Showing posts with label Adoption Agencies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adoption Agencies. Show all posts
Orphanages are often run as businesses, the children being the assets.
Dozens of orphanages in Cambodia, including some run by Australians, have been accused of exploiting children to attract donations.
The government in Phnom Penh is cracking down on the booming multimillion-dollar orphanage industry after investigators discovered shocking abuses of children and a list has been compiled of centres targeted for raids and closure.
Children in one orphanage told investigators how they were forced to crawl while they were beaten with sticks and had to eat rice from the ground as punishment for failing to recite Bible psalms, according to SISHA, an anti-trafficking and exploitation organisation working with government agencies in Phnom Penh.
Another orphanage offered children for local adoption to avoid laws prohibiting foreign adoptions in the country, said SISHA's operations director Eric Meldrum, a British former detective. ''They told me to go over there and choose which one I want,'' Mr Meldrum said.
Investigators say Australia has a greater involvement in Cambodia's orphanages than any other nation through Australians running them directly, volunteering or donating.
About 72 per cent of the 10,000 children living in Cambodia's estimated 600 orphanages have a parent, although most are portrayed as orphans to capitalise on the goodwill of foreign tourists and volunteers, including thousands of Australians, research shows.
Up to 300 of these centres are operating illegally and flouting a push by government and United Nations agencies for children to be reunited with their parents.
The managers of several respected Australian-run orphanages are alarmed by the situation and note that the number of orphanages has increased 65 per cent in the past five years while the number of orphans has reduced dramatically as Cambodia recovered from genocide, invasion and an AIDS epidemic.
The largest Australian-run centres include Sunrise Children's Villages, Hagar, Hope for Cambodian Children and Kampuchea House. Fairfax Media is not suggesting any of these homes is being investigated.
One of the first orphanages investigated was the Love In Action centre, an Australian-run orphanage in Phnom Penh, where there were allegations of children being beaten and neglected. The centre's 71-year-old Victorian founder, Ruth Golder, is under investigation after 21 children were taken away from her centre in a raid on March 22. She strongly denies any abuse took place.
The orphanage, which has links to the Christian Outreach Centre in Australia, had operated illegally for years from donations from Australians.
There is growing criticism in Cambodia and other developing countries about so-called ''orphan tourism'' and ''volunteer tourism'', where thinly disguised businesses exploit both tourists and volunteers.
Visitors who have undergone no background checks can walk into dozens of Cambodia's orphanages and be left alone with children who are being described by child welfare workers as Cambodia's stolen generation. Donors also take children away for outings - sometimes overnight - leaving them open to sexual abuse, investigators say.
In the Children's Umbrella Centre Organisation orphanage on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, children were lined up last year and strangers who had donated to the centre were invited to pick any before driving away with four, investigators say.
The centre, which had an open sewer in a compound where children slept, has been closed.
While many orphanages are well run, enforce child protection policies and have strict rules for visitors, almost all are largely unregulated in a country where state institutions are weak and no qualifications are required to set up an orphanage or children's centre.
On the streets of Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia, children playing traditional instruments are led by men with signs declaring ''support our orphans''. Anyone who donates is invited to visit nearby orphanages.
''We believe this is dangerous because the children are not orphans and should not be there in the first place,'' said Sebastien Marot, executive director of Friends-International, a non-government organisation conducting a campaign to warn tourists and volunteers that children are not tourist attractions.
Mr Meldrum said unscrupulous orphanage operators had adopted a business model where the centres got more money from international donors if they had more children.
He said orphanage recruiters would approach poor, often rural, families promising the centre could offer their children education, food, clothing and a chance for a better life.
''There are many reports of cash transactions for the child, though it is usually referred to as a donation to the family,'' he said.
Several international studies have found that children should be living in their communities with family members, relatives or foster families except in extreme circumstances.
A study by Save the Children found that institutional care should only be used for children as a ''last resort and only then if it is of a high standard and in the best interests of the individual child''.
Studies also show that in most orphanages children are taught a foreign language, religion and Western culture that leaves them struggling to cope in Cambodia's Buddhist community when they are eventually released, often when they turn 18.
Mr Marot said Cambodia was particularly vulnerable ''because it is suffering from the victim syndrome where everyone thinks the country is still coming out of war. Everyone comes here with this attitude towards Cambodia as this victimised country where all the children are in miserable and horrible situations, which is not the case any more.''
But Geraldine Cox, who runs two Sunrise Children's Villages in Cambodia, said while the Friends' campaign had merit it ''does not take into account the many orphanage centres which are well run and rely on visits by tourists to survive''.
She said visitors should be discouraged from visiting centres where receipts for donations are not given, photo identifications are not requested and where a visitor cannot see annual financial reports.
American missionary Cathleen Jones came to Cambodia 20 years ago to run an orphanage with 120 children but soon ''started realising these kids had parents and families and they wanted to be with them''.
Now her Children In Families organisation works to find Cambodian homes for children through kinship or permanent and long-term foster care for children who cannot be reunited with their parents.
''If there is no imminent danger to the child he or she should not be removed, even if the family is dysfunctional,'' Ms Jones said, adding that many orphanages refused to release children once they were in their care even if a family environment was available.
''They are kept for years,'' she said.
Mr Marot said the people who ran some orphanages ''keep the kids looking poor … badly dressed in order to attract sympathy from you in order to get your money.''
''It's a lucrative business. The children are the assets,'' he said.
Volunteer placement organisations promote volunteer tourism as a way for travellers to ''make a difference'' and have experiences that are ''life changing and rewarding''.
Volunteers pay several thousand dollars for a two-week visit, while some stay many months.
But Mr Marot said visitors were doing things with children at the centres that were banned in their own countries.
''Imagine if a busload of Chinese turned up at a school in Australia, played with the children, spoke to them in Chinese, pushed them to eat rice and fish and took photographs with them and splashed them all over Facebook?'' Mr Marot said.
''The parents would go berserk.''
Cambodian government agencies, including the Ministry of Social Affairs, and SISHA late last year set up a committee to identify, investigate and close harmful unregistered orphanages, while adopting guidelines for standards of residential care in registered centres that are comparable with those in Western countries...
■Lindsay Murdoch is Fairfax Media's south-east Asia correspondent.
Read the remaining article: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/stealing-a-generation-cambodias-unfolding-tragedy-20130406-2hdy2.html#ixzz2PnNPZtRc
A critique of Harry and Bertha Holt’s work while setting up intercountry adoption in South Korea.
1954-1955 Discovering Amerasian Children
1956 “Having Trouble Finding Little Ones”
1957-1958 “Swamped” with Requests for Children
1959 Counseling More Mothers
1960-1964 “House Slaves?”
For the Love of Children
How are the Mothers Today?
1954-1955: Discovering Amerasian Children
Bertha Marian Holt was born in 1905 to Clifford and Eva Holt. She married Harry Holt, a first cousin (Mark Baker, 2006), on December 31, 1927 and eventually they had six children together. In 1954, Harry and Bertha Holt were convinced that God had sent them on a mission to obtain and raise eight South Korean-born Amerasian (American-Korean or mixed-race) children, in addition to the Holts own. (p. 4 & 8) By Autumn of 1955, hundreds of fellow Americans visited the Holt farm in Oregon each week “begging” for a child. The public’s main interest was to “see what the children look like” since they, too, were considering adoption. (p. 9) There was so much media attention that the Holts continued to receive at least 50 daily letters and applications from every state but two. They used this national interest to publicize their loyalty to Christianity. Due to being evangelists and “born-again” Christians, it was the Holts’ desire and priority to give the Korean-born Amerasian children to Christians only. (p. 12)
The Holts used an inexpensive and efficient procedure called “Adoption by Proxy,” considered (what the Holt’s called) a Christian “triumph” against the United States Government. (p. 12) The wanting Christian couple would give Harry Power of Attorney. He would then represent their desires and obtain the children under Korean law. The children would finally come to the U.S. as sons and daughters belonging to the wanting couples. Determined to fill the demand of numerous letters from wanting adopters, the Holts set up post in Seoul hoping to get their hands on more children. Famous friend and reverend, Billy Graham, dedicated their Reception Center. By Christmas of 1955, the Holts receive “thousands” of letters, including 50 inquiries for children each day for a week. (p. 12)
The Holts mention some minor setbacks in 1955. Many established missionaries in Seoul had already reserved the children for their friends. (p. 12) Also, some Korean mothers wanted to wait for the return of their children’s American fathers instead of agreeing to release their children. Other problems came in the form of letters or crank calls, accusing Harry of bringing home “slant-eyed Orientals” or “slant-eyed monsters.” (p. 13) Harry and Bertha dismissed the issue of racism when it came to the incoming children, not realizing that it existed and that it could become the crux of many issues for the inter-racial adoptee to face, isolated. They also did not recognize that their biological daughter made a racially insensitive remark when she affectionately called a Korean-Black child “monkey-face.” (p. 28)
The biggest upset for adoptees and adoptive parents, when reading Bertha Holt’s book Bring My Sons from Afar published by Holt International Children’s Services, was to learn that the Holt’s had called the children “orphans” even though the Holts had collected the children from mothers and they continue to do so today. According to Bertha memoir, in 1954 Harry Holt (with the help of a Korean liaison or a team of followers) actually “hunted” for Amerasian children and “talked to mothers,” sometimes showing photos of children in the United States, while passing out religious pamphlets. (p. 13) Harry wrote that one mother was almost hysterical when taking her child off her back. (p. 16) She misunderstood Harry’s intention, believing that she would be able to stay in touch with her child. The mother didn’t realize that adoption was, as Harry Holt told Bertha, according to her book, “a clean break and forever.” (p. 13)
1956 “Having Trouble Finding Little Ones”
Harry mentions how a “sobbing” mother unable to speak, was “afraid” to give him her baby and some children were “kicking and screaming.” He attempted to comfort the mothers by preaching to them his Christian beliefs, leading many to believe that they would be rewarded by God for giving away their children. After Holt took the children, he sent them to his compound, labeling and showing them as “orphans” in the West so he could send them overseas via the Orphan Bill, a process that he and his cohorts introduced to Congress. The Orphan Bill gave the impression that the children were parentless. This was a lie. Early on, Harry had set up a non-profit bank account and called it “Orphan Foundation Fund” (p. 18) so he could take tax-deductible donations from fellow Americans to help fund the Holt’s desires. Gifts to this account helped to enlarge what would become their empire.
The American Social Agency “denounced” proxy adoptions “furiously” and the Holts perceived opposition or criticisms as “devilish schemes,” accusing the American agency of printing “propaganda” against overseas adoption. (p. 16) Bertha even complained in her memoir that due to the long governmental process, some Korean mothers took their children back home even though the Holts had already assigned these children to American couples. She believed legislatures were “shameful” for making adoptions so difficult. In Seed from the East, the Holts earnestly prayed for their way, even saying “the devil and all his angels can’t keep them [wanting adopters and Korean-born children] apart.” The Holts depended on proxy adoptions to continue their business.
By the summer of 1956, Harry reported that he was “having trouble finding the little ones”. (p. 27) At this time the Holts had already given 750 wanting Christian couples approval for a child. By fall, the Holts were “deluged” with additional inquiries. (p. 29) In October, Harry made a radical decision to go ahead and assign full Korean children to Caucasian families (instead of only mixed race children) “since the numbers of families wanting children increased far beyond the number of Amerasian children available.” (p. 33) Before Christmas of that same year, they received 300 letters including 96 more inquiries for children. (p. 35)
1957-1958: “Swamped” with Requests for Children
The Holts feared that the U.S. Welfare Agency would make “serious trouble,” (p. 37) which could possibly slow down or halt their business activities. They mailed 6000 cards, advising their followers to write their Senators regarding the “Orphan” Bill. (p. 37) The Holts wholeheartedly believed that they were working God’s will rather than selfishly fulfilling their own stubborn wants. Harry used Samuel 2:8 to affirm his activities:“Surely He raiseth the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dung hill, to set him among princes and to make them inherit the thrown of glory.” (p. 36) He believed that adopted children were “the first fruits of this Christian labor of love.” (p. 39) In contrast, however, the well-being of the Korean families were not considered. The Holts focused solely on giving the children to wanting and waiting couples.
