Vacuous US Government Assurances Regarding China & Child Laundering: Do They Really Think We’re This Dumb ( Or Are They This Dumb)?

The following notice about adoption from China appeared last August on the US State Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs Intercountry Adoption page for China:

China

August 15, 2011

Notice: Concerns About Information on the Background of Children Adopted from China

The press has reported allegations that in 2005 local family planning officials in China, in the name of enforcing the “One Child Policy,” seized children from their birth families and sold them to orphanages. Embassy Beijing has been in touch with China’s Centre for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) about the allegations mentioned in the articles and CCCWA has promised updates on their investigations when they have further information. We are not aware of any intercountry adoption by a U.S. family that has been confirmed to be linked to these alleged actions.

In response to these concerns, we would like to remind adopting parents that verification of a child’s eligibility for intercountry adoption is an integral part of the intercountry adoption process. If there is evidence that documents may have been falsified or are not accurate, then officials at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate conduct an investigation before the visa is approved. If you wish to get more information on your child’s background, we suggest that you contact the adoption service provider that assisted you with the adoption.

If you have any further questions about this notice please contact the Office of Children’s Issues at: 1-888-407-4747 within the United States or 202-501-4444 from outside the United States.

More than 37,000 children were adopted into the United States from China during the boom years of 2000 through 2005. During that time, most (including myself) thought that the Chinese adoption system was almost completely free of child laundering---free of practices that illicitly obtain children through purchase, fraud, or kidnapping. (Of course, there has always been the underlying issue of the role of coercive population control policies as a significant factor in abandonments.) Since then, there has been an unending and growing series of revelations indicating that by 2002, and probably beginning by 2000, there was systematic misconduct in how children were obtained for intercountry adoption. It has now reached the point where these concerns and revelations have become publicized even within China, and where many adoptive parents have become aware of these difficulties.

This places those who adopted from China during these years in an enormously difficult situation, and sets the stage, as this generation of Chinese adoptees grows up, of a generation of Chinese adult adoptees wondering whether they were purchased or stolen children.

In this context, one might have thought that the governments involved would feel some sense of responsibility and ownership, given that every one of these adoptions was approved by both China and the United States. Instead, one sees an enormous face-saving set of denials. Given the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, one may have expected that in China. For Americans, however, it is embarrassing to see our own government similarly engage in face-saving denial, for it indicates a government more concerned with saving its own reputation than in the best interests of the children and adults whose lives were directly impacted.

Consider the most recent U.S. Government public statement on this issue, posted on the official State Department adoption web site in August 2011, and linked and copied below. Notice the use of meaningless assurances, which one does not have to be a lawyer (as I am) to spot. For example, we are told that various parts of the Chinese government are involved in responding to these allegations and conducting investigations. While it has been true that sometimes the Chinese government conducts face-saving prosecutions that do go so far as to prosecute some individuals, we also know that the Chinese government tends to issue denials that any of the trafficked children ended up being placed overseas for adoption, and tends to minimize the scope of the scandals they investigate, due to their concern with maintaining the positive reputation of their adoption program. Is the United States government really telling us to trust that the Chinese government would tell us if they discovered that large numbers of trafficked children had been adopted into other countries? Do the U.S. government officials who wrote this really themselves believe that the Chinese government would publicize such facts if they discovered them?

Then, the U.S. government tells us that they are “not aware” of any U.S. adoptions which have been “confirmed” to be linked to a specific subset of these wrongs: the seizures of children by population control officials. A key word here is “confirmed.” The reason such has not been confirmed is that the Chinese government would not admit it if they had confirmed such a fact and the United States government does not itself investigate such allegations once the children have arrived in the United States. Without adequate investigation, such cases can never be “confirmed.” You cannot confirm what you do not investigate.

I will use my own experience as an example. We adopted two older girls from India who turned out to be laundered/trafficked children wrongfully taken from their family. We informed the United States government and the government of India. Yet, neither government ever conducted any investigations of these cases. Thus, even though we have done reunions with their family in India and have documented in detail that the children were adopted without consent and with false paperwork, in an official sense, these remain “unconfirmed” cases. And, of course, our own actions in informing the governments involved and conducting our own confirming investigations is relatively rare. In most instances where adoptive families suspect that the children may have been trafficked or laundered, they are far too frightened to either inform the government s involved, or investigate. And even among the minority of families that carry out their own independent investigations and confirm the wrongdoing, only a smaller minority ever informs the governments involved of what they have themselves discovered.

