Where's the story on Thanassis???

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070831/wl_time/cleaningupinternationaladoptions

"Cleaning Up International Adoptions"
By MICA ROSENBERG/ANTIGUA Fri Aug 31, 6:05 PM ET

Earlier this month, dozens of Guatemalan police, soldiers and government officials raided Casa Quivira, a foster home in the colonial town of Antigua. They took custody of 46 babies and accused the home of failing to issue the proper paperwork for adoptions. Worse, says Carmen de Wennier, Guatemala's Secretary for Social Welfare, Casa Quivira is being investigated for illegally trafficking infants, an accusation that its owners vehemently deny: "If these children were bought in the womb," de Wennier says, "that is a crime." Stacy's Comment #1 - What does deWennier consider US domestic open adoption being? I mean, we're not specifically paying for the baby in open adoption. We're paying the bmom expenses. But she's pregnant, and money is exchanged. In GT, even if the adoption plan is established while the baby is in the womb, we are paying legal fees and hopefully bmom expenses...

News of the raid, a story that rivaled Guatemala's upcoming presidential election for headlines, was especially alarming for women like Ana Escobar, a Guatemalan, and Ann Roth, an American. Last spring, armed gunmen held up Escobar in the storage room of her Guatemala City shoe store while two female accomplices stole her 6-month-old daughter Esther. Escobar, 26, is convinced the baby was put up for illegal adoption, and she came to Antigua to see if Esther was one of the infants found at Casa Quivira. "We are not animals to be bought and sold," she says, clutching Esther's photo. Isn't this why we have DNA testing done, right at the beginning of the process? I thought the DNA test had to establish at something like 99% that the bmom is, indeed, the bmom. So how could this kidnapped baby be "bought and sold?" Unfortunately, it doesn't make much sense that this was the intended reason for the kidnapping. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Roth had been waiting with her husband David to adopt a boy and a girl from Casa Quivira - but now, after having paid half the $30,000 fee, she finds everything in a precarious state of limbo. "I feel," says Ann, 37, "like someone has kicked me in the stomach ten times." Again, with the money. Losing your child is NOT just about losing the money! It's about losing your CHILD. And in this case, losing TWO.

That feeling, which more and more Guatemalan mothers and adoptive mothers in the U.S. are experiencing these days, reflects the growing awareness that adoption in Guatemala is all too often a multi-million-dollar underworld trade. The nation's ill-regulated adoption business, run by private lawyers and notaries, is rife with corruption, including forged paperwork, payoffs to women who agree to hand over their children and, in some cases, newborns stolen from hospitals or mothers' arms, according to the government human rights ombudsman's office. One U.S. couple spent almost two years and $50,000 to adopt their Guatemalan daughter, Ella, only to find out later that her biological mother "was essentially a baby factory" who had sold many of her eight children to a dealer, says the adoptive father. "It felt almost dirty, like we were involved in a child brokering scheme." Because we all want to believe we are adopting a child who needs a family, not that a child was produced as part of a business scheme. How can we establish the view that something needs to be done so that "baby factory" is not the best choice for poor, uneducated women in Guatemala? Because it's not that they are taking the easy way out, it's that they are taking the way out that will actually let them earn a living. That's the sad thing, that these women have no other means of earning a living. How about we ADDRESS that rather than berate them for it? UNICEF, you have any ideas on that one? How about educating the children NOW so that they have more opportunities in life than making babies to "sell?"

The activity is driven largely by surging U.S. demand. With adoption in the U.S. still a bureaucratic nightmare, and with fewer babies available in distant places like China and Eastern Europe, Guatemala has become an increasingly popular adoption source for U.S couples. I haven't heard ANYONE say they went to GT instead of China or EE because there are "more" babies available there. I hear it's because of the (1) ease of travel, (2) shorter in-country time, and (3) foster care. Plus, other adoptive parents like myself speak Spanish and feel they would better be able to expose the child to his/her heritage by adopting from a Spanish-speaking country. Almost 5,000 babies were adopted last year from the nation of 13 million - the world's highest per capita adoption rate - and 95% of them went to the U.S. Since 1990, in fact, more than 25,000 Guatemalan children have been placed in American homes.

