{"id":6560,"date":"2018-03-15T13:22:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T13:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.againstchildtrafficking.org\/?p=6560"},"modified":"2018-03-31T13:23:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T13:23:37","slug":"child-trafficking-through-international-adoption-continues-despite-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/child-trafficking-through-international-adoption-continues-despite-regulations\/","title":{"rendered":"Child Trafficking Through International Adoption Continues Despite Regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

By Joshua Philipp, The Epoch Times
\nMarch 15, 2018 10:09 am Last Updated: March 28, 2018 3:20 pm<\/p>\n

Two displaced Iraqi sisters from Mosul, play at an orphanage in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, on April 30, 2017. (SAFIN HAMED\/AFP\/Getty Images)
\nShareTweetShareEmail
\nGlobal adoption is a big business, fraught with loose regulations and profit incentives that have made it a target for kidnappers, human traffickers, and pedophiles.<\/p>\n

Despite regulations on international adoptions, and with some countries even banning all foreign adoptions, the problem has continued. Kidnappers continue to fuel the trade, and adoption agencies continue to skirt the laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I stumbled on was horrific,\u201d said Ed Opperman, a private investigator and host of \u201cThe Opperman Report\u201d radio show.<\/p>\n

Opperman began investigating cases of parents trying to locate their real children and of kids looking for their real parents. In some countries, \u201cthere\u2019s no vetting whatsoever,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is money to be made in this adoption business.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s out there. They\u2019re exploited for child labor, for sex, you name it.
\n\u2014 Peter Gleason, lawyer and former NYPD police officer
\n\u201cYou can go to Thailand and countries in Africa and just pick up a kid, and come back to America with no paperwork,\u201d he said. Even Russia, which has acted to crack down on international adoptions, has only minimal red tape that includes a test, a background check, and a waiting period.<\/p>\n

In July 2014, a new U.S. law went into effect that required federal review and accreditation of all U.S. adoption agencies. The Intercountry Adoption Universal Accreditation Act of 2012 was passed amid widespread reports that kidnappers were selling children to foreign orphanages, sometimes with the cooperation of what appeared to be legitimate humanitarian groups.<\/p>\n

Guatemala banned international adoptions in 2007, at a time when close to 1 out of every 100 children born in the country were being adopted by foreign parents. In 2011, investigative journalist and author Erin Siegal McIntrye obtained memos from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala that showed children were being kidnapped for the industry, and that mothers were being threatened with death for attempting to locate their children.<\/p>\n

After the foreign adoption industry in Guatemala was shut down, and after Guatemala adopted international standards on foreign adoptions under the Hague Abduction Convention, the international adoption market went elsewhere and the local criminals looked for new streams of revenue. However, the abuse of adoptions didn\u2019t end. InSight Crime reported in 2013 that in Guatemala, \u201cillegal adoptions continue to flourish despite regulations,\u201d and that \u201cthe majority of stolen babies are sold for irregular adoptions or for their organs.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 15-year-old displaced Iraqi girl from Mosul speaks to an employee of her orphanage in northern Iraq on April 30, 2017. (SAFIN HAMED\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES)<\/p>\n

Ongoing Abuse
\nWhile the 2014 U.S. law ended the \u201cwild west\u201d state of the international adoption business in the United States, which had been mostly untouched by federal regulation and oversight, the law did little to solve the problem.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Uganda tightened its foreign adoption laws, according to Reuters, to restrict \u201cfast-track foreign adoptions\u201d in which children with living parents could be kidnapped under the guise of adoption in just days. Reuters stated that hundreds of children were taken from Uganda, mainly to the United States.<\/p>\n

In India, children up for adoption have been referred to as \u201cmanufactured orphans.\u201d India\u2019s Firstpost news outlet reported that in 2016, a \u201ckidnap-for-adoption\u201d racket was uncovered in Kolkata, where an adoption agency was found guilty of stealing infants from \u201cimpoverished unwed mothers, rape survivors, and marginalized families.\u201d<\/p>\n

It stated, \u201cIn many cases, healthy babies were substituted with stillborns and the mothers were told their babies had died. Sometimes, poor parents were made to sign documents which they did not comprehend. They thought they were admitting their children to a free residential school but actually ended up giving up all rights over them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, police in India arrested the heads of an adoption center that was selling children to foreign couples for between $12,000 and $23,000 per child.<\/p>\n

The problem has continued even in the United States. In 2017, the FBI raided the agency European Adoption Consultants in Ohio, where news outlet WKYC reported allegations that the enterprise failed to adequately supervise adoptions for \u201cpreventing the sale, abduction, exploitation, or trafficking of children.\u201d European Adoption Consultants was also reported to have failed to prevent the \u201csolicitation of bribes\u201d and to have fraudulently obtained birth parent consent.<\/p>\n