Harry also traveled to Mexico to see if there were “orphans” available (p. 39) but the Mexican authorities were “insulted” when he asked if he could send the children to North Americans (p. 40). Eventually he found a governor who was favorable to the idea. He also traveled to Germany and Austria but was unsuccessful there (p. 40). Upon returning from a worldwide search, he decided to build a compound in Mexico within that year. (p. 41)
During the first few years, the Holts continuously introduced extensions to the Refugee Act and the Orphan Bill. Once during this time, Harry blew up at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for their delays in issuing proxy adoption visas. (pp. 51-52) Seventy waiting Christian couples had already paid their fees. The Holts mailed 92 letters from people who had already adopted. Only 22 visas were issued on October 22 but on Oct. 31, the Holt team still managed to take 80 Korean children. (pp. 51-52)
The Holt’s “Glad” file (consisting of records showing processed adoptions) expanded to five filing drawers in their home office. (p. 62) When an American newspaper included a photo of an adopted and barefoot Korean boy eating from a paper plate and sitting on the ground of his American home, Harry told Bertha “never let anyone in Korea see the picture.” (p. 72) Ultimately he feared the Koreans would stop allowing the children overseas because the child was pictured barefoot. (In today’s advertising campaign geared to potential parents and financial donors, the children are shown smiling with their new parents. It is also interesting to note that in many cases the wanting couples are led to believe the child belongs to them even prior to obtaining the child. This is the agency’s deceptive way to get the couple emotionally attached prior to receiving the child so that the couple will pay “whatever it takes” to follow through with the adoption. Big bright and beautiful photos of children are shown in Holts marketing campaign, but rarely happy children with their Asian families. Some might consider this type of advertising as propaganda)
The Holt team prepared and mailed 3500 New Year greetings, finding this an effective way to gain a solid following and gain requests for more children. (p. 78) By the end of 1958, the Holts had joyfully sent 1069 Korean children to foreign Christian couples. (pp. 79-80)
1959 Counseling More Mothers!
By winter of 1959, the Holt compound grew to 7000 square feet, including multiple buildings. 50 Koreans had been trained to help and Bertha boasted many American adopters asked for a second child after receiving the first one. The Holts were “flooded” with phone calls and nothing seemed to discourage Bertha–not even an article reporting “bad” adoption cases such as death. (pp. 44, 45, 66, 68) Instead she praised that controversy brought “an avalanche of inquiries” from interested people. (p. 81)
That same winter, the Holts biological daughter wrote that their Korean liaison did a “good job” talking to mothers when they went to the country in search for children. (p. 82) The Holts would introduce themselves, give a reason for the visit, hand out a religious brochure and preach such stories as “Buddha’s bones are still in his grave, but Jesus’ grave is empty.” (p. 87) Sometimes, the team might show photos of smiling Korean children with Caucasian families, and then ask the Korean mother if she had ever thought of letting her child go to America. Molly wrote that the mothers had always admitted to thinking about it. That particular May, Bertha reported that 20 “quietly sobbing” mothers watched their children leave for the states by airplane. (p. 88) Bertha documented how another Korean mother remained calm while signing the paperwork, but “sobbed convulsively” as the Holts pulled away and her child waved good-bye. (p. 88)
Bertha’s accounts at the Holt compound causes us to become disturbed over the amount of children who died in their care. Were the children really orphans? We wonder why the Holts did not suggest for the Korean parents to help wean and tend to their children in their commune. For example, it is mentioned by 1959 that 85 children died. Was this death rate higher than normal? Could the deaths have been prevented if the Korean parents were allowed inside the commune and involved with their children’s care.
At times, it is mentioned that the Holts admitted children to the compound even without acquiring written permission from parents. For instance, they took a child from a grandmother and from the orphanage superintendent based on his fear that the child’s mother would “sell her as a slave” because the child’s father was an African-American. No proof of this fear was ever given and the child was taken into the compound. (p. 89)
The Holts use their evangelical friends to peruse and pursue more children, scouring the country regularly to promote their program in neighboring orphanages and by talking with fellow administrators. Their efforts expanded to any area they could reach. Harry even traveled to Baja California where he hoped to find children who “might be made adoptable” after a flood had hit the town. (p. 100) Instead of looking for extended family members who could provide care, the Holts hurried to devastated or rural areas with plans to immediately send children to waiting couples who had paid the fees.
The Holts wanted to make a clear distinction between them and other agencies. They would maintain that they did not “sell” children but rather provided a “service” of obtaining children for wanting couples. The November Newsletter of 1959 became the Holts first official regular mailer, in which children are continuously called “orphans.” (Today, they are called children “served”) The current news of the day was that the Mexican Government did not allow resident missionaries. The Holts had found a way into the country by working with the “orphans” thereby “preaching” with their actions. At this time the Holts planned to provide care to pregnant women via what they called “unwed” mothers with “illegitimate” children. Their hope was to provide services “through this difficult time” of pregnancy.
In December of 1959, Harry wrote home concerning his idea of sending “our orphans” to Paraguay, a country he believed to be “begging for immigrants” with plans to start a “colony with girls” due to having a friend who owned “several thousand acres.” (p. 101)
1960-1964 “House Slaves”
The Holts found that using fellow Christians to further their program was an effective way to distribute awareness of their work, gain money and expand their practices. January of 1960, the Holts received $7000 in donations from Newsletter recipients and others. (p. 108) In the Fall Newsletter, Bertha wrote her interpretation of Korean culture, spreading false information, generalities, and stereotypes to their readership. One such sweeping statement told by Bertha was that since “orphan girls” were without fathers “no one will want to marry her.” (p. 118) This motivated Mr. Holt to start a “teenage program” for older females where the girls would “work eight hours, cooking, cleaning, serving, helping in the office, or with babies and children, or at various other tasks.” (p. 118) She wrote, “They attend an adult school in the afternoon until 9:00 P.M.” This program, in the eyes of Holts, would prevent the girls from becoming “house slaves.” (p. 118)
That year ended with the Holts sending out 4000 New Year’s Greetings with 2580 Newsletter to their American supporters. (p. 124) In the West, the Holts were hailed as modern-day saints. A made for television movie, several newspaper and magazine articles helped to increase the family’s wealth and boost their reputation.
Summer of 1961, Bertha and children moved to the South Korea to join Harry. (p. 133) Bertha experienced firsthand life at the commune. One day that summer, she mentioned that Harry had “wasted” an entire day waiting for a toddler “whose mother didn’t bring her.” (p. 139) A few days later Bertha reported that the Korean teenagers were becoming more disrespectful, refusing to carry out “orders” and even formed a “self-government,” leading their own. (p. 139) By fall, Bertha complained in her diary that they had even more teenagers who refused to work. She wrote “Now we had 100 teenage girls who were a big headache.” (p. 143)
January of 1963, the Holts held “evangelistic meetings” four nights a week at their compound. One sermon asked whether the listener would go to heaven or hell. (pp. 179-180) Scare tactics? The isolated Korean children were solely under the influence of the Holts and their evangelists. The Holts got licensed to operate an agency in Oregon. By this time they had transported 2734 Korean children overseas. (p. 180) Summer of 1963, the Holts sent out 4000 additional Newsletters to their American supporters. (p. 180)
In 1964, ten years after the Holts first became motivated to visit Korea and take eight Amerasian children for their family and thousands of full-blooded Korean children for fellow Christians, the Holts had finally run out of wanting Christian families. (p. 199) Instead of stopping their activities (that began with the intent to give children to Christians only), they “reluctantly” changed their policy to allow NonChristians to adopt. Bertha ended her book, writing that this change was of great controversy back then and still today. (p. 199) She prayed “even more earnestly that every adopted child would become a born-again Christian.” Harry Holt died April of 1964.
For the Love of Children:
Bertha Holt tirelessly continued adoption work, accumulating at least forty awards in her lifetime. She is so revered and renowned in the West that there is even an elementary school named after her. This tenacious woman passed away August of 2000. Harry and Bertha Holt did not only find new families for children but they changed the laws all over the world to allow children to be dislocated from parents easily and economically. A total of 157,145 South Korean children have been removed from his or her family between 1958 and 2005. For every child, there are several family members who are impinged upon for the rest of their lives. No adoptee that I know of, have been given their parents’ death certificates, proving our status as orphans as claimed by the agencies.
The Holts have penetrated their practices into countries all over the world. Holt International’s 2005 Annual Report shows that with the help of their partners, they have “served” 47,942 children just for that year. That same year, it’s interesting to note, Holt International received almost $20 million dollars in revenues and other support. Adoption agencies have already established businesses in one hundred countries. Rather than advocating family counseling, support and resources (which would have made less profit–although they now show an attempt due to being scrutinized), the agencies get paid very well when they send the child overseas. Their non-profit status helps to deceive the public into believing they are providing a service for everyone involved. While it was intended for the adopted children to live utopian lives, how are the parents left behind still coping?
How are the Mothers Today?
The Holt agency has a published book called To my Beloved Baby: Writings of Birth Mothers, which cannot be found in the U.S. Unlike the stereotypical birth mother, these women were not teens, like the public has been led to believe. These mothers believed they had no right to offer their own “inferior” love to their babies. In fact, these modest women assumed that they would receive God’s blessing for releasing their children to the agency as if it was GOD who had arranged for their babies to be placed with a more “admirable” family. Sadly, these mothers assumed their children would come back for them. One mother shared how the doctor, nurse, and birth father tried to reassure her decision to relinquish her rights by reminding her she needed to be “cheery” for when her child returned as an adult. (Mothers, 2005) A false promise? Another 32-year-old mother told of how she cried for days after leaving her baby with Holt. (Mothers, 2005) A 37-year-old mother confided that the pastor had named her son out of the hope that the baby would be a follower of Jesus. (Mothers, 2005) Another mother cried, “Why did you take after your unworthy mother?” (Mothers, 2005) Counseling sessions led her to believe her baby might have an easier life by being adopted abroad, so she chose that route. (Mothers, 2005) These mothers hoped they were doing the “right” thing in conjunction with the agency’s religious beliefs.
Did the Korean parents know that they were relinquishing all rights from ever having future contact or a reunion? Did the agency educate them over the long-term ramifications and the impact resulting from sending their child overseas? Were these vulnerable mothers given a pressure-free choice?
Using a belief that God had ordained the Holts (and still does) to move children to “new” and “improved” families, the Holts have radically changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of families and children worldwide and continue to do so. This article is dedicated to all adoptees who have committed suicide, including one of Holt’s adopted sons, Joe (1984), and another Korean-born adoptee (Eric Lew Jones) sent to the infamous Christian cult leader Jim Jones (best known for inducing his 900 followers to drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, which led to their death). May these two young men and all families separated by adoption be nurtured by the Great Mother of the Universe.
http://www.holtintl.org/insstats.shtml
Bertha Holt, Bring My Sons From Afar, Holt Children’s Services,
Eugene Oregon, 1986
Writings of Birth Mothers, To My Beloved Baby, Holt Children’s Services, Seoul South Korea, 2005
Mark Baker, The Register Guard, Children Changing Lives,” OregonLife, 2006
http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000031930/Harry and Bertha Holt, International Adoption, Holt International Children’s services
1956 “Having Trouble Finding Little Ones”
1957-1958 “Swamped” with Requests for Children
1959 Counseling More Mothers
1960-1964 “House Slaves?”
For the Love of Children
How are the Mothers Today?