So, in short, it is entirely cynical for the government that fails to conduct the investigations necessary to “confirm” such cases to issue vacuous assurances. It would be like a government claiming that the crime rate is down after they systematically decide not to prosecute crimes.

The state department further assures us:

Verification of a child’s eligibility for intercountry adoption is an integral part of the intercountry adoption process. If there is evidence that documents may have been falsified or are not accurate, then officials at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate conduct an investigation before the visa is approved.

These assurances are similarly misplaced. First, the visa approval processes the government mentions here occurred before the children arrived in the United States; in terms of China before 2005 there were few suspicions that there was any wrongdoing, and hence presumably no such individualized investigations were conducted by the U.S. Embassy or Consulate. Second, in China relinquishment of a child is illegal, and hence adopted children were all officially “abandoned,” generally without any paperwork identifying their original families. This makes any after the fact investigation extremely difficult. Third, the normal processes for intercountry adoption would involve the United States government simply reviewing documentation of the child’s status as adoptable as provided by governments or others in the country of origin. Where the child is obtained through force, fraud, or funds, false paperwork is provided indicating the child was properly abandoned or relinquished, and then everything proceeds based upon a review of the false paperwork. Child laundering scandals in numerous nations, including China, as well as Guatemala, Cambodia, India, Vietnam, Samoa, and others, have indicated that this normal review of documents process is totally ineffective in screening out children who have been illicitly obtained.

So why does the government provide us with these disingenuous set of false but vacuous assurances? Presumably, the government believes that they can get away with it, and can appear to be responding to the publicized scandals in a purportedly responsible way. It is up to the diverse adoption community---adoptees, adoptive families, agencies, scholars, and original families (although usually powerless and voiceless) to let the government know that we are not fooled---nor are we amused---by this verbal sleight of hand.

David

Notice: Concerns About Information on the Background of Children Adopted From China, US Department of State, 15 August 2011

Response to the Christian Adoption and Orphan Care Movement

Law Professor and fellow Fleasbiting blogger David Smolin has recently posted a new article to his collection of adoption related articles at bepress.

"Of Orphans and Adoption, Parents and the Poor, Exploitation and Rescue: A Scriptural and Theological Critique of the Evangelical Christian Adoption and Orphan Care Movement" meets the trendy "Christian adoption and Orphan Care Movement's" arguments head-on in order to respond to them.

The abstract of the article is as follows:

The primary purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that the scriptural and theological analysis undergirding the evangelical adoption and orphan care movement is patently and seriously erroneous. Thus, this essay will demonstrate that, based on the standards, methods, and presuppositions broadly shared by evangelical Christians in analyzing scripture and theology, the evangelical adoption movement’s specific analysis of concepts such as “adoption” and “orphans” has been seriously deficient and has produced conclusions that are demonstrably false. The second purpose of this essay will be to indicate that these errors of scriptural and theological analysis have produced, and are producing, practices that in scriptural and Biblical terms would be called “sinful” and in more secular language can be called exploitative.

The article can be read by clicking on this link and then clicking the "download" button between the article title and the photograph.

Desiree

"Of Orphans and Adoption, Parents and the Poor, Exploitation and Rescue: A Scriptural and Theological Critique of the Evangelical Christian Adoption and Orphan Care Movement" by David Smolin, currently published on the bepress.com site with publication forthcoming in Regent Journal of International law, Vol. 8, No. 2 in Spring 2012. Additional publication of a shortened version of the article is forthcoming in May 2012 in a special Adoption Symposium Issue of The Journal of Christian Legal Thought, published by the Christian Legal Society.

China: 89 Children Rescued from Child Traffickers July 2011

As top headlines in China and around the world proclaimed in July 2011, 89 infants and children were recovered from child traffickers within China during this month.

The 89 children were recovered in two separate operations.

The first, on July 15, recovered 8 infants from a Chinese-Vietnamese cross-border trafficking network.

The second, on July 20, recovered 81 children of various ages from a trafficking network entirely within Chinese borders.

First Recovery Action: July 15, 2011

A Joint Action between China and Vietnam Recovering 8 Trafficked Infants

Earlier reports of children being trafficked to Dongxing City in Guangxi initiated an investigation by local and Chinese central authorities.

