[Iran Press TV Latest] The Haitian police have arrested 10 US citizens after they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the earthquake-stricken nation. The suspects were detained at Malpasse, Haiti's main border crossing with the Dominican Republic, after Haitian police conducted a routine search of their vehicle.
One of the suspects, who says she is the leader of an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge, denied they had done anything wrong.
The Haitian authorities said the 10 US citizens had no documents to prove they had cleared the adoption of the 33 children -- aged 2 months to 12 years old -- through any embassy and no papers showing they were made orphans by the quake in the impoverished Caribbean country.
That sounds like they were doing something wrong.
I know a thing or two about this racket: the ringleaders come to a foreign country and trick or coerce mothers into surrendering their children. They have help from locals, generally lawyers, who get a substantial cut. They then bribe the local judges to sign off on adoption papers. With the papers in hand they get desperate American couples to take temporary custody in the country, and then apply for guardianship. With that they can go to the American embassy and file the papers to allow their new child to travel with them back to the US, where they go to a state court to finalize the 'adoption'.
The birthmother's rights were terminated, there's an impressive piece of paper with all sorts of stamps and seals from the foreign country, and a US Dept of State paper for the travel. The state child court judges don't say no to all that.
It's outright selling of children, and it's been a problem for decades in poor countries like Guatemala and Vietnam. Parenthetically, it was a problem for a while in China until China made an example of a few local officials by shooting them. That cleaned up the situation enough such that now China is actually one of the more ethical countries in international adoption.
There is a UN accord on inter-country adoption that is supposed to make this much more difficult; it is only know being implemented by the US.
In Guatemala an 'adoption', frequently fraudulent, might cost an American couple up to $50,000. Please don't tell me that they "didn't know".
The louses who organize these scams particularly like a disaster like an earthquake or hurricane. It generates orphans, real or imagined, and plays on the heartstrings of Westerners who are desperate for a child.
The leaders of this racket need their finances and associations with all stateside agencies thoroughly tossed, and then they need to go to prison. |
In addition to outright trafficking in children, Haitian officials have also expressed concern that legitimate aid groups may have flown children believed to be orphans out of the country for adoption before efforts to find their parents had been exhausted.
| That's one of the tricks, snatching the children before their parents can be found. One of the locals who is in on the scam will then tell the parents that their child was found dead and was buried so as to avoid disease. Who's going to prove them wrong? |
As a result, the Haitian government halted many types of adoptions earlier this month. |