The Lie We Love
The following are a few excerpts from "The Lie We Love" by E.J. Graff, associate director and senior researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The full version of her article appeared in the November/December 2008 Foreign Policy and can be accessed online at www.brandeis.edu/investigate, along with much of the documentation that led to this article. We thank Ms. Graff and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism for this important research.
We all know the story of international adoption: Millions of infants and toddlers have been abandoned or orphaned - placed on the side of a road or on the doorstep of a church, or left parentless due to AIDS, destitution, or war. These little ones find themselves forgotten, living in crowded orphanages or ending up on the streets, facing an uncertain future of misery and neglect. But, if they are lucky, adoring new moms and dads from faraway lands whisk them away for a chance at a better life.
Unfortunately, this is largely fiction.
Westerners have been sold the myth of a world orphan crisis. We are told that millions of children are waiting for their "forever families" to rescue them from lives of abandonment and abuse. But many of the infants and toddlers being adopted by Western parents today are not orphans at all. Yes, hundreds of thousands of children around the world do need loving homes. But more often than not, the neediest children are sick, disabled, traumatized, or older than five. They are not the healthy babies that most Westerners hope to adopt. There are simply not enough healthy, adoptable infants to meet Western demand - and there is too much Western money in search of healthy babies. As a result, many international adoption agencies work not to find homes for needy children but to find children for Western homes.
Since the mid-1990s, the number of international adoptions each year has nearly doubled, from 22,200 in 1995 to just under 40,000 in 2006. At its peak in 2004, more than 45,000 children from developing countries were adopted by foreigners. Americans bring home more of these children than any other nationality - more than half the global total in recent years.
Where do these babies come from? As international adoptions have flourished, so has evidence that babies in many countries are being systematically bought, coerced, and stolen away from their families of origin. Nearly half of the 40 countries listed by the U.S. State Department as the top sources for international adoption over the past 15 years - places such as Belarus, Brazil, Ethiopia, Honduras, Peru, and Romania - have at least temporarily halted adoptions or been prevented from sending children to the United States because of serious concerns about corruption and kidnapping. And yet when a country is closed due to corruption, many adoption agencies simply transfer their clients' hopes to the next "hot" country. That country abruptly experiences a spike in infants and toddlers adopted overseas - until it too is forced to shut its doors.
... Consider the case of Ana Escobar, a young Guatemalan woman who in March 2007 reported to police that armed men had locked her into a closet in her family's shoe store and stolen her infant. After a 14-month search, Escobar found her daughter in pre-adoption foster care, just weeks before the girl was to be adopted by a couple from Indiana. DNA testing showed the toddler to be Escobar's child. In a similar case from 2006, Raquel Par, another Guatemalan woman, reported being drugged while waiting for a bus in Guatemala City, waking to find her year-old baby missing. Three months later, Par learned her daughter had been adopted by an American couple....
Along the way, the international adoption industry has become a market often driven by its customers. Prospective adoptive parents in the United States will pay adoption agencies between $15,000 and $35,000 (excluding travel, visa cost, and other miscellaneous expenses) for the chance to bring home a little one. Special needs or older children can be adopted at a discount. Agencies claim the costs pay for the agency's fee, the cost of foreign salaries and operations, staff travel, and orphanage donations. But experts say the fees are so disproportionately large for the child's home country that they encourage corruption.
... Many adoption agencies and adoptive parents passionately insist, "Arrest the bad guys, but let the 'good' adoptions continue." However, remove cash from the adoption chain... and the number of healthy babies needing Western homes all but disappears....
... In many countries, it can be astonishingly easy to fabricate a history for a young child, and in the process, manufacture an orphan. The mothers of these children are often poor, young, unmarried, divorced, or otherwise lacking family protection. The children may be born into a locally despised minority group that is afforded few rights. And for enough money, someone will separate these little ones from their vulnerable families, turning them into "paper orphans" for lucrative export....
... Improved regulations will protect not only the children being adopted and their families of origin, but also the consumers: hopeful parents. Adopting a child can be made wrenching by the abhorrent realization that a child believed to be in need of a home simply isn't. One American who adopted a little girl from Cambodia in 2002 wept as she spoke at an adoption ethics conference in October 2007 about such a discovery. "I was told she was an orphan," she said. "One year after she came home, and she could speak English well enough, she told me about her mommy and daddy and her brothers and her sisters."
..."Credulous Westerners eager to believe that they are saving children are easily fooled into accepting laundered children," writes David Smolin, a law professor and advocate for international adoption reform. "For there is no fool like the one who wants to be fooled."
We all know the story of international adoption: Millions of infants and toddlers have been abandoned or orphaned - placed on the side of a road or on the doorstep of a church, or left parentless due to AIDS, destitution, or war. These little ones find themselves forgotten, living in crowded orphanages or ending up on the streets, facing an uncertain future of misery and neglect. But, if they are lucky, adoring new moms and dads from faraway lands whisk them away for a chance at a better life.