Because this investigation centered on cross-border criminal activity, in February 2011, a joint task force was set up between Chinese and Vietnamese officials. This joint task force culminated in a law enforcement campaign (involving more than 300 law enforcement officers) that began on July 15, 2011 with the arrests of 39 child abduction/trafficking suspects and the recovery of 8 trafficked infants.

This joint Chinese-Vietnamese law enforcement campaign, concerned with cross border crime involving the abduction and trafficking of children, is scheduled to continue through September 15, 2011.

Indeed, since the first news report detailing the rescue of these 8 children, further investigation has already revealed that the same trafficking network had smuggled a total of 21 abducted infants from Vietnam to China during the period between June 2, 2011 and the July 15, 2011 raid. This is an additional 13 children beyond the 8 reported as recovered.

Though the 8 recovered infants were first reported to have been ages 7 days to 10 months, subsequent reports have stated that the youngest two, with umbilical cords still attached, were under a week old. Most of the babies were boys.

Details of the elaborate reported abduction, smuggling, and trafficking scheme have since been enumerated by an Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (of ???). It goes like this:

Vietnamese infants were reportedly abducted in Vietnam by Vietnamese nationals. Allegedly drugged so that they would not cry and call attention to themselves, the infants were then reportedly smuggled across the Beilun River (and the Vietnamese-Chinese border) on bamboo rafts. Subsequently, so as to avoid the border checkpoints, the babies were then reportedly transported by bicycle through the fields bordering the Beilun River and on into nearby Chinese towns. Upon arrival in Dongxing or Fangchenggang, the drugged infants then allegedly continued their journey by bus, arriving first in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Shuang region, and then in the final leg of their journeys, in either Shanewei or Jieyang in Guangdong. The children’s journeys took an average of 20 hours.

A later article alleged that an obstetrician helped care for the babies while they were awaiting sale. (The report did not say where the obstetrician was located.)

Some news reports put the selling price of the trafficked babies at several thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan apiece. However, other news reports put the selling price of the trafficked infants at a reported 40,000 yuan each (about US $6,215).

News reports imply that some of these children had already been sold to Chinese families. There are two clues in the news report that imply that this is so. First, Chinese officials’ commentaries state that the Chinese families who bought these babies will not be allowed to keep them. This clearly implies that at least some recovered children were no longer in transit, nor were they awaiting sale, but that they had already been sold. Secondly, at least one news report includes criticism of removing (at least some? of) these infants from their “adopted famil[es].”

“Separating them from their adopted family may be a second blow to their young minds” (Chen Shiqu)

Obviously, you cannot remove a child from an adopted family and worry about the effect of that removal on the child if the child is not yet with the adoptive family.

(Some readers may object to the use of the word “adoptive” here to describe families who bought trafficked children--especially when those children landed in families through channels that were not sanctioned by the government (not legal). However, I am simply reporting the terminology used by the articles themselves. And after all, to the child, who knows nothing of how he/she came to be with the only family he/she has ever consciously known and to whom he/she has bonded, what is the difference? It is the same conscious experience for the child either way. In fact, this is exactly the point that those who criticized removing the children from the adoptive families, were making. Of course, this kind of point is exactly that often made by adoptive families fighting to retain custody of adoptive children when that custody is challenged by original parents seeking the return of their children. But this argument of not disturbing children who are settled can cut both ways. The same adoptive families who argue that they should retain possession of adoptive children for the sake of continuity for the child (when their own custody is being challenged), do not seem to worry about continuity for the child when it comes to the child’s loss of foster families, first families, etc. with whom the child had bonded--often as the only family he/she had ever known--when the child loses that previous family because an adoption is taking places and the child is to be placed in the adoptive family's arms….. So methinks there is here somewhat of a double standard of worry about the effects on a child of loss of family, and that that double standard has almost everything to do with the adults’ interests in the situation. It is easy to imagine what the best interest of a child is when you as an adult stand to benefit from this decision coming out in your favor. But this is another discussion for another post, and, alas, I have digressed… And within the context of this story, that is not point. It's just that I find it ironic that that idea should pop up here where many might find it objectionable. The world's a funny place, no?)

Upon recovery from traffickers and adoptive families, the 8 infants were taken to local hospitals and health centers for observation. At least one news report asserted that five of the eight children were found to have “serious health issues.” Whether these “health issues” were immediate and temporary and due to transport (for example, the effects of having been drugged) or the stresses of recovery (tiny babies have to be fed regularly to avoid dehydration and other ills) or whether they were suffering from more serious long term issues (for any number of reasons), was not stated.

