India: Baby Farming for Domestic Adoption Using Young Household Servants

An investigative team from CNN-IBN in Delhi, India has uncovered a trafficking scheme in which impoverished rural village girls, many of them tribals, are being recruited by employment agencies who ostensibly place them in larger cities as domestic servants. Subsequently cut-off from contact with their village families, the girls also fall victim to a much more sinister, profitable (for the agency) scheme.

According to allegations, the girls, while working for minimal or non-existent pay, also reportedly become unwilling baby-producers for the placement agency. Reportedly arranging to have the girls raped so that they become impregnated, the agency supposedly continues to monitor the girls (who continue working as domestic servants) as the babies are gestated. When the girls give birth, the newborns are, according to news reports, taken by the placement agency and sold on India's thriving domestic adoption black market.

The racket was busted when, after receiving a "tip-off," two members of CNN-IBN's Special Investigation team posing as an adoptive couple wanting a baby for domestic adoption, visited a particular Delhi placement agency with a hidden camera.

While negotiating a price for a baby, the investigative couple met both the mother of a child who had previously been adopted out and also the midwife who had delivered her baby 20 days earlier. During the meeting, the midwife and the agency representative, with the mother in question looking on, had a disagreement about the mother's age--was she or was she not an minor?

Apparently the CNN-IBN investigative team later followed up with the midwife who told them not only that the mother was a minor but also that:

"They [the placement agency] have been involved in getting young girls pregnant, making them give birth to children. Whoever they give the baby to, they take a lot of money from them."

The midwife insisted that she had been "smelling a rat for some time."

The investigative team called the local police who proceeded to conduct a raid. With information from the midwife, the police and the investigative team were able to locate the family who had bought the young mother's baby.

"The family [who had adopted the baby] claimed that they had no clue as to where the baby had come from. According to them, they collected the baby from the chamber of a lawyer..."

The infant was taken into protective custody.

Police subsequently returned to the placement agency. By day's end, they had arrested and/or taken in for questioning, the placement agency director and some agency personnel, the young mother, and the adoptive family. The lawyer who supposedly effected the transfer of the infant from agency to adoptive family was also located, but denied all knowledge of the situation.

The racket and similar ones involving other placement agencies, are being investigated by Delhi police. According to press reports, since the original arrest, several other young women who were being similarly exploited as baby producers have been taken into protective custody.

At last press report, according to North-West Delhi DCP (Deputy Commissioner of Police--the ranking police chief of the area), the crimes that were to be booked in the case included kidnapping, rape, confinement, abduction (of the baby), intimidation, and the intention to commit all the above crimes.

The discovery of this racket has created special concern among those on the Delhi Child Welfare Committee. They have "asked for strong action against the culprits."

The racket has also created serious public concern in India, bringing into sharp public focus at least three related areas of concern--areas of concern that have helped make possible the exploitation of these minors as baby-producers for the adoption market:

• the activities of placement agencies who routinely comb villages to recruit older children


• the plight of domestic servants within India


• the adoption climate--the market for and supply of adoptable children within India


• and finally, the state of Indian laws that govern these activities

This blog post will look quickly at each of these concerns so as to better understand the news story.

According to news reports, an abundant number of placement agencies recruit children, mostly from rural areas, to work in larger nearby cities, most often as domestic help. Many of these placement agencies are not registered businesses, but rather transient entrepreneurial "mom and pop" operations run by a husband and wife team. Most placement agencies are not registered businesses; most do not keep records of their own activities. Many hire young tribals as agents to go from village to village to find the child workers and are paid according to the numbers of children they find.

"Supplying child laborers as domestic workers is big business for agencies in Delhi.

Once taken from their villages, the working children and their families are frequently, purposefully cut-off from communication with each other. A placement agency calling care is the only way parents have to trace their child and check on his or her whereabouts and safety. However, when an anxious parent concerned by the lack of subsequent to work placement communication from his or her child calls to check on the child, the parent is shocked to discover that either the calling cared phone numbers do not work at all or else the person on the other end of the line has no information on the child--in fact, he/she has never heard of the child. Concerned parents who continue to trouble agencies about missing children often meet not only with non-cooperation, but also threats.