The company operated in Bulgaria, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, India, Poland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

According to Peter Gleason, a lawyer and former police officer in the New York Police Department, the problem of child trafficking through adoption agencies is well-known. \u201cIt\u2019s out there,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re exploited for child labor, for sex, you name it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exploiting Disaster
\nHuman traffickers also take advantage of natural disasters. Australia\u2019s ABC News reported that in the wake of Haiti\u2019s 2010 earthquake, \u201ctrafficking networks were springing into action immediately after the disaster and taking advantage of the weakness of local authorities and relief coordination\u201d to kidnap children.<\/p>\n

This issue hit the headlines when Laura Silsby, the former director of The New Life Children\u2019s Refuge, was arrested with nine other American nationals for trying to bring 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic without documentation.<\/p>\n

There is money to be made in this adoption business.
\n\u2014 Ed Opperman, private investigator and radio show host
\nSilsby initially claimed the children were orphaned or abandoned, but the Haitian government and the charity SOS Children\u2019s Villages found this wasn\u2019t true; none of the children were orphans, as all had at least one living parent. Silsby\u2019s legal adviser, Jorge Puello, was also detained in an alleged human trafficking ring accused of bringing women and children from Central America and Haiti.<\/p>\n

Former President Bill Clinton, who was then coordinating relief efforts in Haiti, intervened to have all co-conspirators in the case released, except Silby. Yet prosecutors reduced her charges from conspiracy and child abduction to \u201carranging irregular travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Re-homing\u2019 of Children
\nAmong the other ongoing issues, according to Opperman, is that of \u201cre-homing,\u201d in which people can adopt children, then pass the children to new parents with almost no regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole network, there are message boards, there are Yahoo groups of all these people who\u2019ve got these kids. They don\u2019t want them anymore, and they re-home them,\u201d Opperman said.<\/p>\n

He said child advertisements can include statements of pre-teen children being \u201csexually aggressive,\u201d having problems with substance abuse, or being \u201cvery eager to please.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no paperwork. What they do is they give you a power of attorney, that \u2018here, you can enroll my kid in school, you can take him to the doctor,\u2019 and that\u2019s it. The kid\u2019s gone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there are documented cases where these kids, they wound up with pedophiles.\u201d<\/p>\n

After they\u2019re in the United States and handed off to less regulated forms of adoption, the children are more likely to face abuse.<\/p>\n

Geoffrey Rogers, CEO of the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, said that \u201capproximately 60 to 70 percent of kids that are trafficked in the United States come out of the foster care system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approximately 60 to 70 percent of kids that are trafficked in the United States come out of the foster care system.
\n\u2014 Geoffrey Rogers, CEO, U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking
\nAccording to a 2015 report from the Arkansas Journal of Social Change and Public Service, \u201cre-homing is not regulated; there\u2019s no legal framework to address it,\u201d and it\u2019s \u201cmostly an underground affair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report notes the majority of children who fall victim to re-homing are adopted from abroad. It says close to 73 percent are advertised as adopted from overseas, and only around 7 percent are advertised as not from overseas. Ten to 20 percent of adoptions fail.<\/p>\n

With domestic adoptions, there are processes and procedures for the rights of birth mothers, for future adoptive parents, and for the welfare of the children. The report states, \u201cThese safeguards are often absent when parents adopt children from overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is because children born in U.S. hospitals or to U.S. citizens benefit from reliable documentation that is often absent in international adoptions, which creates a greater risk of unethical conduct than in domestic adoptions,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n

Opperman noted that the situation for children adopted from overseas also differs heavily across states. Among the states with the weakest regulations, he said, is Utah, and he noted that some adoption agencies will choose to establish their office in the states with weak oversight. \u201cThere are a couple states where it\u2019s just a free for all\u2014you can do whatever you want. Even if the adoption goes through in Florida or New York, they\u2019ll do the paperwork out of Utah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opperman said, \u201cThere\u2019s really no vetting done with these private adoptions whatsoever. Once they take place, nobody knows where these kids went.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com By Joshua Philipp, The Epoch Times March 15, 2018 10:09 am Last Updated: March 28, 2018 3:20 pm Two displaced Iraqi sisters from Mosul, play at an orphanage in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, on April 30, 2017. (SAFIN HAMED\/AFP\/Getty Images) ShareTweetShareEmail Global adoption is a big business,… Weiter »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6561,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions\/6561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}