Officials state that efforts will be made to reunite the infants with their Vietnamese parents, and that DNA testing will be utilized to facilitate this. If, however, officials are unable to properly identify the infants, and efforts to reunite them with their parents are ultimately unsuccessful, the infants, according to current Chinese law, because they lack proper verifiable identification, will NOT be eligible for adoption. Unidentified children not ultimately returned to their original parents, will therefore, at least according to current law, grow up in orphanages. Officials quoted in the article seem to understand that this is a disturbing prospect to many.

In fact, Ji Gang, director of Domestic Adoption of the Chinese Welfare and Adoption Center, is quoted as saying that the possibility of ‘conditional adoption’ (which would allow "children whose parents cannot be found within a specified period of time" to be adopted) is being discussed. (Note that this is the director of Chinese DOMESTIC adoption director speaking and that therefore, he is likely implying that children who can not be properly identified and whose parents are not found, would likely become available for DOMESTIC adoption within China.) This idea is of not letting unidentified children get caught in an institutional limbo where they would be ineligible for adoption is echoed in a quote from Chen Shiqu, Director of the Human Trafficking Office in the Ministry of Public Security:

“We are negotiating with civil affairs departments to improve the laws to allow unidentified children to be adopted”

Second Recovery Action: July 20, 2011

Involving 14 Provinces within China, Recovering 81 Trafficked Children

The second recovery action on July 20 was a much more massive affair, involving more than 2,600 law enforcement officers from no less than 14 Chinese provinces, and resulting in more than 330 arrests. The area involved extends from southwestern China’s province of Fujian to northern China’s province of Hebei.

Although some reports say that the two operations together resulted in the “rescue” of “89 infants,” details in the same reports and others imply that the rescued included, not only infants, but also children well beyond infancy. Indeed, at least one photo shows two of the rescued children; these children are clearly not only not infants, but are beyond puberty; indeed, one of the girls, though relatively young, clearly appears to be pregnant.

Some locations involved the July 20th action, do indeed appear to involved the recovery of nothing but infants. One photo taken in the city of Handan shows a line of smiling policewomen carrying 13 “rescued” infants to safety. Most of the recovered infants in the July 20th action are girls, and they are very young, ranging in age from 10 days to 4 months. Of those infants who had not yet been sold to families, some had been in the care of the traffickers for up to two months. At least one report alleged that those infants found in the traffickers’ care had been being fed low-quality milk powder and had been kept in squalid conditions.

It’s not immediately apparent where the July 20th recovered children came from. News reports note both that abductions by child traffickers of children within China are fairly common, but also note that some Chinese families, especially within rural areas, who prefer sons over daughters, have also been known to sell their infant daughters to traffickers so as to be able to try again for a son. One report states that all of the “rescued” children had been abducted. But all in all, considering all the reports, it remains unclear as to exactly where the children had come from. Given the short period of time that had elapsed since the children were recovered, it is possible that investigators themselves may not have yet known where the children came from.

These children, like the infants rescued earlier on July 15^th, were given medical exams and then taken to orphanages where to be cared for during the process of identification (using DNA and other clues) and attempted reunion with their parents (if they can be found).

That some parent child reunions were already taking place just a few days after the children were recovered is clear from some news report photos. That these reunions could also be emotionally difficult and complicated is also evident. In one photo, a father is shown to have found his twin girls, abducted six years earlier. As I mentioned earlier, though the twins look fairly young, it is also obvious that they are already through puberty, as one of the girls appears to be in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Sadly, the photo caption states that the father was “reluctant” to take his twin girls home again because he “couldn’t accept what [they] had become.” Readers are left to wonder about the father's decision. Did he take his adolescent daughters home or not? One can only begin to imagine the drama of this family's story. Fault--if it was appropriate to assign any--for “what [the girls] had become” in the time they were away from their original family was not almost certainly not their own. How therefore could these girls be rejected by their own father? On the other hand, one has also to identify with the difficulty of the father's situation. The task of rehabilitating adolescents who may have been trafficked for un-named purposes, but purposes that we have to wonder about, would surely not be easy. And the outcome of that rehabilitation, uncertain. The father might very well be taking home virtual strangers whose values might very well differ from his own and his community's, and yet he would become immediately responsible for these adolescents and what happened to them from that time forward. An extremely difficult and complicated assignment for any parent.