One press report tells of a man named Ghusari who is missing both a son and a daughter:

The agent took my daughter later he threatened me that if I register a complaint with the police, I will not be able to see my daughter ever again.

In spite of nasty threats like these and a police force that is not always kindly nor responsive to the concerns of impoverished rural folk, rural parents DO file police reports asking for help in finding missing children taken by recruiters.

"The list [of missing children taken by recruiters] available with CNN-IBN shows that over 700 children are missing from Sarguja district in Chattisgarh. And this village, Cheerapara, is missing no less than 64 of its children....

What are the chances that these parents will see never see their children again? Father Theodore Lakda, director of an NGO which rescues children trafficked from Chattisgarh reports that 20-30 percent of the children taken by recruiters will never be seen again.

Some who manage to come home again, tell of long work hours, abuse, and all too often of failing to get paid for the work they have done. As for justice for these children and their families, it is rare.

In the last two years, reports of crimes committed against domestic help, many of them young people, have increased by forty percent, but during the same period, conviction rates for the same have stayed steady at ten percent of the total.

"Many activists feel believe that there's a predominant feeling within the civil society that because it's a domestic help--perceived to be a helpless creature--anyone can get away with anything. 'Yes, they sometimes feel that they are feeding and clothing a young person and there is no control or no standards imposed. They don't pay the salaries of these people; it's a total question of bonded labor.'

--Leila Baig of the domestic arm of CARA.

It is in this climate of exploitation, injustice, and disregard for basic human rights that the racket of exploiting young domestic servants to involuntarily produce adoptable babies for the black market takes place.

But what of the adoption climate in India?

According to Western popular knowledge and press reports, India is fairly overflowing with adoptable young infants--so many infants that Western adoption agencies beg for parents for these children. In such a climate, why would there be an adoption black market? Why, if there is an overabundance of adoptable infants, would anyone bother to gestate yet more adoptable babies and in a way that was clearly criminal--and so put themselves in danger of criminal prosecution?

With some thought we could imagine many possible answers to this question--perhaps Indians don't like the formal process for one reason or another, perhaps some people are shut-out of the process for one reason, perhaps the cost of a formal adoption is too high, or perhaps some people want to adopt in such a way that their adoption is secret or hidden, etc. etc. etc.

Rather than speculate as to the reasons why someone would go to the trouble of hatching such a scheme if the country were overflowing with adoptable babies, let's let an expert on Indian adoption--an official spokesperson of the Indian government's agency charged with overseeing and regulating the adoption of Indian children both domestically and abroad, answer the question herself.

Leila Baig, Secretary of CEVARA (the Central Voluntary Adoption and Resource Agency), a domestic arm of CARA (Central Adoption Resource Agency), was a guest on a segment of CNN-IBN's Sunday Special, an in-depth TV show that examines critical issues in India. The show's host posed this question:

'Just why do such cases [of exploiting minor domestic help to gestate babies for the adoption trade] happen? Are laws--or the lack of them--to blame? Is that the reason why trafficking of children is now becoming a part of adoption practice in the country [of India]?'

And Leila Baig of CARA answered thus:

"It's not entirely adoption laws which are at fault over here but there is a huge demand for children now. There aren't enough children coming into the regulated system."

A "huge demand for children now?"

"There aren't enough children..."??

Hmm....how interesting.

And it comes straight from the lips of a CARA official. You can watch the video yourself by clicking on one of the links below.

Demand for legally adoptable infants exceeds supply.

Something that we who have been watching the adoption climate in India--both domestic and international--have suspected for some time.

It could make sense of a good many things.

More on this later in another post.