1954-1955: Discovering Amerasian Children
Bertha Marian Holt was born in 1905 to Clifford and Eva Holt. She married Harry Holt, a first cousin (Mark Baker, 2006), on December 31, 1927 and eventually they had six children together. In 1954, Harry and Bertha Holt were convinced that God had sent them on a mission to obtain and raise eight South Korean-born Amerasian (American-Korean or mixed-race) children, in addition to the Holts own. (p. 4 & 8) By Autumn of 1955, hundreds of fellow Americans visited the Holt farm in Oregon each week “begging” for a child. The public’s main interest was to “see what the children look like” since they, too, were considering adoption. (p. 9) There was so much media attention that the Holts continued to receive at least 50 daily letters and applications from every state but two. They used this national interest to publicize their loyalty to Christianity. Due to being evangelists and “born-again” Christians, it was the Holts’ desire and priority to give the Korean-born Amerasian children to Christians only. (p. 12)
The Holts used an inexpensive and efficient procedure called “Adoption by Proxy,” considered (what the Holt’s called) a Christian “triumph” against the United States Government. (p. 12) The wanting Christian couple would give Harry Power of Attorney. He would then represent their desires and obtain the children under Korean law. The children would finally come to the U.S. as sons and daughters belonging to the wanting couples. Determined to fill the demand of numerous letters from wanting adopters, the Holts set up post in Seoul hoping to get their hands on more children. Famous friend and reverend, Billy Graham, dedicated their Reception Center. By Christmas of 1955, the Holts receive “thousands” of letters, including 50 inquiries for children each day for a week. (p. 12)
The Holts mention some minor setbacks in 1955. Many established missionaries in Seoul had already reserved the children for their friends. (p. 12) Also, some Korean mothers wanted to wait for the return of their children’s American fathers instead of agreeing to release their children. Other problems came in the form of letters or crank calls, accusing Harry of bringing home “slant-eyed Orientals” or “slant-eyed monsters.” (p. 13) Harry and Bertha dismissed the issue of racism when it came to the incoming children, not realizing that it existed and that it could become the crux of many issues for the inter-racial adoptee to face, isolated. They also did not recognize that their biological daughter made a racially insensitive remark when she affectionately called a Korean-Black child “monkey-face.” (p. 28)
The biggest upset for adoptees and adoptive parents, when reading Bertha Holt’s book Bring My Sons from Afar published by Holt International Children’s Services, was to learn that the Holt’s had called the children “orphans” even though the Holts had collected the children from mothers and they continue to do so today. According to Bertha memoir, in 1954 Harry Holt (with the help of a Korean liaison or a team of followers) actually “hunted” for Amerasian children and “talked to mothers,” sometimes showing photos of children in the United States, while passing out religious pamphlets. (p. 13) Harry wrote that one mother was almost hysterical when taking her child off her back. (p. 16) She misunderstood Harry’s intention, believing that she would be able to stay in touch with her child. The mother didn’t realize that adoption was, as Harry Holt told Bertha, according to her book, “a clean break and forever.” (p. 13)
1956 “Having Trouble Finding Little Ones”
Harry mentions how a “sobbing” mother unable to speak, was “afraid” to give him her baby and some children were “kicking and screaming.” He attempted to comfort the mothers by preaching to them his Christian beliefs, leading many to believe that they would be rewarded by God for giving away their children. After Holt took the children, he sent them to his compound, labeling and showing them as “orphans” in the West so he could send them overseas via the Orphan Bill, a process that he and his cohorts introduced to Congress. The Orphan Bill gave the impression that the children were parentless. This was a lie. Early on, Harry had set up a non-profit bank account and called it “Orphan Foundation Fund” (p. 18) so he could take tax-deductible donations from fellow Americans to help fund the Holt’s desires. Gifts to this account helped to enlarge what would become their empire.
The American Social Agency “denounced” proxy adoptions “furiously” and the Holts perceived opposition or criticisms as “devilish schemes,” accusing the American agency of printing “propaganda” against overseas adoption. (p. 16) Bertha even complained in her memoir that due to the long governmental process, some Korean mothers took their children back home even though the Holts had already assigned these children to American couples. She believed legislatures were “shameful” for making adoptions so difficult. In Seed from the East, the Holts earnestly prayed for their way, even saying “the devil and all his angels can’t keep them [wanting adopters and Korean-born children] apart.” The Holts depended on proxy adoptions to continue their business.
By the summer of 1956, Harry reported that he was “having trouble finding the little ones”. (p. 27) At this time the Holts had already given 750 wanting Christian couples approval for a child. By fall, the Holts were “deluged” with additional inquiries. (p. 29) In October, Harry made a radical decision to go ahead and assign full Korean children to Caucasian families (instead of only mixed race children) “since the numbers of families wanting children increased far beyond the number of Amerasian children available.” (p. 33) Before Christmas of that same year, they received 300 letters including 96 more inquiries for children. (p. 35)
1957-1958: “Swamped” with Requests for Children
The Holts feared that the U.S. Welfare Agency would make “serious trouble,” (p. 37) which could possibly slow down or halt their business activities. They mailed 6000 cards, advising their followers to write their Senators regarding the “Orphan” Bill. (p. 37) The Holts wholeheartedly believed that they were working God’s will rather than selfishly fulfilling their own stubborn wants. Harry used Samuel 2:8 to affirm his activities:“Surely He raiseth the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dung hill, to set him among princes and to make them inherit the thrown of glory.” (p. 36) He believed that adopted children were “the first fruits of this Christian labor of love.” (p. 39) In contrast, however, the well-being of the Korean families were not considered. The Holts focused solely on giving the children to wanting and waiting couples.
Harry also traveled to Mexico to see if there were “orphans” available (p. 39) but the Mexican authorities were “insulted” when he asked if he could send the children to North Americans (p. 40). Eventually he found a governor who was favorable to the idea. He also traveled to Germany and Austria but was unsuccessful there (p. 40). Upon returning from a worldwide search, he decided to build a compound in Mexico within that year. (p. 41)
During the first few years, the Holts continuously introduced extensions to the Refugee Act and the Orphan Bill. Once during this time, Harry blew up at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for their delays in issuing proxy adoption visas. (pp. 51-52) Seventy waiting Christian couples had already paid their fees. The Holts mailed 92 letters from people who had already adopted. Only 22 visas were issued on October 22 but on Oct. 31, the Holt team still managed to take 80 Korean children. (pp. 51-52)
The Holt’s “Glad” file (consisting of records showing processed adoptions) expanded to five filing drawers in their home office. (p. 62) When an American newspaper included a photo of an adopted and barefoot Korean boy eating from a paper plate and sitting on the ground of his American home, Harry told Bertha “never let anyone in Korea see the picture.” (p. 72) Ultimately he feared the Koreans would stop allowing the children overseas because the child was pictured barefoot. (In today’s advertising campaign geared to potential parents and financial donors, the children are shown smiling with their new parents. It is also interesting to note that in many cases the wanting couples are led to believe the child belongs to them even prior to obtaining the child. This is the agency’s deceptive way to get the couple emotionally attached prior to receiving the child so that the couple will pay “whatever it takes” to follow through with the adoption. Big bright and beautiful photos of children are shown in Holts marketing campaign, but rarely happy children with their Asian families. Some might consider this type of advertising as propaganda)
The Holt team prepared and mailed 3500 New Year greetings, finding this an effective way to gain a solid following and gain requests for more children. (p. 78) By the end of 1958, the Holts had joyfully sent 1069 Korean children to foreign Christian couples. (pp. 79-80)
1959 Counseling More Mothers!
By winter of 1959, the Holt compound grew to 7000 square feet, including multiple buildings. 50 Koreans had been trained to help and Bertha boasted many American adopters asked for a second child after receiving the first one. The Holts were “flooded” with phone calls and nothing seemed to discourage Bertha–not even an article reporting “bad” adoption cases such as death. (pp. 44, 45, 66, 68) Instead she praised that controversy brought “an avalanche of inquiries” from interested people. (p. 81)
That same winter, the Holts biological daughter wrote that their Korean liaison did a “good job” talking to mothers when they went to the country in search for children. (p. 82) The Holts would introduce themselves, give a reason for the visit, hand out a religious brochure and preach such stories as “Buddha’s bones are still in his grave, but Jesus’ grave is empty.” (p. 87) Sometimes, the team might show photos of smiling Korean children with Caucasian families, and then ask the Korean mother if she had ever thought of letting her child go to America. Molly wrote that the mothers had always admitted to thinking about it. That particular May, Bertha reported that 20 “quietly sobbing” mothers watched their children leave for the states by airplane. (p. 88) Bertha documented how another Korean mother remained calm while signing the paperwork, but “sobbed convulsively” as the Holts pulled away and her child waved good-bye. (p. 88)
Bertha’s accounts at the Holt compound causes us to become disturbed over the amount of children who died in their care. Were the children really orphans? We wonder why the Holts did not suggest for the Korean parents to help wean and tend to their children in their commune. For example, it is mentioned by 1959 that 85 children died. Was this death rate higher than normal? Could the deaths have been prevented if the Korean parents were allowed inside the commune and involved with their children’s care.
At times, it is mentioned that the Holts admitted children to the compound even without acquiring written permission from parents. For instance, they took a child from a grandmother and from the orphanage superintendent based on his fear that the child’s mother would “sell her as a slave” because the child’s father was an African-American. No proof of this fear was ever given and the child was taken into the compound. (p. 89)
The Holts use their evangelical friends to peruse and pursue more children, scouring the country regularly to promote their program in neighboring orphanages and by talking with fellow administrators. Their efforts expanded to any area they could reach. Harry even traveled to Baja California where he hoped to find children who “might be made adoptable” after a flood had hit the town. (p. 100) Instead of looking for extended family members who could provide care, the Holts hurried to devastated or rural areas with plans to immediately send children to waiting couples who had paid the fees.
The Holts wanted to make a clear distinction between them and other agencies. They would maintain that they did not “sell” children but rather provided a “service” of obtaining children for wanting couples. The November Newsletter of 1959 became the Holts first official regular mailer, in which children are continuously called “orphans.” (Today, they are called children “served”) The current news of the day was that the Mexican Government did not allow resident missionaries. The Holts had found a way into the country by working with the “orphans” thereby “preaching” with their actions. At this time the Holts planned to provide care to pregnant women via what they called “unwed” mothers with “illegitimate” children. Their hope was to provide services “through this difficult time” of pregnancy.
In December of 1959, Harry wrote home concerning his idea of sending “our orphans” to Paraguay, a country he believed to be “begging for immigrants” with plans to start a “colony with girls” due to having a friend who owned “several thousand acres.” (p. 101)
1960-1964 “House Slaves”
The Holts found that using fellow Christians to further their program was an effective way to distribute awareness of their work, gain money and expand their practices. January of 1960, the Holts received $7000 in donations from Newsletter recipients and others. (p. 108) In the Fall Newsletter, Bertha wrote her interpretation of Korean culture, spreading false information, generalities, and stereotypes to their readership. One such sweeping statement told by Bertha was that since “orphan girls” were without fathers “no one will want to marry her.” (p. 118) This motivated Mr. Holt to start a “teenage program” for older females where the girls would “work eight hours, cooking, cleaning, serving, helping in the office, or with babies and children, or at various other tasks.” (p. 118) She wrote, “They attend an adult school in the afternoon until 9:00 P.M.” This program, in the eyes of Holts, would prevent the girls from becoming “house slaves.” (p. 118)
That year ended with the Holts sending out 4000 New Year’s Greetings with 2580 Newsletter to their American supporters. (p. 124) In the West, the Holts were hailed as modern-day saints. A made for television movie, several newspaper and magazine articles helped to increase the family’s wealth and boost their reputation.
Summer of 1961, Bertha and children moved to the South Korea to join Harry. (p. 133) Bertha experienced firsthand life at the commune. One day that summer, she mentioned that Harry had “wasted” an entire day waiting for a toddler “whose mother didn’t bring her.” (p. 139) A few days later Bertha reported that the Korean teenagers were becoming more disrespectful, refusing to carry out “orders” and even formed a “self-government,” leading their own. (p. 139) By fall, Bertha complained in her diary that they had even more teenagers who refused to work. She wrote “Now we had 100 teenage girls who were a big headache.” (p. 143)
January of 1963, the Holts held “evangelistic meetings” four nights a week at their compound. One sermon asked whether the listener would go to heaven or hell. (pp. 179-180) Scare tactics? The isolated Korean children were solely under the influence of the Holts and their evangelists. The Holts got licensed to operate an agency in Oregon. By this time they had transported 2734 Korean children overseas. (p. 180) Summer of 1963, the Holts sent out 4000 additional Newsletters to their American supporters. (p. 180)
In 1964, ten years after the Holts first became motivated to visit Korea and take eight Amerasian children for their family and thousands of full-blooded Korean children for fellow Christians, the Holts had finally run out of wanting Christian families. (p. 199) Instead of stopping their activities (that began with the intent to give children to Christians only), they “reluctantly” changed their policy to allow NonChristians to adopt. Bertha ended her book, writing that this change was of great controversy back then and still today. (p. 199) She prayed “even more earnestly that every adopted child would become a born-again Christian.” Harry Holt died April of 1964.