Such is one of the problems of older child abduction. Children continue to grow and mature. They become different people than they’d have originally have been if they had never been taken from their families. The abducted children have in some very real sense, ceased to exist; likewise, from the children's point of view the parents have also become odd and foreign to the people they've become. In this way, the harm done to the victims by traffickers who steal children is inestimable. Time which is lost cannot be recovered, but more than that, that which is done can not be undone, influence/culture lost can't be recovered, and influence/culture hijacked by others can't be erased.

What Does This Mean for Supposed “Surplus” of Children Within China and for International Adoption from China?

Speculation is that this, China’s highly publicized and widespread crackdown on child trafficking in July (and for the few months previous to July) is a deliberate move on the part of the Chinese government to convince Chinese citizens, outraged at the government’s past lack of responsiveness to the “growing tide of child kidnapping” and child trafficking within China, that they do indeed care and are taking effective, concrete action.

This growing public outrage is no accident. News reports credit the growing displeasure of citizens with both the rising tide of child abductions and the government’s inaction in regard to them, with the most recent campaign by parents of kidnapped children to raise public awareness and outrage. In particular, a recent Chinese micro-blog campaign by parents of abducted and trafficked children complained about government officials who ignored and hindered parents from finding their abducted children. Parents complained that some law enforcement agencies refused to file reports of missing children, and that law enforcement agencies, even when they did file reports, often failed to act on leads given by parents. The campaign therefore encouraged Chinese citizens to help parents of abducted children recover their missing children by taking photos of children on the street to help facilitate identification of kidnapped children.

The parents of kidnapped and abducted children have, after years of struggle, finally won the attention of not only Chinese citizens, but also of the Chinese state media and the Chinese government officials. The reality of the widespread problem of child abduction and child trafficking within China is now openly acknowledged by both the state media and the government.

Indeed, the state media itself now openly estimates that up to 20,000 children a year are abducted and/or trafficked in China. According to Chen Shinqu, director of the Human Trafficking Office of the Ministry of Public Security:

“Child abductions have entered a phase of high-frequency.”

According to China Daily, Chen sees the "main cause of human trafficking crimes" to be the “existence of a buyer’s market.”

Indeed, many of us who have followed international adoption corruption for a long time, have come to believe that where there is high demand for human children and there is the money to back this demand, entrepreneurs, criminals, and others will arise to ensure that that market demand is met. To believe that it is otherwise is to be naïve.

China's one-child policy is frequently blamed as the cause of this demand for children within China. Under the one child policy most families were allowed only one child. Combined with a cultural and economic preference for sons, in the early years of the one-child policy, this led to the abandonment of many baby girls as families held out for a son. More recently, as the one-child policy has perhaps relaxed somewhat, and the availability of ultrasound machines has proliferated, sex-selective abortion has eliminated baby girls before birth, leading to a highly publicized gender imbalance within China in the younger generations. As the population has grown lop-sided with boys, families have begun to worry about procuring wives for their sons in future years. Some families solve this future problem by buying girl babies, “child brides,” when their sons are young and raising them to be future wives and daughters-in-law.

The shortage of girls has not raised the status of women; instead, girls have become one more rare commodity within a market ready and willing to buy them. Speculation is that far from raising the status of women, a shortage of marriageable women will lead—and indeed may already have led--to greater levels of trafficking of both children and women for sexual purposes and prostitution.

Likewise, as families have been willing to buy a girl child for future purposes, families who desire a son (but are unable to produce one for various reasons) have also become willing to buy one.

Indeed, children, as their numbers have shrunken within Chinese society, are in short supply generally, and so they have become rare commodities capable of fetching high sums.

And as stated before, where the market demands and is willing to pay high prices, suppliers eager to make good money inevitably eventually step in. Thus, child traffickers have increasingly been abducting and trafficking children.

What does all this mean in the international adoption arena? After all, isn’t this a blog primarily about international adoption and international adoption corruption?

Well, perhaps it means that the story peddled for the last twenty years or so by adoption agencies and the popular media, and the story that adoptive parents still hoping to adopt from China—which I STILL hear from acquaintances on the street—tell about China having so many unwanted baby girls that they’re simply there for the picking, (and indeed, we all ought to be lining up to adopt one of them if we were good Christians and cared about children) while it may once have been true, is no longer true. The situation has changed. China may well still have SOME children in need of adoption, but in China, as elsewhere, these children are likely to be seriously handicapped children and much older children. (The advisability of international adoption of much older children will be the subject of other posts.)