Desiree

Initial Video Which Broke the Story:
Exposed! Delhi's Baby Sellers Exploit Minors, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Corresponding Text:
Exposed! Delhi's Baby Sellers Exploit Minors, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

A Series of Four Videos which comprise CNN-IBN's Sunday Special "Babies for Sale" (a longer investigative TV format looks at the issue in more depth and with expert guests):
Video Part I--Babies for Sale, CNN-IBN's TV show Sunday Special, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Video Part II--Babies for Sale, CNN-IBN's TV show Sunday Special, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Video Part III--Babies for Sale, CNN-IBN's TV show Sunday Special, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Video Part IV--Babies for Sale, CNN-IBN's TV show Sunday Special, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Corresponding texts for four part video report:
Text--Minor Mothers: Ill-Fated Girls Pawns for Sex-Racket, IBNLive.com, 3 Sept 2007

Domestic Help: How Trafficking Takes Place?">Domestic Help: How Trafficking Takes Place?, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Follow up report:Welfare Board Takes Abused Minors into Protection, IBNLive.com, 2 Sept 2007

Guatemala: Baby Farming

Martha lives in Guatemala.

She is a 14 year old unwed mother who lives in a house for unwed mothers.

Sometime in the last year, Martha gave up her baby up for adoption.

If you adopted a young infant from Guatemala in the last year and were told that your child was given up for adoption by an unmarried teen, Martha or one of her unwed housemates could possibly be the birthmother of your son or daughter.

If you think that you understand something of Martha's story based on the above description...think again. It is NOT what you think.

Martha's story is the not the archetypal story of a teenager who became pregnant by accident.

In fact, Martha doesn't even have a boyfriend.

And no, her pregancy can't be blamed on a failed teen marriage.

Nor was Martha pregnant by a violent act--not by rape or even incest.

Martha was, in fact, even at age 13, pregnant by design. And before she ever became pregnant, she understood that she would not keep her baby. Her firstborn son or daughter, would have to be surrendered for adoption.

Martha knew that once she had given birth, she would likely never see her child again.

Two years ago when she was 12, Martha's father was approached by a man who came to their slum in a car.

For what it's worth, you should know that Martha's father is a man who works very hard--back-breakingly hard--and long hours on a nearby coffee plantation in order to try to support his family. Unfortunately, however, Martha's father's hard work falls woefully short of supporting his family. This is because he earns very low wages--wages so low that they have his family living in a cardboard box, wages so low that he has watched six of Martha's eleven siblings die from starvation and the related ravages of severe and grinding poverty. Martha's family's poverty dogs them like a lion guarding its prey. It is always there, watching them, lying in wait until the right moment--and then one by one, it leaps forward and devours them.

Anyway, this man in a car offered to take Martha away to live with him and his wife in their little house. It wouldn't be just the three of them, but Martha and the man and his wife would be living with several other young teen-aged girls. Martha would be looked after and be well fed. In terms of manual labor, Martha's work load would be light--she would be given household tasks like caring for the couple's garden and doing their and the other girls' laundry. However, the financially valuable work that Martha would be doing--the work for which this man in the car was willing to pay Martha's father-- would be unseen, showing only over the months as her belly grew to bulging proportions.

And if and when Martha succeeded in producing and successfully giving birth to a live, healthy baby, then the man in the car, would then pay Martha's father $300--the equivalent of a year's salary (at his coffee plantation wages). In fact, Martha could continue to live with this man for several years, producing babies, one after another. There would be money for Martha's father for every baby that Martha produced.

This kind of parental "choice"--the choice between helplessly watching all your children continue be in grave danger of dying or betraying one of them to possibly save the lives of the other(s)--is the kind of hellish choice that a movie called Sofie's Choice made famous.

Here it was in Martha's father's face.

What should he do? Should he prostitute out his 12 year old daughter to be a kind of brood mare for the adoption industry? Should be arrange to have his own grandchildren created and sold off like farm animals in an attempt to save his own remaining six children from dying from the ravages of poverty?

Or should he take the moral high ground and risk having his children--including Martha--die of starvation?

It was a Sophie's Choice, and in the end, like the tortured Sophie, he chose to gamble one child away to save the others.

What could he do but say yes?

And so, there it was. Martha's father said yes.

Martha was taken away at 12 years of age. A man whom she didn't know came shortly thereafter and impregnated her. Martha's valuable work happened over the months that followed as she lived in the little house with the man who had come in the car, the man's wife, and six other young teen girls. Those six other girls are also doing the same valuable work as Martha.