For the Love of Children:
Bertha Holt tirelessly continued adoption work, accumulating at least forty awards in her lifetime. She is so revered and renowned in the West that there is even an elementary school named after her. This tenacious woman passed away August of 2000. Harry and Bertha Holt did not only find new families for children but they changed the laws all over the world to allow children to be dislocated from parents easily and economically. A total of 157,145 South Korean children have been removed from his or her family between 1958 and 2005. For every child, there are several family members who are impinged upon for the rest of their lives. No adoptee that I know of, have been given their parents’ death certificates, proving our status as orphans as claimed by the agencies.
The Holts have penetrated their practices into countries all over the world. Holt International’s 2005 Annual Report shows that with the help of their partners, they have “served” 47,942 children just for that year. That same year, it’s interesting to note, Holt International received almost $20 million dollars in revenues and other support. Adoption agencies have already established businesses in one hundred countries. Rather than advocating family counseling, support and resources (which would have made less profit–although they now show an attempt due to being scrutinized), the agencies get paid very well when they send the child overseas. Their non-profit status helps to deceive the public into believing they are providing a service for everyone involved. While it was intended for the adopted children to live utopian lives, how are the parents left behind still coping?
How are the Mothers Today?
The Holt agency has a published book called To my Beloved Baby: Writings of Birth Mothers, which cannot be found in the U.S. Unlike the stereotypical birth mother, these women were not teens, like the public has been led to believe. These mothers believed they had no right to offer their own “inferior” love to their babies. In fact, these modest women assumed that they would receive God’s blessing for releasing their children to the agency as if it was GOD who had arranged for their babies to be placed with a more “admirable” family. Sadly, these mothers assumed their children would come back for them. One mother shared how the doctor, nurse, and birth father tried to reassure her decision to relinquish her rights by reminding her she needed to be “cheery” for when her child returned as an adult. (Mothers, 2005) A false promise? Another 32-year-old mother told of how she cried for days after leaving her baby with Holt. (Mothers, 2005) A 37-year-old mother confided that the pastor had named her son out of the hope that the baby would be a follower of Jesus. (Mothers, 2005) Another mother cried, “Why did you take after your unworthy mother?” (Mothers, 2005) Counseling sessions led her to believe her baby might have an easier life by being adopted abroad, so she chose that route. (Mothers, 2005) These mothers hoped they were doing the “right” thing in conjunction with the agency’s religious beliefs.
Did the Korean parents know that they were relinquishing all rights from ever having future contact or a reunion? Did the agency educate them over the long-term ramifications and the impact resulting from sending their child overseas? Were these vulnerable mothers given a pressure-free choice?
Using a belief that God had ordained the Holts (and still does) to move children to “new” and “improved” families, the Holts have radically changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of families and children worldwide and continue to do so. This article is dedicated to all adoptees who have committed suicide, including one of Holt’s adopted sons, Joe (1984), and another Korean-born adoptee (Eric Lew Jones) sent to the infamous Christian cult leader Jim Jones (best known for inducing his 900 followers to drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid, which led to their death). May these two young men and all families separated by adoption be nurtured by the Great Mother of the Universe.
http://www.holtintl.org/insstats.shtml
Bertha Holt, Bring My Sons From Afar, Holt Children’s Services,
Eugene Oregon, 1986
Writings of Birth Mothers, To My Beloved Baby, Holt Children’s Services, Seoul South Korea, 2005
Mark Baker, The Register Guard, Children Changing Lives,” OregonLife, 2006
http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000031930/Harry and Bertha Holt, International Adoption, Holt International Children’s services
The Evangelical Adoption Crusade
By Kathryn Joyce
First published in The Nation
Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
In late March Craig Juntunen told a group of Christian adoption advocates assembled at a Chandler, Arizona, home about his plans to increase international adoptions fivefold. Just over a year before, the world had been riveted by the saga of Laura Silsby, the American missionary arrested while trying to transport Haitian children across the Dominican border. But the lessons of that scandal seemed far from Juntunen’s mind as he described his “crusade to create a culture of adoption” by simplifying adoption’s labyrinthine ethical complexities to their emotional core. Juntunen, a former pro football quarterback and the adoptive father of three Haitian children, has emerged as a somewhat rogue figure in the adoption world since he recently founded an unorthodox nonprofit, Both Ends Burning. He has commissioned a documentary about desperate orphans in teeming institutions, Wrongfully Detained, and proposed a “clearinghouse model” that will raise the number of children adopted into US families to more than 50,000 per year.
Juntunen acknowledges that many adoption experts find his proposals naïve, particularly in a year that witnessed scandals in Haiti, Nepal and most recently Ethiopia, where widespread irregularities and trafficking allegations may slow the once-booming program to a crawl. He met a chilly reception recently at the Adoption Policy Conference at New York Law School when he spoke alongside State Department officials. But Juntunen insists that his ideas for increasing adoption constitute a social movement, akin to the civil rights movement, and that the force of a growing “adoption culture” will help them prevail.
In this expectation, he may be right. In Arizona, Juntunen was speaking with Dan Cruver, head of Together for Adoption, a key coalition in a growing evangelical adoption movement. The event was the first of the organization’s new “house conferences”: small-scale meet-ups bolstering an active national movement that promotes Christians’ adopting as a way to address a worldwide “orphan crisis” they say encompasses hundreds of millions of children. It’s a message Cruver also emphasizes in his book Reclaiming Adoption—one in a growing list of titles about “orphan theology,” which teaches that adoption mirrors Christian salvation, plays an essential role in antiabortion politics and is a means of fulfilling the Great Commission, the biblical mandate that Christians spread the gospel.
Yet while Cruver and his colleagues have inspired thousands of Christians to enter the arduous and expensive process of international adoption, the adoption industry is on a steep decline after years of ethical problems and tightening regulations around the world. Since the mid-’90s, eighty-three countries have ratified the Hague convention regulating international adoption. By 2010 there were 12,000 such adoptions in the United States (including 1,100 exceptional “humanitarian parole” cases from post-earthquake Haiti)—almost half those at the peak in 2004. If evangelicals heed Cruver’s call en masse, it could mean not just a radical change in who raises the world’s children but a powerful clash between rapidly falling supply and sharply inflating demand.
* * *
Adoption has long been the province of religious and secular agencies, but in the past two years evangelical advocacy has skyrocketed. In 2009 Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life, shepherded through a Southern Baptist Church (SBC) resolution calling on all 16 million members of the denomination to become involved in adoption or “orphan care.” Last year at least five evangelical adoption conferences were held, and between 1,000 and 2,000 churches participated in an “Orphan Sunday” event in November. And in February, the mammoth evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services announced that its adoption placements had increased 13 percent since 2009, in large part because of the mobilization of churches.
“We expect adoptions will continue to rise as new movements within the Christian community raise awareness and aid for the global orphan crisis,” Bethany CEO Bill Blacquiere said.
One result has been the creation of “rainbow congregations” across the country, like the congregation Moore helps pastor in Louisville, Highview Baptist. An active adoption ministry has brought 140 adopted children into the congregation in the past five years. These children don’t recognize the flags of their home countries, Moore proudly noted at a 2010 conference, but they can all sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
* * *
After the Haiti earthquake, the evangelical adoption movement sprang into action. Next to longstanding religious relief orphanages, upstart evangelical missions appeared. Some flung themselves into adversarial activism, decrying international aid organizations like UNICEF for obstructing the speedy adoption of Haitian children.
In the United States, evangelicals and sympathetic politicians led the charge for expanded, expedited international adoption for what they had claimed before the earthquake was the country’s 400,000 or more orphans—a figure repeated widely, despite a UNICEF clarification that likely only 50,000 children had lost both parents. (Identifying which children fit this description is a matter of painstaking investigation.)
Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat and staunch adoption advocate, argued ferociously to expand a “humanitarian parole” program that expedites adoptions in progress: “Either UNICEF is going to change or have a very difficult time getting support from the US Congress,” she told the Associated Press.
Others used the emotional language of rescue; a Mormon mission president said he had “negotiated the release” of sixty-six children bound for Salt Lake City homes.
But what most people will remember about adoption in Haiti is the saga of Laura Silsby and nine other Southern Baptists who were jailed after trying to transport thirty-three “orphans”—most solicited from living families—to an unbuilt orphanage in the Dominican Republic, to await prospective evangelical adopters. Throughout the scandal the group members maintained they were simply “ten Christians who obeyed God’s calling.”
* * *
Silsby’s claims to divine guidance attracted scorn from the media—one outlet accused her of “baby-snatching for Jesus”—but her language resonates with now-commonplace Christian adoption rhetoric.
The movement cuts across evangelical distinctions, with the Southern Baptists taking a doctrinal lead; charismatic prayer warrior Lou Engle, co-founder of TheCall, praying for “the most outrageous adoption movement to be released through the church”; and Rick Warren declaring that members of his Saddleback Church will adopt 500 children in three years.
Individual ministries abound, like Orphan’s Ransom, which helps evangelicals pay international adoption fees that can range from $20,000 to $63,000. Churches report a “contagious” “adoption culture” in which even small congregations have adopted dozens of children in just a few years. Movement leaders say this viral effect is key to building the movement. “Get as many people in the church to adopt, and adopt as many kids as you can,” said one speaker at the 2010 Adopting for Life Conference, noting the particular power of a pastor’s example. Following that advice, in June the SBC joined with Bethany Christian Services to begin subsidizing Southern Baptist pastors’ adoption costs.
Observers from adoption lobby groups mention two watershed moments for the movement: Warren’s entrance into the orphan care field in 2005 and President Bush’s decision in 2008 to name Jedd Medefind, a former Republican staffer in the California legislature, as head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Medefind is now the affable president of Christian Alliance for Orphans, a coalition of eighty Christian groups, and Warren’s church is helping to set up an adoption program in Rwanda.
“It was kind of a perfect storm,” reflects Tom DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), an influential secular adoption advocacy group that has sought to partner with the evangelical movement. “We hit that moment when a movement really starts to ramp up and get the attention of the public.”
The movement’s influence was on display in September in a closed-door meeting with UNICEF—frequently cast as “anti-adoption” for raising ethical concerns about adopting from disaster- or poverty-stricken nations—leveraged by six key evangelical adoption groups in an effort to find common ground.
As a way for conservative evangelicals to reclaim the social gospel message from liberal churches, adoption is a perfect storm, too, seemingly defining antiabortion activism as more truly “prolife”—or “whole life,” as one Bethany staffer coined it—while providing a new opportunity, as recent orphan theology texts explain, to spread the gospel. In Reclaiming Adoption, Cruver bluntly declares, “The ultimate purpose of human adoption by Christians, therefore, is not to give orphans parents, as important as that is. It is to place them in a Christian home that they might be positioned to receive the gospel.”
In person, Russell Moore denies that invoking the Great Commission means adoption is a vehicle for evangelism. But in Adopting for Life, he calls adoption “evangelistic to the core,” since Christian adoptive parents are “committing to years of gospel proclamation.” Likewise, although Medefind dismisses the idea of proselytizing through adoption, the Alliance membership agreement envisions “every orphan experiencing God’s unfailing love and knowing Jesus as Savior.”
Followers appear to have taken the message at face value. Last winter, in the wake of the earthquake, the Rev. Tom Benz announced his plan to “airlift 50 to 150 [Haitian] orphans” to a place called BridgeStone, a 140-acre retreat center owned by his Alabama church. Benz, a jolly pastor who runs an evangelical summer program for Ukrainian orphans next to the Black Sea, explained that the Haiti program would host children for ninety days, during which volunteers would teach them English, “immerse them in the gospel” and “incubate adoptions” with local church families.
