9e.pdf
- ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/judge-attacks-social-worker-over-international-adoption-scandal-599872.html
- ^ http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/CambodiaNews.html
- ^ Desiree Smolin and David Kruchkow, Why Bad Stories Must Be Told, The Adoption Agency Checklist, [3]
- ^ http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/outofcambodia.html
- ^ http://untreaty.un.org/English/TreatyEvent2003/Texts/treaty2E.pdf
- ^ "The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance of the Indian Adoption Scandals" Seton Hall Law Review Thirty-Five.Number Two (2005): 403-493. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/2
- ^ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12185524
- ^ "The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance of the Indian Adoption Scandals" Seton Hall Law Review Thirty-Five.Number Two (2005): 403-493. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/2
- ^ Jorge L. Carro, Regulation of Intercountry Adoption: Can the Abuses Come to an End?, 18 HASTINGS INT’L & COMP. L. REV. 121, 144 (1994)(documenting “baby trafficking” problems in Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and Romania).
- ^ http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=david_smolin see footnote 29
- ^ Jorge L. Carro, Regulation of Intercountry Adoption: Can the Abuses Come to an End?, 18 HASTINGS INT’L & COMP. L. REV. 121, 144 (1994)(documenting “baby trafficking” problems in Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and Romania).
- ^ http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=david_smolin see footnote 29
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