Reports and rumors of shady adoption dealings in Guatemala have surfaced for several years, but the country's authorities are now under increasing pressure from Washington as well as their own citizens to clean the adoption scene, and that could cause the adoption surge to slow. And at the same time as the "surge" in Guatemala, there was a decrease in EE. And a slow-down in China. Hello, could those issues be related? Not to mention the problems with accreditation in the Russia agencies, and the new restrictions for China! And again, I may be wrong in this supposition, but there's now the increase in Ethiopia also. And Haiti. And Liberia. And wasn't Vietnam just reopened? After hearing of cases in Guatemala in which babies were switched in the middle of adoption processes, for example, the U.S. recently announced that it would require two DNA tests on babies to ensure that a child issued an exit visa is the same one originally given up for adoption. More important, Guatemalan lawmakers earlier this year ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, which will tighten controls - by closely tracking the use of adoption fees and by creating a centralized adoption authority that can be easily regulated - in both Guatemala and the U.S when it takes effect January 1. Is ANYONE opposed to having closer tracking of adoption fees for Guatemala? It's the "central authority" that has people skeptical, as this is a third-world country with known governmental-level corruption. And isn't your story about the governmental corruption involved in the CQ raid? Wouldn't that raid be an example of what may happen with the centralized adoption authority? Isn't THAT your real story here? As stories appear in the Guatemalan media about child traffickers rushing to find children before the year's end, citizen mobs in several small towns have attacked suspected baby-snatchers, in some cases beating or burning them alive.

Florida resident Clifford Phillips, who runs Casa Quivira with his Guatemalan wife, insists they're victims of the spreading anti-adoption hysteria and persecution. Insist, like you don't believe him. THAT should be your real story. Where are all of the statements from the happy CQ parents who openly share the wonderful experience they had adopting from this agency? The doctor reports that comment on how fabulously healthy these babies are? Where's the SUPPORT for this guy? It's readily available on the Internet, and you don't even have to look too hard. "This is an injustice that needs to be stopped now," says Phillips, arguing that Guatemala is treating him as if he were "guilty until proven innocent." The adoptions of two of the Casa Quivira children, in fact, were found to be legal, and those infants have since left for the U.S. No, they were not found to be "legal." They were proven to be approved, finalized, completed. The two infants who "left for the U.S." would have been able to leave CQ anyway, since their adoption process was finalized. Please don't make it sound like these two cases were OK, but the others are questionable. These two cases were finalized, their parents had LEGAL custody in Guatemala. That's not to say that CQ didn't have legal paperwork on the other children, because a judge verified that they DID have the necessary paperwork for the other babies. It was PGN that decided to impose PINA, it was that whole central authority thing at work here. But the rest have been removed to other private facilities, and nine were hospitalized with lung problems and other sicknesses. Lung problems? As in, rotovirus? Or could it even be easier than that, because if there were armed men in the hogar giving orders, maybe the nannies didn't pick the babies UP for as long as they should. Because if there's a gun pointing at you, maybe you don't want a baby in your arms. And we all know that babies need to be held, not just because it helps them bond and trust, but because it helps their blood AND AIR flow better. And the "other sicknesses." As has been pointed out in the comments about the raid, the "officers" did not let formula in to the hogar. The babies were all drinking milk. Whole milk. And babies should NOT drink milk, because it creates intestinal problems. Even in babies who are not lactose-intolerant.
For Ann Roth, the situation is "horrific. We are praying as hard as we can for these babies." So is Ana Escobar. None of the Casa Quivira children - their names, dates of birth and arrival at the home pinned to their crib headboards - turned out to be Esther. But "I won't give up until I find my daughter," says Escobar. "There are a lot of people who adopt children without really knowing if the mother wanted to give them up or if they were stolen. Without knowing if the mother is suffering." I don't know if a bmoms suffer. But I don't know one adoptive parent who doesn't think the bmom suffered at some point with the decision. Maybe it was only the initial decision that caused suffering, maybe it was DNA, maybe it was the final signing. Or maybe the child was kidnapped (which I find the most troubling scenario). Or maybe the bmom was told the baby died at birth but was really taken for adoption (we've all seen the TV movies about those scenarios, but I believe they really happen). Unfortunately, we do not know if the mother wanted to give them up or if they were stolen. The same could be said for adoptions from the US foster system, also. I remember reading one story of a couple who lost their parental rights and were fighting it because of some traffic stop where the dad overreacted. From the foster system standpoint, I imagine there was more to it than that. But from this parent's perspective, his children were stolen by the government and sold. There was also that family, I think they were Chinese (living in the US while the dad attended university), who thought they were giving their baby to custody of the state for a few weeks until they got back on their feet. They went to reclaim their baby and were told no, they kept fighting but not the "right" way according to the state, and now their daughter (school-aged) is fighting against going with her legal parents, saying that her other family is her REAL family and should be allowed to adopt her. There's little difference, really. It's one of those "leap of faith" things adoptive parents take, we take the leap that the process was done legally, that all was done in the best interest of the child. BECAUSE MOST OF THE TIME, THAT'S THE CASE!