Benz originally planned the program for Ukrainian orphans, but once he announced his Haiti plans, he says, he was overwhelmed by volunteer support and donations. Miles of new plumbing and electrical wire were laid for the center’s twenty-two cabins, and construction began on three permanent staff “lodges” (one for Benz’s family), almost all with donated materials and labor. Benz was optimistic that he could wrangle the system, with the help of a friend with State Department connections, by representing his plan as a foreign studies program.
“It’s not like we’re taking the kids permanently,” he said. “We’re taking them for ninety days, and then they’re going back.” Reminded of the adoption mission, Benz chuckled. “Well, that’s absolutely part of our agenda, but you know, that’s not the thing we’re going to emphasize to the Haitian government!”
Over the spring and summer of 2010, months wore on and passports for the Haitian children were not forthcoming. The only progress made was on the BridgeStone estate. After months of delays, a September fundraising missive asked donors for continued patience as Benz sought to “bring children out of darkness and suffering into faith and life in Jesus Christ.” Shortly thereafter, Benz’s Haiti blog came down, and he sent an announcement of the retreat center’s pending open house for the launch of its adoption program for Ukrainian children. By March it had resulted in eight adoptions that, Benz promised, would help the children “grow into mighty men and women of faith.”
* * *
For many adoption reformers, the Silsby affair changed the script for how adoption is discussed. Karen Moline, a board member of the watchdog group Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform, says Silsby “put a face to the worst part of what international adoption can be, which is entitlement,” meaning American parents’ sense of entitlement to developing nations’ children.
Susie Krabacher, an American and devout Christian, is director of Mercy and Sharing, a Haitian orphanage founded in 1994 to care for severely disabled, abandoned children, which does not perform adoptions. She says there is enormous economic pressure on Haitian parents to relinquish children. Many orphanages in Haiti provide for children whose parents can’t afford to feed them but who remain involved and visit often. But Haiti also has a history of unethical adoption programs. Post-earthquake, Krabacher says, they have become “the biggest money-making operation in Haiti.” Indeed, many orphanages, mindful of high international adoption fees, tell struggling parents that they should give up one of their children. The financial desperation in Haiti is so intense and the coercion so pervasive, Krabacher says, that the vast majority of Mercy and Sharing’s 181 employees “would have to look at the option of giving up a child if they didn’t have a job.”
This gets at the central problem in how most evangelical adoption ministries define the scope of the worldwide “orphan crisis.” As with the misleading estimates of Haitian orphans, the global numbers most frequently mentioned—ranging from 132 million to 210 million—paint an inaccurate picture, willfully misconstruing UNICEF tallies of developing nations’ vulnerable children, a category that includes children who have lost only one parent or who live with extended family.
Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s chief of child protection, says no good estimate exists of the number of orphans worldwide, but a 2004 UNICEF report calculated that there were at least 16 million children worldwide who had lost both parents.
“There are not 145 million kids out there waiting for someone in America to adopt them,” says Paul Myhill, president of the evangelical orphan ministry World Orphans, which he calls a “black sheep” in his field for its prioritization of in-country orphan care over adoption. “It’s unfair to bat these statistics around without using all the qualifiers.”
But those numbers have their effect. In July, Bethany Christian Services announced that “three of the largest Christian-based adoption agencies,” including itself, were “seeing record numbers of adoptions.” Bethany attributes the increase to the evangelical adoption movement as well as the crisis in Haiti, which inspired nearly 20,000 inquiries from across the United States, even though Haiti, post-quake, was quickly closed for new adoptions. Agencies like Bethany explained that they easily redirected this outpouring of enthusiasm to more open markets, like Ethiopia.
The problem is that Ethiopia, which last year was poised to become the world’s top “sending country,” is beset by numerous ethical scandals. In 2009 and 2010, investigations by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and CBS News found evidence that Christian World Adoption—a US agency whose slogan is “God is in control of our agency and your adoption”—had recruited and allegedly even bought children from intact families, some of whom didn’t understand the permanency of adoption. (CWA claimed that these cases were misunderstandings and charged that it was being persecuted for its Christian beliefs.) In January the State Department hosted a conference call to discuss ethical difficulties surrounding Ethiopia’s adoption program. Just weeks later came the announcement that the license for Minnesota-based Christian agency Better Future Adoption Services had been revoked by the Ethiopian government over accusations of child trafficking. And in March, Ethiopia’s government announced it was cutting the rate of new adoptions by 90 percent.
Just after the Haiti earthquake, the Christian Alliance for Orphans advertised that its sixth-annual summit would produce a “long-term response” for Haiti’s orphans. By late April 2010, when nearly 1,200 Christians gathered for the summit at a megachurch outside Minneapolis, organizers had to contend with the shadow Silsby had cast. Even Moore worried that the scandal would “give a black eye to the orphan-care movement.”
“We’re killing ourselves with these ethical lapses,” says Chuck Johnson, president of the secular adoption lobby group the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). “I think Christians are the worst at this sometimes, about the ends justifying the means. ‘I will do anything to save this one child’s life’; ‘I will falsify a visa application if I have to.’”
In early 2010, Johnson told me, NCFA held an online ethics seminar that drew roughly twenty-five representatives from religious and secular adoption agencies. As part of the webinar, NCFA took a blind poll of participants’ responses to various ethical situations. Either through ignorance or a willingness to bend the rules, 20–30 percent of agency representatives gave answers that were tantamount to committing visa fraud or other serious violations. “You’ll hear people saying, I’m following God’s law, not man’s laws,” Johnson says.
Brian Luwis, founder of the evangelical agency America World Adoption and a Christian Alliance board member, says ardent adoptive parents can wreak havoc for those coming after them. “I call them ‘adoption crazies,’” he says. “They’re such strong advocates, they’ll do things in desperation to have a child they think is theirs. Some are really unlawful, falsifying an adoption or something like that. Many won’t get caught, but once you get caught, what have you done to the system?” It’s not hard to imagine how movement rhetoric that casts international adoption as emergency rescue and spiritual battle could inspire a willingness to use any means necessary.
There are indications that such rule-bending occurs at the top levels of government. Blogging about the 2010 Adoption Policy Conference in New York for The Huffington Post, sociologist Philip Cohen reported a troubling statement made by Whitney Reitz, an official at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—the Homeland Security agency that oversees the entry of international adoptees. Reitz, who is credited with crafting last year’s “humanitarian parole” program for Haitian children, told the crowd, “The idea was to help the kids. And if we overlooked Hague, I don’t think I’m going to apologize.”
Chris Rhatigan, a USCIS spokesman, explains that the comment was made during a closed-door session not meant to be open to the media and in the context of a devastating natural disaster, “where very extraordinary measures were taken.” “Our main goal at the time was to save those children,” says Rhatigan. “I think they did everything they possibly could.”
* * *
Despite the Silsby affair, the Haiti earthquake helped accelerate the rise of the evangelical adoption movement, and increased its influence. At the Christian Alliance summit, JCICS’s DiFilipo implored the audience to advocate for less restrictive adoption policies, pointing to the drop in international adoptions from nearly 23,000 in 2004 to a projected 7,000 by 2012.
These numbers underlie a feeling among adoption advocates that even though demand is increasing, international adoption is under siege. “The days of a large sending country are over,” Johnson has said.
The decrease is often attributed to the closure of Guatemala and the slowdown in China. DiFilipo says the threat is far broader, with eight or nine countries “functionally suspending” intercountry adoption within the past three years—something he attributes to “institutional bias” against international adoption rather than documented ethical lapses.
As the numbers have dropped, the adoption industry has constricted, with the closure or merger of 25 percent of US agencies since 2000. The shuttering of Guatemala in 2008—what Luwis called “the gravy train” for many agencies—was a major factor. JCICS felt the squeeze too. In an internal 2009 document, the organization described financial shortages that forced it to halve expenses and staff in recent years.
“In the last few years, a bunch of top placing agencies in the US met together kind of clandestinely,” recalls Luwis. “To me it was a ‘saving our rear’ meeting. I take no salary. But for some of the others, this is their livelihood. They place thousands of kids; this is the way they’ve done it, they’re not going to change.”
Even as adoption numbers decrease, advocates maintain substantial bipartisan support. A key ally is Senator Landrieu, a founding member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and sponsor of numerous pieces of pro-adoption legislation—many in collaboration with hard-right senators.
Landrieu was scheduled to address the Christian Alliance summit but was waylaid by the BP oil spill. In her place spoke fellow Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another advocate who has made common cause with right-wing senators like Sam Brownback and James Inhofe. Klobuchar told me how, as part of the first senatorial delegation to Haiti, she urged President René Préval to revise the country’s adoption and parental rights policies. In a September letter to the State Department, she interceded for US families whose pending adoptions from Nepal were halted after indications that the country’s newly reopened program was again processing trafficked children.
It’s an illustration of how temporary were the lessons from Haiti, and how common the underlying problems its scandals exposed. “Congress’s slant is that international adoption is good, so let’s get those kids out,” says Moline of Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform. “They don’t understand what the business aspect of it really means, and they must answer to their constituents’ demands.”
One of the most significant recent initiatives on Capitol Hill is the Families for Orphans Act, drafted by the Families for Orphans Coalition, whose executive committee includes DiFilipo, Luwis and Johnson. The bill, which Landrieu’s office will reintroduce this year, would create a special State Department office to oversee adoptions and offer—critics say condition—developmental aid to countries that help obtain permanent parental care for orphans, including through international adoption. In an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner in March 2010, co-sponsors Landrieu and Inhofe dangled the promise that the office could facilitate the placement of tens of thousands more Haitian children with US families.
Juntunen of Both Ends Burning believes the chokepoint created as newly mobilized evangelicals enter the tightening adoption market will spark outrage that will transform the system—cutting red tape, and possibly needed safeguards, along the way. “We’ve created this culture of adoption, and now more and more people want to participate and are left frustrated because they’re denied the opportunity to pursue what they want to pursue,” Juntunen told me. “Well, that’s where social movements happen. I think that this culture of adoption will be the force, the catalyst, for change.”
And the pressure won’t be coming just from evangelicals. In June, Together for Adoption and other evangelical leaders will meet with Juntunen and his network of secular adoption advocates to discuss ways to reverse the international adoption freefall.
After a year of headlines concerning improperly adopted children, from Haiti to Nepal to Ethiopia, evangelical advocates admit that the system is troubled, but they insist that expanding international adoption is necessary and, if done right, beautiful. “There’s always going to need to be tremendous vigilance that compassionate intentions lead to compassionate outcomes,” says the Christian Alliance’s Medefind. “But if you’re not willing to deal with complexity, it would be wise to stay away from efforts to address the world’s needs.”
Despite the altruistic motives of many evangelical adopters, the size and wealth of their movement is likely to tip the balance of a system that already responds too blithely to the moral and humanitarian concerns raised by poor countries and all too readily to Western demand.
First published in The Nation
Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
In late March Craig Juntunen told a group of Christian adoption advocates assembled at a Chandler, Arizona, home about his plans to increase international adoptions fivefold. Just over a year before, the world had been riveted by the saga of Laura Silsby, the American missionary arrested while trying to transport Haitian children across the Dominican border. But the lessons of that scandal seemed far from Juntunen’s mind as he described his “crusade to create a culture of adoption” by simplifying adoption’s labyrinthine ethical complexities to their emotional core. Juntunen, a former pro football quarterback and the adoptive father of three Haitian children, has emerged as a somewhat rogue figure in the adoption world since he recently founded an unorthodox nonprofit, Both Ends Burning. He has commissioned a documentary about desperate orphans in teeming institutions, Wrongfully Detained, and proposed a “clearinghouse model” that will raise the number of children adopted into US families to more than 50,000 per year.
Juntunen acknowledges that many adoption experts find his proposals naïve, particularly in a year that witnessed scandals in Haiti, Nepal and most recently Ethiopia, where widespread irregularities and trafficking allegations may slow the once-booming program to a crawl. He met a chilly reception recently at the Adoption Policy Conference at New York Law School when he spoke alongside State Department officials. But Juntunen insists that his ideas for increasing adoption constitute a social movement, akin to the civil rights movement, and that the force of a growing “adoption culture” will help them prevail.