Unfortunately, this is largely fiction.
Westerners have been sold the myth of a world orphan crisis. We are told that millions of children are waiting for their "forever families" to rescue them from lives of abandonment and abuse. But many of the infants and toddlers being adopted by Western parents today are not orphans at all. Yes, hundreds of thousands of children around the world do need loving homes. But more often than not, the neediest children are sick, disabled, traumatized, or older than five. They are not the healthy babies that most Westerners hope to adopt. There are simply not enough healthy, adoptable infants to meet Western demand - and there is too much Western money in search of healthy babies. As a result, many international adoption agencies work not to find homes for needy children but to find children for Western homes.
Since the mid-1990s, the number of international adoptions each year has nearly doubled, from 22,200 in 1995 to just under 40,000 in 2006. At its peak in 2004, more than 45,000 children from developing countries were adopted by foreigners. Americans bring home more of these children than any other nationality - more than half the global total in recent years.
Where do these babies come from? As international adoptions have flourished, so has evidence that babies in many countries are being systematically bought, coerced, and stolen away from their families of origin. Nearly half of the 40 countries listed by the U.S. State Department as the top sources for international adoption over the past 15 years - places such as Belarus, Brazil, Ethiopia, Honduras, Peru, and Romania - have at least temporarily halted adoptions or been prevented from sending children to the United States because of serious concerns about corruption and kidnapping. And yet when a country is closed due to corruption, many adoption agencies simply transfer their clients' hopes to the next "hot" country. That country abruptly experiences a spike in infants and toddlers adopted overseas - until it too is forced to shut its doors.
... Consider the case of Ana Escobar, a young Guatemalan woman who in March 2007 reported to police that armed men had locked her into a closet in her family's shoe store and stolen her infant. After a 14-month search, Escobar found her daughter in pre-adoption foster care, just weeks before the girl was to be adopted by a couple from Indiana. DNA testing showed the toddler to be Escobar's child. In a similar case from 2006, Raquel Par, another Guatemalan woman, reported being drugged while waiting for a bus in Guatemala City, waking to find her year-old baby missing. Three months later, Par learned her daughter had been adopted by an American couple....
Along the way, the international adoption industry has become a market often driven by its customers. Prospective adoptive parents in the United States will pay adoption agencies between $15,000 and $35,000 (excluding travel, visa cost, and other miscellaneous expenses) for the chance to bring home a little one. Special needs or older children can be adopted at a discount. Agencies claim the costs pay for the agency's fee, the cost of foreign salaries and operations, staff travel, and orphanage donations. But experts say the fees are so disproportionately large for the child's home country that they encourage corruption.
... Many adoption agencies and adoptive parents passionately insist, "Arrest the bad guys, but let the 'good' adoptions continue." However, remove cash from the adoption chain... and the number of healthy babies needing Western homes all but disappears....
... In many countries, it can be astonishingly easy to fabricate a history for a young child, and in the process, manufacture an orphan. The mothers of these children are often poor, young, unmarried, divorced, or otherwise lacking family protection. The children may be born into a locally despised minority group that is afforded few rights. And for enough money, someone will separate these little ones from their vulnerable families, turning them into "paper orphans" for lucrative export....
... Improved regulations will protect not only the children being adopted and their families of origin, but also the consumers: hopeful parents. Adopting a child can be made wrenching by the abhorrent realization that a child believed to be in need of a home simply isn't. One American who adopted a little girl from Cambodia in 2002 wept as she spoke at an adoption ethics conference in October 2007 about such a discovery. "I was told she was an orphan," she said. "One year after she came home, and she could speak English well enough, she told me about her mommy and daddy and her brothers and her sisters."
..."Credulous Westerners eager to believe that they are saving children are easily fooled into accepting laundered children," writes David Smolin, a law professor and advocate for international adoption reform. "For there is no fool like the one who wants to be fooled."
Posted by Caleigh Brooks at 5/11/2009 9:28 PM 
Categories: Is Adoption Humane
Tags: Foreign Policy Waltham romania adoption ethiopia american adoption congress e.j. graff peru Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism honduras Massachusetts journalism belarus international adoption brazil
Categories: Is Adoption Humane
Tags: Foreign Policy Waltham romania adoption ethiopia american adoption congress e.j. graff peru Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism honduras Massachusetts journalism belarus international adoption brazil
It turns my stomach to think that these beautiful little children may have actually been bought instead of rescued. I would love to adopt one day myself, but now I am a bit less enthusiastic. I guess this is why it is imperative to research all parties involved. Could you direct us to any 100% legitimate adoption agencies?
Lacie
Individual Health Insurance
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