China’s domestic demand for healthy, young children—even girls (maybe especially girls)—may well be strong enough to absorb whatever healthy, young children are available.

It also means that the idea that Chinese adoption is, compared to other countries, squeaky clean, is probably also dead. Can we honestly believe that international adoption could remain squeaky clean in a country where child abduction and child trafficking is rampant, where orphanages have been documented to pay people for supplying adoptable young children (yes, this has been documented), where officials have been documented to have forcibly removed children (in excess of the family planning quota) from their parents in order to send them to orphanages, where orphanages gain money for every child they place, and where children are such rare, valuable commodities?

If you believe that one, I know a few other fairy tales that someone would like to tell you, and a few telemarketers and scammers out there that would love to have your name and email address.

Desiree

“China Rescues Dozens of Infants from Human Traffickers” Beijing Newsroom, edited by Alex Richardson and Sui-Lee Wee, Reuters, 27 July 2011

“Human Trafficking Ring Busted” Zheng Caixong and Zhang Yan, China Daily, 27 July 2011

“Chinese police rescue 89 children in two major human trafficking cases” by Chen Zhi, Xinhua News Agency, English.xinhua.com, 27 July 2011

“Authorities to Place Stolen Babies in Care” by Zhang Yan, China Daily, 29 July 2011

“Doctor Helped in Selling of Children to Chinese Families” Financial Times of London (source: Shanghai Daily), 8 August 2011

“China Cracks Down on Child Kidnappings” by Patti Waldmeir, Shanghai, Financial Times of London, 27 July 2011

“Children as young as 10 DAYS old among 89 rescued from clutches of Chinese people traffickers” Daily Mail Online, 27 July 2011

Intercountry Adoption Accountability Project (Part II---Comment and Response)

NOTE: Fleasbiting is having technical issues. Blogspot is malfunctioning and refusing to encode a comment button on our blog--despite our following instructions for fixing the problem. So please know know that is not that we don't want your comments--we do--and not that we don't want to interact with our readers--we do. We hope to have this issue resolved soon. In the meantime, feel free to send your comments to us via email or else save them up until we get this problem fixed. Our apologies.

The following is a comment I received on e-mail; with permission, I am including it here, and will respond immediately below.

Wow what a terrible story. I am sorry for your experience and do not discount it but you seem to be painting all adoptions with the same brush. Our children were not stolen. There is no need to steal children for adoption because there are thousands waiting. We have seen the two orphanages and several others in the country that our children were adopted from and we know that our children were starved for affection and had been that way for some time. It is horrible that someone would steal children for money.
We are the truth. And there are thousands of families who have legitimate stories and legitimate orphans and there are many more waiting. Do not damage their chances of getting out of a hell on earth.

Rebecca Schwindeman (adoptive parent of a child from Russia)

Rebecca’s comments represent, in my view, a common viewpoint, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond. While I will disagree with much of what Rebecca has said, please keep in mind there is nothing personal in this. My response is designed to respond as much to the many people in the adoption community who think in a manner similar to Rebecca, rather than just to Rebecca herself.

First: I have always acknowledged that there are many children adopted who are not stolen children. I would further acknowledge that the problem of stolen/laundered children is not the major problem in Russian adoptions (the country from which Rebecca adopted).

Child laundering has been a serious problem in many sending nations, including Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Nepal, Samoa, and Vietnam. Further, the reactions to such misconduct have caused many sending nations to sharply reduce, close, or never open to intercountry adoption, including much of Latin America (based on trafficking documented in the 1980s), Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Nepal, Vietnam, and most of sub-Saharan Africa (which has never opened to IA, in significant part due to concerns with trafficking, corruption, and scandals.)

This is where the blame game comes in. Rebecca asks me not to “damage” the chances of children to be adopted. Since I am an academic, writer, and blogger with no power to directly impact IA or its rules, the implication is that I need to self-censor. I have seen this implied and stated repeatedly---that somehow talking about the things that go wrong is what destroys IA.

My response:

Ignoring abusive adoption practices ensures that the adoption system will never reform; for a system that covers up its mistakes has no incentive to learn from them. Such silence breeds impunity: an impunity which has made IA impervious to reform.

Such an approach would be like running an air traffic system by covering up plane crashes, rather than investigating them and using the information derived to avoid future crashes.