In this expectation, he may be right. In Arizona, Juntunen was speaking with Dan Cruver, head of Together for Adoption, a key coalition in a growing evangelical adoption movement. The event was the first of the organization’s new “house conferences”: small-scale meet-ups bolstering an active national movement that promotes Christians’ adopting as a way to address a worldwide “orphan crisis” they say encompasses hundreds of millions of children. It’s a message Cruver also emphasizes in his book Reclaiming Adoption—one in a growing list of titles about “orphan theology,” which teaches that adoption mirrors Christian salvation, plays an essential role in antiabortion politics and is a means of fulfilling the Great Commission, the biblical mandate that Christians spread the gospel.
Yet while Cruver and his colleagues have inspired thousands of Christians to enter the arduous and expensive process of international adoption, the adoption industry is on a steep decline after years of ethical problems and tightening regulations around the world. Since the mid-’90s, eighty-three countries have ratified the Hague convention regulating international adoption. By 2010 there were 12,000 such adoptions in the United States (including 1,100 exceptional “humanitarian parole” cases from post-earthquake Haiti)—almost half those at the peak in 2004. If evangelicals heed Cruver’s call en masse, it could mean not just a radical change in who raises the world’s children but a powerful clash between rapidly falling supply and sharply inflating demand.
* * *
Adoption has long been the province of religious and secular agencies, but in the past two years evangelical advocacy has skyrocketed. In 2009 Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life, shepherded through a Southern Baptist Church (SBC) resolution calling on all 16 million members of the denomination to become involved in adoption or “orphan care.” Last year at least five evangelical adoption conferences were held, and between 1,000 and 2,000 churches participated in an “Orphan Sunday” event in November. And in February, the mammoth evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services announced that its adoption placements had increased 13 percent since 2009, in large part because of the mobilization of churches.
“We expect adoptions will continue to rise as new movements within the Christian community raise awareness and aid for the global orphan crisis,” Bethany CEO Bill Blacquiere said.
One result has been the creation of “rainbow congregations” across the country, like the congregation Moore helps pastor in Louisville, Highview Baptist. An active adoption ministry has brought 140 adopted children into the congregation in the past five years. These children don’t recognize the flags of their home countries, Moore proudly noted at a 2010 conference, but they can all sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
* * *
After the Haiti earthquake, the evangelical adoption movement sprang into action. Next to longstanding religious relief orphanages, upstart evangelical missions appeared. Some flung themselves into adversarial activism, decrying international aid organizations like UNICEF for obstructing the speedy adoption of Haitian children.
In the United States, evangelicals and sympathetic politicians led the charge for expanded, expedited international adoption for what they had claimed before the earthquake was the country’s 400,000 or more orphans—a figure repeated widely, despite a UNICEF clarification that likely only 50,000 children had lost both parents. (Identifying which children fit this description is a matter of painstaking investigation.)
Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat and staunch adoption advocate, argued ferociously to expand a “humanitarian parole” program that expedites adoptions in progress: “Either UNICEF is going to change or have a very difficult time getting support from the US Congress,” she told the Associated Press.
Others used the emotional language of rescue; a Mormon mission president said he had “negotiated the release” of sixty-six children bound for Salt Lake City homes.
But what most people will remember about adoption in Haiti is the saga of Laura Silsby and nine other Southern Baptists who were jailed after trying to transport thirty-three “orphans”—most solicited from living families—to an unbuilt orphanage in the Dominican Republic, to await prospective evangelical adopters. Throughout the scandal the group members maintained they were simply “ten Christians who obeyed God’s calling.”
* * *
Silsby’s claims to divine guidance attracted scorn from the media—one outlet accused her of “baby-snatching for Jesus”—but her language resonates with now-commonplace Christian adoption rhetoric.
The movement cuts across evangelical distinctions, with the Southern Baptists taking a doctrinal lead; charismatic prayer warrior Lou Engle, co-founder of TheCall, praying for “the most outrageous adoption movement to be released through the church”; and Rick Warren declaring that members of his Saddleback Church will adopt 500 children in three years.
Individual ministries abound, like Orphan’s Ransom, which helps evangelicals pay international adoption fees that can range from $20,000 to $63,000. Churches report a “contagious” “adoption culture” in which even small congregations have adopted dozens of children in just a few years. Movement leaders say this viral effect is key to building the movement. “Get as many people in the church to adopt, and adopt as many kids as you can,” said one speaker at the 2010 Adopting for Life Conference, noting the particular power of a pastor’s example. Following that advice, in June the SBC joined with Bethany Christian Services to begin subsidizing Southern Baptist pastors’ adoption costs.
Observers from adoption lobby groups mention two watershed moments for the movement: Warren’s entrance into the orphan care field in 2005 and President Bush’s decision in 2008 to name Jedd Medefind, a former Republican staffer in the California legislature, as head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Medefind is now the affable president of Christian Alliance for Orphans, a coalition of eighty Christian groups, and Warren’s church is helping to set up an adoption program in Rwanda.
“It was kind of a perfect storm,” reflects Tom DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS), an influential secular adoption advocacy group that has sought to partner with the evangelical movement. “We hit that moment when a movement really starts to ramp up and get the attention of the public.”
The movement’s influence was on display in September in a closed-door meeting with UNICEF—frequently cast as “anti-adoption” for raising ethical concerns about adopting from disaster- or poverty-stricken nations—leveraged by six key evangelical adoption groups in an effort to find common ground.
As a way for conservative evangelicals to reclaim the social gospel message from liberal churches, adoption is a perfect storm, too, seemingly defining antiabortion activism as more truly “prolife”—or “whole life,” as one Bethany staffer coined it—while providing a new opportunity, as recent orphan theology texts explain, to spread the gospel. In Reclaiming Adoption, Cruver bluntly declares, “The ultimate purpose of human adoption by Christians, therefore, is not to give orphans parents, as important as that is. It is to place them in a Christian home that they might be positioned to receive the gospel.”
In person, Russell Moore denies that invoking the Great Commission means adoption is a vehicle for evangelism. But in Adopting for Life, he calls adoption “evangelistic to the core,” since Christian adoptive parents are “committing to years of gospel proclamation.” Likewise, although Medefind dismisses the idea of proselytizing through adoption, the Alliance membership agreement envisions “every orphan experiencing God’s unfailing love and knowing Jesus as Savior.”
Followers appear to have taken the message at face value. Last winter, in the wake of the earthquake, the Rev. Tom Benz announced his plan to “airlift 50 to 150 [Haitian] orphans” to a place called BridgeStone, a 140-acre retreat center owned by his Alabama church. Benz, a jolly pastor who runs an evangelical summer program for Ukrainian orphans next to the Black Sea, explained that the Haiti program would host children for ninety days, during which volunteers would teach them English, “immerse them in the gospel” and “incubate adoptions” with local church families.
Benz originally planned the program for Ukrainian orphans, but once he announced his Haiti plans, he says, he was overwhelmed by volunteer support and donations. Miles of new plumbing and electrical wire were laid for the center’s twenty-two cabins, and construction began on three permanent staff “lodges” (one for Benz’s family), almost all with donated materials and labor. Benz was optimistic that he could wrangle the system, with the help of a friend with State Department connections, by representing his plan as a foreign studies program.
“It’s not like we’re taking the kids permanently,” he said. “We’re taking them for ninety days, and then they’re going back.” Reminded of the adoption mission, Benz chuckled. “Well, that’s absolutely part of our agenda, but you know, that’s not the thing we’re going to emphasize to the Haitian government!”
Over the spring and summer of 2010, months wore on and passports for the Haitian children were not forthcoming. The only progress made was on the BridgeStone estate. After months of delays, a September fundraising missive asked donors for continued patience as Benz sought to “bring children out of darkness and suffering into faith and life in Jesus Christ.” Shortly thereafter, Benz’s Haiti blog came down, and he sent an announcement of the retreat center’s pending open house for the launch of its adoption program for Ukrainian children. By March it had resulted in eight adoptions that, Benz promised, would help the children “grow into mighty men and women of faith.”
* * *
For many adoption reformers, the Silsby affair changed the script for how adoption is discussed. Karen Moline, a board member of the watchdog group Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform, says Silsby “put a face to the worst part of what international adoption can be, which is entitlement,” meaning American parents’ sense of entitlement to developing nations’ children.
Susie Krabacher, an American and devout Christian, is director of Mercy and Sharing, a Haitian orphanage founded in 1994 to care for severely disabled, abandoned children, which does not perform adoptions. She says there is enormous economic pressure on Haitian parents to relinquish children. Many orphanages in Haiti provide for children whose parents can’t afford to feed them but who remain involved and visit often. But Haiti also has a history of unethical adoption programs. Post-earthquake, Krabacher says, they have become “the biggest money-making operation in Haiti.” Indeed, many orphanages, mindful of high international adoption fees, tell struggling parents that they should give up one of their children. The financial desperation in Haiti is so intense and the coercion so pervasive, Krabacher says, that the vast majority of Mercy and Sharing’s 181 employees “would have to look at the option of giving up a child if they didn’t have a job.”
This gets at the central problem in how most evangelical adoption ministries define the scope of the worldwide “orphan crisis.” As with the misleading estimates of Haitian orphans, the global numbers most frequently mentioned—ranging from 132 million to 210 million—paint an inaccurate picture, willfully misconstruing UNICEF tallies of developing nations’ vulnerable children, a category that includes children who have lost only one parent or who live with extended family.
Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s chief of child protection, says no good estimate exists of the number of orphans worldwide, but a 2004 UNICEF report calculated that there were at least 16 million children worldwide who had lost both parents.
“There are not 145 million kids out there waiting for someone in America to adopt them,” says Paul Myhill, president of the evangelical orphan ministry World Orphans, which he calls a “black sheep” in his field for its prioritization of in-country orphan care over adoption. “It’s unfair to bat these statistics around without using all the qualifiers.”
But those numbers have their effect. In July, Bethany Christian Services announced that “three of the largest Christian-based adoption agencies,” including itself, were “seeing record numbers of adoptions.” Bethany attributes the increase to the evangelical adoption movement as well as the crisis in Haiti, which inspired nearly 20,000 inquiries from across the United States, even though Haiti, post-quake, was quickly closed for new adoptions. Agencies like Bethany explained that they easily redirected this outpouring of enthusiasm to more open markets, like Ethiopia.
The problem is that Ethiopia, which last year was poised to become the world’s top “sending country,” is beset by numerous ethical scandals. In 2009 and 2010, investigations by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and CBS News found evidence that Christian World Adoption—a US agency whose slogan is “God is in control of our agency and your adoption”—had recruited and allegedly even bought children from intact families, some of whom didn’t understand the permanency of adoption. (CWA claimed that these cases were misunderstandings and charged that it was being persecuted for its Christian beliefs.) In January the State Department hosted a conference call to discuss ethical difficulties surrounding Ethiopia’s adoption program. Just weeks later came the announcement that the license for Minnesota-based Christian agency Better Future Adoption Services had been revoked by the Ethiopian government over accusations of child trafficking. And in March, Ethiopia’s government announced it was cutting the rate of new adoptions by 90 percent.
Just after the Haiti earthquake, the Christian Alliance for Orphans advertised that its sixth-annual summit would produce a “long-term response” for Haiti’s orphans. By late April 2010, when nearly 1,200 Christians gathered for the summit at a megachurch outside Minneapolis, organizers had to contend with the shadow Silsby had cast. Even Moore worried that the scandal would “give a black eye to the orphan-care movement.”
“We’re killing ourselves with these ethical lapses,” says Chuck Johnson, president of the secular adoption lobby group the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). “I think Christians are the worst at this sometimes, about the ends justifying the means. ‘I will do anything to save this one child’s life’; ‘I will falsify a visa application if I have to.’”
In early 2010, Johnson told me, NCFA held an online ethics seminar that drew roughly twenty-five representatives from religious and secular adoption agencies. As part of the webinar, NCFA took a blind poll of participants’ responses to various ethical situations. Either through ignorance or a willingness to bend the rules, 20–30 percent of agency representatives gave answers that were tantamount to committing visa fraud or other serious violations. “You’ll hear people saying, I’m following God’s law, not man’s laws,” Johnson says.