I guess it is what you call a home business. A clever way to keep a man and his wife and the families of the girls who do this valuable work for them, out of completely abject poverty.

A "cottage industry" for the new millenium.

A realistic business for the brave new world where the right to nurture a child from infancy through adulthood--the privilege of becoming a child's forever family--is worth thousands of dollars--a literal fortune by the time you take account of exchange rates in poor countries--on the world market.

A business for the global economy that finds and supplies whatever the global market demands without regard to local ecology, local suffering, or theoretical and unseen things like human rights and human decency.

In a world where adoption angels abound....the Martha's of the world simply do not exist. Period. End of story.

In regard to this particular example of the cottage industry, to save money and keep out of trouble (doctors can ask pesky questions sometimes), the girls are not provided with prenatal care. Neither are doctors or midwives provided when it comes time for the girls to give birth; in Martha's home, the man and his wife are the ones who assist with the girls' births.

Of course, there is a sometimes a high cost for do-it-yourself medical care. One of the girls recently died in childbirth.

I guess that death got Martha a little worried, because she secretly (against the rules) wandered into a nearby doctor's clinic, a humanitarian clinic operated by a US physician, to ask for some minimal prenatal care and some prenatal vitamins.

Which is how the outside world began to get the first real clue that she and this presumed cottage industry exist in Guatemala. How many Martha's and how many of these "cottage industries" churning out human children for adoption exist or don't exist is anyone's guess. The numbers may be large or small. Those who know about such things aren't talking about them.

The doctor that she approached became so disturbed at Martha's situation and her story that he decided to do something about it. He decided to start by telling someone local whom he trusted. He got nowhere with that. In fact, he was instead warned that he should drop it because frankly, no one cares and those who care, care because they are (literally) *invested* in seeing the practice continue. It might be dangerous to him to pursue justice.

The doctor was disturbed enough to be brave and take his knowledge to others--to human rights groups in both Guatemala and in the US. To his horror, no one seemed to care about the exploitation of Martha and her housemates. Well known human rights groups simply said the equivalent of SO WHAT??

The doctor wrote up an account of what he found and it was published on the last page of the newsletter for a non-profit group which works to better the lives of Guatemalan children through education.

The doctor's account is a plea for someone, somewhere to care about Martha and her friends and family and their situation.

It is a plea for the human community to care about Martha's exploitation as a human baby machine activated to keep her family from starving to death.

It is a plea for justice and human decency.

I write this account of his account because I think that is time for the world and the adoption community to be aware of the voiceless Martha's and Martha's fathers of the world.

As American adoption agencies scramble to assure prospective adoptive parents that Guatemala, a country that places more children per capita for international adoption than any other country in the world and thus has a $150,000,000 a year adoption industry to show for it--is not nearly as ethically risky a place from which to adopt as the US DOS states that it is (see my blog entry of March 15,2007 , "US DOS Issues Notice About Guatemalan Adoption"), the question is....is it?

Is Guatemala simply a country, that, for whatever reason, is so chock full of healthy young orphans in need of homes so that it is, with the help of an agency and a Guatemalan attorney, a prospective adoptive parent's dream come true?

Or is it a place where prospective parents, with their expendable $$$, have come to expect to find healthy, young baby orphans, and so there are those in Guatemala who are consequently continuing "to find" healthy, young baby orphans?

NOTE: I do not mean to imply that Guatemala produces no legitimate orphans, I am merely questioning their continuing goodly supply of orphans. And asking the world and us adoptive parents to start demanded answers. Investigations. Whatever it takes to ensure that we aren't receiving our adoptable babies on the backs of the Martha's of the world.

When the adoption of a single Guatemalan child involves up to $30,000 (the equivalent of more than a lifetime of wages for those who are producing the children), and a country is filled with poor people eaking out a living on $300 a year, could there maybe be some real incentive for corruption in adoption. And where there is that kind of incentive for corruption, is it reasonable to believe that it doesn't exist and it isn't gobbling up girls like Martha?

Desiree

GSSG News, Volume IV, Number 1, March 2006