Brian Luwis, founder of the evangelical agency America World Adoption and a Christian Alliance board member, says ardent adoptive parents can wreak havoc for those coming after them. “I call them ‘adoption crazies,’” he says. “They’re such strong advocates, they’ll do things in desperation to have a child they think is theirs. Some are really unlawful, falsifying an adoption or something like that. Many won’t get caught, but once you get caught, what have you done to the system?” It’s not hard to imagine how movement rhetoric that casts international adoption as emergency rescue and spiritual battle could inspire a willingness to use any means necessary.
There are indications that such rule-bending occurs at the top levels of government. Blogging about the 2010 Adoption Policy Conference in New York for The Huffington Post, sociologist Philip Cohen reported a troubling statement made by Whitney Reitz, an official at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—the Homeland Security agency that oversees the entry of international adoptees. Reitz, who is credited with crafting last year’s “humanitarian parole” program for Haitian children, told the crowd, “The idea was to help the kids. And if we overlooked Hague, I don’t think I’m going to apologize.”
Chris Rhatigan, a USCIS spokesman, explains that the comment was made during a closed-door session not meant to be open to the media and in the context of a devastating natural disaster, “where very extraordinary measures were taken.” “Our main goal at the time was to save those children,” says Rhatigan. “I think they did everything they possibly could.”
* * *
Despite the Silsby affair, the Haiti earthquake helped accelerate the rise of the evangelical adoption movement, and increased its influence. At the Christian Alliance summit, JCICS’s DiFilipo implored the audience to advocate for less restrictive adoption policies, pointing to the drop in international adoptions from nearly 23,000 in 2004 to a projected 7,000 by 2012.
These numbers underlie a feeling among adoption advocates that even though demand is increasing, international adoption is under siege. “The days of a large sending country are over,” Johnson has said.
The decrease is often attributed to the closure of Guatemala and the slowdown in China. DiFilipo says the threat is far broader, with eight or nine countries “functionally suspending” intercountry adoption within the past three years—something he attributes to “institutional bias” against international adoption rather than documented ethical lapses.
As the numbers have dropped, the adoption industry has constricted, with the closure or merger of 25 percent of US agencies since 2000. The shuttering of Guatemala in 2008—what Luwis called “the gravy train” for many agencies—was a major factor. JCICS felt the squeeze too. In an internal 2009 document, the organization described financial shortages that forced it to halve expenses and staff in recent years.
“In the last few years, a bunch of top placing agencies in the US met together kind of clandestinely,” recalls Luwis. “To me it was a ‘saving our rear’ meeting. I take no salary. But for some of the others, this is their livelihood. They place thousands of kids; this is the way they’ve done it, they’re not going to change.”
Even as adoption numbers decrease, advocates maintain substantial bipartisan support. A key ally is Senator Landrieu, a founding member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and sponsor of numerous pieces of pro-adoption legislation—many in collaboration with hard-right senators.
Landrieu was scheduled to address the Christian Alliance summit but was waylaid by the BP oil spill. In her place spoke fellow Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another advocate who has made common cause with right-wing senators like Sam Brownback and James Inhofe. Klobuchar told me how, as part of the first senatorial delegation to Haiti, she urged President René Préval to revise the country’s adoption and parental rights policies. In a September letter to the State Department, she interceded for US families whose pending adoptions from Nepal were halted after indications that the country’s newly reopened program was again processing trafficked children.
It’s an illustration of how temporary were the lessons from Haiti, and how common the underlying problems its scandals exposed. “Congress’s slant is that international adoption is good, so let’s get those kids out,” says Moline of Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform. “They don’t understand what the business aspect of it really means, and they must answer to their constituents’ demands.”
One of the most significant recent initiatives on Capitol Hill is the Families for Orphans Act, drafted by the Families for Orphans Coalition, whose executive committee includes DiFilipo, Luwis and Johnson. The bill, which Landrieu’s office will reintroduce this year, would create a special State Department office to oversee adoptions and offer—critics say condition—developmental aid to countries that help obtain permanent parental care for orphans, including through international adoption. In an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner in March 2010, co-sponsors Landrieu and Inhofe dangled the promise that the office could facilitate the placement of tens of thousands more Haitian children with US families.
Juntunen of Both Ends Burning believes the chokepoint created as newly mobilized evangelicals enter the tightening adoption market will spark outrage that will transform the system—cutting red tape, and possibly needed safeguards, along the way. “We’ve created this culture of adoption, and now more and more people want to participate and are left frustrated because they’re denied the opportunity to pursue what they want to pursue,” Juntunen told me. “Well, that’s where social movements happen. I think that this culture of adoption will be the force, the catalyst, for change.”
And the pressure won’t be coming just from evangelicals. In June, Together for Adoption and other evangelical leaders will meet with Juntunen and his network of secular adoption advocates to discuss ways to reverse the international adoption freefall.
After a year of headlines concerning improperly adopted children, from Haiti to Nepal to Ethiopia, evangelical advocates admit that the system is troubled, but they insist that expanding international adoption is necessary and, if done right, beautiful. “There’s always going to need to be tremendous vigilance that compassionate intentions lead to compassionate outcomes,” says the Christian Alliance’s Medefind. “But if you’re not willing to deal with complexity, it would be wise to stay away from efforts to address the world’s needs.”
Despite the altruistic motives of many evangelical adopters, the size and wealth of their movement is likely to tip the balance of a system that already responds too blithely to the moral and humanitarian concerns raised by poor countries and all too readily to Western demand.
A link to "The Adoption Underworld" & "The Orphan Manufacturing Chain"
This is a great article that demonstrates how children are labeled "orphans" to be processed (unnecessarily) for intercountry adoption.
click here for the article
Korean-Australian woman finds she was falsely adopted
An Australian woman has found she was the subject of a falsified adoption in South Korea, where her biological mother was told her baby was stillborn.
As Australians find it harder to adopt babies from overseas, one woman has discovered she was falsely adopted from South Korea, where her biological mother was told her baby was stillborn.
Emily Will* was pronounced dead at birth. Born in a small maternity home in the South Korean countryside, the midwife allegedly told her biological parents the baby was “stillborn”.
“I don’t know how this could have happened to me,” she says. “Why would someone (the midwife) do that? Why would someone make a choice for someone else?”
“Her decision changed my life.”
For 23 years, Ms Will believed she was put up for adoption after her biological parents decided to part ways. Her adoption papers said her parents were in a de facto relationship, a status considered shameful in traditional Korean society, with two daughters.
It was not until she became a mother herself, Ms Will became curious about her biological roots.
“After my daughter was born, something changed. Something changed in me,” she says.
“I didn’t know my medical history. I didn’t know what I could have passed on to my kid. I didn’t know if there were any genetic heart diseases. Nothing.”
EMOTIONAL REUNION
After three years of searching and waiting, Ms Will thought she was prepared to meet her biological parents.
“It’s well known that you may possibly or most probably have a false story given to you so you brace yourself,” says Ms Will, 24, a mother of two in Sydney. “But when you finally get the real story, the story you thought you had prepared yourself for… it definitely throws you.”
“Adoption should not be treated as a retail industry. It’s not an exporting importing thing. We’re human beings. We’re not products. We’re not for sale. You can’t put a price on a human life,” Ms Will says.
* Names have been changed for privacy reasons
Source of article http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1693349/Korean-Australian-woman-finds-she-was-falsely-adop
As Australians find it harder to adopt babies from overseas, one woman has discovered she was falsely adopted from South Korea, where her biological mother was told her baby was stillborn.
Emily Will* was pronounced dead at birth. Born in a small maternity home in the South Korean countryside, the midwife allegedly told her biological parents the baby was “stillborn”.
“I don’t know how this could have happened to me,” she says. “Why would someone (the midwife) do that? Why would someone make a choice for someone else?”
“Her decision changed my life.”
For 23 years, Ms Will believed she was put up for adoption after her biological parents decided to part ways. Her adoption papers said her parents were in a de facto relationship, a status considered shameful in traditional Korean society, with two daughters.
It was not until she became a mother herself, Ms Will became curious about her biological roots.
“After my daughter was born, something changed. Something changed in me,” she says.
“I didn’t know my medical history. I didn’t know what I could have passed on to my kid. I didn’t know if there were any genetic heart diseases. Nothing.”
EMOTIONAL REUNION
After three years of searching and waiting, Ms Will thought she was prepared to meet her biological parents.
“It’s well known that you may possibly or most probably have a false story given to you so you brace yourself,” says Ms Will, 24, a mother of two in Sydney. “But when you finally get the real story, the story you thought you had prepared yourself for… it definitely throws you.”
“Adoption should not be treated as a retail industry. It’s not an exporting importing thing. We’re human beings. We’re not products. We’re not for sale. You can’t put a price on a human life,” Ms Will says.
* Names have been changed for privacy reasons
Source of article http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1693349/Korean-Australian-woman-finds-she-was-falsely-adop
Indian Adoption Scandal
This video demonstrates what goes on behind agency profiteering and trafficking for adoption not only in India but around the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym3HVJWyJ1s&fb_source=message
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym3HVJWyJ1s&fb_source=message
Adoption not an option
For weeks, government officials and adoption agencies have been quietly telling kind-hearted Americans the same thing: The thousands of children orphaned by the December tsunami are not available for adoption — and most never will be. The same is true of children in Africa, even though 80 percent of the world’s AIDS orphans live there, and war, poverty and famine have ravaged many of its 54 countries.
International or foreign adoption just isn’t done in many countries, adoption experts say. The main reasons are religious restrictions and cultural norms that don’t allow adoption by non-relatives, and a lack of government rules on foreign adoption.
Still, this doesn’t prevent Americans from calling U.S. adoption agencies when tragedy strikes in distant lands.
They want “to reach out and do something, and adoption is a tangible thing,” said Susan Soon-keum Cox, an official with Holt International Children’s Services in Eugene, Oregon, which assists with adoptions in a dozen countries, including Thailand and India. For a week after the tsunami, she said, her agency received “about 100 inquiries a day” about adopting the orphans.
Media reports, including ones in The Washington Times, quickly revealed that while Americans often adopt children from Thailand and India, it is almost unheard of in Sri Lanka or Indonesia.
Many countries in Africa also don’t allow foreign adoptions.
“I think families need to understand why,” said Cheryl Carter-Shotts, who runs Indianapolis-based Americans for African Adoption Inc., and has adopted two children from Africa. “People are just hearing ‘no.’ And they’re not hearing why not.”
The first hurdle is typically a legal one. “Many countries don’t have a process in place to allow for foreign adoptions,” said State Department spokesman Bill Strassberger, who lived in Africa for several years and specializes in adoption issues.
More than 20,000 foreign-born children are adopted each year by Americans, he said, adding that the State Department tracks the “top 20” countries for which it issues immigrant visas for orphans. But foreign adoption is rare if there isn’t a stable government with adoption laws and sufficient oversight to prevent baby-trafficking, he said.
Cultural and religious norms also play major roles in whether foreign adoption is allowed, adoption experts said.
Islam, for instance, does not allow non-Muslims to adopt Muslim children. This means that for Christians, “the chances of adopting a Muslim child is nil,” said Roni Anderson, a former Southern Baptist missionary who worked for 12 years in Iraq.
Instead, in many countries, family members and communities are expected to care for orphaned children. “Hillary Clinton borrowed the old phrase, but it’s really an African tradition — it takes a village to raise a child,” said Mr. Strassberger.
“It’s rare that you have a child that nobody wants or nobody is willing to take care of,” he said, recalling his days in Cameroon. When a baby lost its mother, he said, it would be cared for in a local orphanage. “Once the child reached one or two years of age, the family would take the child back,” Mr. Strassberger said, adding that there wasn’t even a word for cousin in the local dialect because all the children in a family were considered brothers and sisters.
There is an important caveat to this experience, said Mrs. Carter-Shotts, whose adoption agency has worked exclusively in Africa since 1986.
“Many of these children become servants” in the homes of their aunts, uncles and relatives, she said. For instance, she knows of one Muslim African country that routinely sends all its orphaned boys to orphanages in another Muslim country, where they grow up to do menial labor. The orphaned girls are taken into relatives’ homes as servants. “When the girls become teenagers, they are sold for dowries into marriage,” said Mrs. Carter-Shotts.
Read more: Adoption not an option - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/feb/1/20050201-113038-7019r/?page=1#ixzz28do13Gvo
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/feb/1/20050201-113038-7019r/?page=1
International or foreign adoption just isn’t done in many countries, adoption experts say. The main reasons are religious restrictions and cultural norms that don’t allow adoption by non-relatives, and a lack of government rules on foreign adoption.
Still, this doesn’t prevent Americans from calling U.S. adoption agencies when tragedy strikes in distant lands.
They want “to reach out and do something, and adoption is a tangible thing,” said Susan Soon-keum Cox, an official with Holt International Children’s Services in Eugene, Oregon, which assists with adoptions in a dozen countries, including Thailand and India. For a week after the tsunami, she said, her agency received “about 100 inquiries a day” about adopting the orphans.
Media reports, including ones in The Washington Times, quickly revealed that while Americans often adopt children from Thailand and India, it is almost unheard of in Sri Lanka or Indonesia.
Many countries in Africa also don’t allow foreign adoptions.
“I think families need to understand why,” said Cheryl Carter-Shotts, who runs Indianapolis-based Americans for African Adoption Inc., and has adopted two children from Africa. “People are just hearing ‘no.’ And they’re not hearing why not.”
The first hurdle is typically a legal one. “Many countries don’t have a process in place to allow for foreign adoptions,” said State Department spokesman Bill Strassberger, who lived in Africa for several years and specializes in adoption issues.
More than 20,000 foreign-born children are adopted each year by Americans, he said, adding that the State Department tracks the “top 20” countries for which it issues immigrant visas for orphans. But foreign adoption is rare if there isn’t a stable government with adoption laws and sufficient oversight to prevent baby-trafficking, he said.
Cultural and religious norms also play major roles in whether foreign adoption is allowed, adoption experts said.
Islam, for instance, does not allow non-Muslims to adopt Muslim children. This means that for Christians, “the chances of adopting a Muslim child is nil,” said Roni Anderson, a former Southern Baptist missionary who worked for 12 years in Iraq.
Instead, in many countries, family members and communities are expected to care for orphaned children. “Hillary Clinton borrowed the old phrase, but it’s really an African tradition — it takes a village to raise a child,” said Mr. Strassberger.
“It’s rare that you have a child that nobody wants or nobody is willing to take care of,” he said, recalling his days in Cameroon. When a baby lost its mother, he said, it would be cared for in a local orphanage. “Once the child reached one or two years of age, the family would take the child back,” Mr. Strassberger said, adding that there wasn’t even a word for cousin in the local dialect because all the children in a family were considered brothers and sisters.
There is an important caveat to this experience, said Mrs. Carter-Shotts, whose adoption agency has worked exclusively in Africa since 1986.
“Many of these children become servants” in the homes of their aunts, uncles and relatives, she said. For instance, she knows of one Muslim African country that routinely sends all its orphaned boys to orphanages in another Muslim country, where they grow up to do menial labor. The orphaned girls are taken into relatives’ homes as servants. “When the girls become teenagers, they are sold for dowries into marriage,” said Mrs. Carter-Shotts.
Read more: Adoption not an option - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/feb/1/20050201-113038-7019r/?page=1#ixzz28do13Gvo
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/feb/1/20050201-113038-7019r/?page=1
Texas AG sues local adoption agency
SAN ANTONIO - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is suing a San Antonio adoption agency. The state says the company took people's money, but never found those families a child.
After months of investigating the Texas Attorney General filed two lawsuits yesterday. One was against Adoption Services Associates, Inc. (ASA) and the other is against ASA's owners. Both suits claim the adoption agency and its owners engaged in "…false, deceptive and misleading acts". They also state ASA took thousands of dollars from families across the country even though they knew they were shutting their doors in April.
http://www.woai.com/content/news/newslinks/story/Texas-AG-sues-local-adoption-agency/Tck8eJmN00O8tNU2-7gfDw.cspx
After months of investigating the Texas Attorney General filed two lawsuits yesterday. One was against Adoption Services Associates, Inc. (ASA) and the other is against ASA's owners. Both suits claim the adoption agency and its owners engaged in "…false, deceptive and misleading acts". They also state ASA took thousands of dollars from families across the country even though they knew they were shutting their doors in April.
http://www.woai.com/content/news/newslinks/story/Texas-AG-sues-local-adoption-agency/Tck8eJmN00O8tNU2-7gfDw.cspx
Couples Outraged With Adoption Agency
Connecticut couples looking to adopt are out of thousands of dollars after the agency filed for bankruptcy.
A Farmington family is out more than $35,000 and, for now, lost hope for adopting a baby girl.
A Texas adoption agency closed its doors in early April, sending a ripple effect to families across the country and Europe in the midst of the adoption process. On April 24, Adoption Services Associates of San Antonio filed for bankruptcy, listing nearly 900 couples and individuals as potential creditors. Seventy one of them are from Connecticut.
Tom and Kerry Craft of Farmington are among the dozens of families wondering what to do next.
“It’s been a roller coaster,” said Tom Craft. “I can’t even say it’s been a roller coaster. It’s been a downhill spiral.”
The Crafts used an agency in Texas instead of Connecticut to take advantage of more favorable adoption laws for the adoptive parents. They were approved by the agency in July 2011, and by February 2012, they were matched up with a birth mother.
For remaining article:
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/LWRD-149948615.html#comments
His Past Life: An old molestation allegation is renewed again
David Cousineau was a prominent community leader and children's advocate for more than a decade. But the past and future of the ex-director of Seattle Children's Home are in question over an allegation that, while a priest in Southern California more than a decade ago, he repeatedly molested an altar boy at his Los Angeles church. Cousineau is named in a list of alleged pedophile priests released last month by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, to whom Cousineau once was a friend and confidant.
The church report names 211 priests accused of molesting 519 boys and 137 girls dating back to 1930. Despite those breathtaking numbers, critics say the list does not fully disclose the true extent of the pedophile history of the L.A. Archdiocese, America's largest.
The report was called a "media stunt" by Steven Sanchez, director of the Los Angeles chapter of Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, who urged Mahony to throw open the complete record to police agencies.
for remaining article:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2004-03-31/news/his-past-life/
The church report names 211 priests accused of molesting 519 boys and 137 girls dating back to 1930. Despite those breathtaking numbers, critics say the list does not fully disclose the true extent of the pedophile history of the L.A. Archdiocese, America's largest.
The report was called a "media stunt" by Steven Sanchez, director of the Los Angeles chapter of Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, who urged Mahony to throw open the complete record to police agencies.
for remaining article:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2004-03-31/news/his-past-life/
Former Holt CEO accused of sex abuse
Cousineau resigned from the Holt position in April, two months after the
adoption agency learned he had once been accused of molesting an 11-year-old boy
in California. An independent law firm hired by Holt couldn't substantiate those
allegations, but the agency decided the accusation had impaired Cousineau's
ability to manage Holt.
The plaintiff in the new suit said in a telephone interview that she decided to file after learning Cousineau worked in a job involving children.
"I heard he worked with orphans, and I just thought that was a scary situation," she said. "I felt I had to come forward and that something needed to be done."
Holt learned the woman was considering litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute.
When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. during its own review of Cousineau's past, said Kevin Sweeney Kevin Sweeney is a Piedmont, California, based business consultant, author, and former special assistant to US Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton administration. , the agency's interim director. He said he was unaware that a suit had been filed and couldn't comment without seeing it.
For remaining article:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Former+Holt+CEO+accused+of+sex+abuse.-a0118205751
The plaintiff in the new suit said in a telephone interview that she decided to file after learning Cousineau worked in a job involving children.
"I heard he worked with orphans, and I just thought that was a scary situation," she said. "I felt I had to come forward and that something needed to be done."
Holt learned the woman was considering litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute.
When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. during its own review of Cousineau's past, said Kevin Sweeney Kevin Sweeney is a Piedmont, California, based business consultant, author, and former special assistant to US Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton administration. , the agency's interim director. He said he was unaware that a suit had been filed and couldn't comment without seeing it.
For remaining article:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Former+Holt+CEO+accused+of+sex+abuse.-a0118205751
With families in limbo, adoption agency turns in its license
SAN ANTONIO --The small staff at Adoption Alliance of San Antonio has seen its “families waiting” file grow a little bigger this week, after the adoption agency started fielding phone calls from worried parents across the country.
Executive Director Justin Johnson said, “They were so shaken up, tearful, crying, you really couldn’t even understand what they were trying to explain to you.”
Johnson is talking about clients who felt abandoned, after another, unrelated agency, Adoption Services Associates, sent out a mass e-mail declaring it was out of money and out of business.
To read more:
http://www.kvue.com/news/state/146801555.html
Executive Director Justin Johnson said, “They were so shaken up, tearful, crying, you really couldn’t even understand what they were trying to explain to you.”
Johnson is talking about clients who felt abandoned, after another, unrelated agency, Adoption Services Associates, sent out a mass e-mail declaring it was out of money and out of business.
To read more:
http://www.kvue.com/news/state/146801555.html
Imagine Adoption case held off again
KITCHENER — The former couple at the helm of an international adoption agency which collapsed in 2009 appears prepared to deal with fraud charges.
Rick Hayhow, who was chief financial officer of the Cambridge-based agency, Imagine Adoption, may plead guilty to the charges, his lawyer said Monday outside Kitchener’s Ontario Court.
Susan Hayhow, the agency’s former executive director, wants a preliminary hearing on her charges. Such a hearing is held to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial.
The Hayhows were jointly charged with breach of trust, six counts of fraud over $5,000 and three counts of fraud under $5,000. Each also faces an individual charge of fraud under $5,000.
More than 400 clients hoping to adopt children from a variety of countries, mostly Ethiopia, were left in limbo after their adoption agency went bankrupt in July 2009.
Waterloo Regional Police began investigating allegations that more than $300,000 was charged to agency credit cards for personal purchases, including trips to Disney World, New York City and the Deerhurst Resort in Muskoka, spa visits, home renovations and a horse and saddle.
The couple drove leased luxury vehicles and paid themselves a combined income of $320,000 a year.
For remaining article:
http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/698128--imagine-adoption-case-held-off-again
Rick Hayhow, who was chief financial officer of the Cambridge-based agency, Imagine Adoption, may plead guilty to the charges, his lawyer said Monday outside Kitchener’s Ontario Court.
Susan Hayhow, the agency’s former executive director, wants a preliminary hearing on her charges. Such a hearing is held to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial.
The Hayhows were jointly charged with breach of trust, six counts of fraud over $5,000 and three counts of fraud under $5,000. Each also faces an individual charge of fraud under $5,000.
More than 400 clients hoping to adopt children from a variety of countries, mostly Ethiopia, were left in limbo after their adoption agency went bankrupt in July 2009.
Waterloo Regional Police began investigating allegations that more than $300,000 was charged to agency credit cards for personal purchases, including trips to Disney World, New York City and the Deerhurst Resort in Muskoka, spa visits, home renovations and a horse and saddle.
The couple drove leased luxury vehicles and paid themselves a combined income of $320,000 a year.
For remaining article:
http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/698128--imagine-adoption-case-held-off-again
Holt International Makes Millions from Selling Children
As you can see from their report, they have millions in assets and they bring in millions in revenues and they also spend more than they bring in for administration and employees.
They also spend millions on creating beautiful marketing materials of children with their "new" and "improved" families and at the same time totally neglect the poor and vulnerable parents who are now without their children. Many wonder why not offer resources to the struggling family? The answer is 'it does not pay':
click here for annual report
They also spend millions on creating beautiful marketing materials of children with their "new" and "improved" families and at the same time totally neglect the poor and vulnerable parents who are now without their children. Many wonder why not offer resources to the struggling family? The answer is 'it does not pay':
click here for annual report
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