Such an approach also fails to account for the full scope and harm of such abusive adoption practices. Adoption systems in which large numbers of children moved became infected with large-scale and systematic abusive practices impacting substantial numbers of adoptions. Within those systems, even the children who were properly adopted are damaged, because they and their adoptive families must live with the uncertainty about whether or not they were stolen---an uncertainty that is very difficult to resolve. Thus, most adoptive parents and adoptees who were adopted from affected countries have no way of knowing whether their adoptions were tainted by child laundering or other abusive practices. This includes, for example, the 25,000 or so children adopted from Guatemala between 2002 and 2008; the approximately 1500 children adopted from Cambodia between 1997 and 2002; the tens of thousands of children adopted from China between 2002 and 2009; the more than 9,000 children adopted from Ethiopia from 2005 to the present; the more than two thousand children adopted from Vietnam between 2006 and 2009; the more than 300 children adopted from Nepal from 2003 to 2010; and so on….

Systems this seriously broken will eventually break down if not fixed. And they are not fixed in large part because the “don’t talk about it” approach provides a sense of impunity for adoption agencies, facilitators, and government officials. Instead of the adoption community lobbying and pushing to fix broken systems, they lobby to keep broken systems going and open. This leads to a self-replicating cycle of abuse which unfortunately has not yet ended.

Another fundamental point: full orphanages do not mean that adoptions are legitimate or needed. The question is how children got to those orphanages, and whether the children are actually orphans. Illicit child trafficking sucks children out of families and into orphanages. Orphanages in many nations are a kind of boarding school and social safety net for the poor. Thus, the mere existence of large numbers of children in orphanages does not indicate a legitimate need for IA.

What, then, of Russia, where a longstanding practice of institutionalization has victimized large numbers of children? As I have said repeatedly, I agree that child laundering generally is NOT the issue there. I agree (and have said repeatedly in the past) that children held in poor quality institutional care, such as has been the case often in Russia, constitute a serious harm in need of urgent remedy. However, what I said in my first “Accountability Project” post applies specifically to Russian adoptions:

[I]ntercountry adoption has all too often approached the delicate task of transplanting deeply traumatized special needs children across families, languages and cultures with all of the skill, competence and care of a drunk teenager high-jacking a car for a joyride. Consequently, intercountry adoption has also produced a significant degree of wreckage amongst adoptive families.

My rhetoric is deliberately strong; but the underlying realities are worse. The wreckage of the Masha Allen case, the fourteen or more Russian adoptees killed by their adoptive parents, and the Hansen’s family act of returning their seven year old adoptive son to Russia on a plane, are symptoms of the extreme stresses and difficulties in Russian adoptions. Such were finally brought to light to some degree in the popular press by the June 2010 Time Magazine article, “When the Adopted Can’t Adapt; see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1997439,00.html. As the article documents, a significant percentage of Russian adoptees arrive with severe difficulties for which adoptive parents are poorly prepared; furthermore, there is in practice often very little in the way of practical assistance post-adoption. The harms done to children and families by the low standards of adoption practice are incalculable and severe.

The official announcement of the July 2011 agreement between the United States and Russia in July 2011 notes new provisions “designed to improve post-adoption reporting and monitoring and to ensure that prospective adoptive parents receive more complete information about adoptive children’s social and medical histories and anticipated needs.” See http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/country_specific_alerts_notices.php?alert_notice_type=notices&alert_notice_file=russia_2. This has only occurred, however, after the international incident of the Hansen case, after more than 40,000 children have come to the United States under the prior, deficient system, and after adoptions from Russia have decreased by more than 80% (from 5862 in 2004 to 1079 in 2010). Unfortunately, this latest reform comes very, very late.

Somehow, though, in pointing out such difficulties, I am labeled an enemy of adoption. This “shoot the messenger” mentality creates impunity rather than accountability. We need a better accountability system, where the persons responsible for the harm are held accountable, instead of the messenger who brings news of such harms being the one blamed when adoption systems are closed, limited, decline, or break down.

Unfortunately, we probably won’t get the accountability system we need until adoption advocates like Rebecca demand it. So long as the adoption community minimizes the problems and seeks to silence the messengers, we will have impunity instead of reform. And without reform, adoption systems will continue to break down, again and again and again….

David

An Accountability Project for Intercountry Adoption--Part I

If intercountry adoption were viewed as an industry (a controversial supposition), it would be a declining industry losing market share to higher tech alternatives. The numbers of children coming into the US are down from the 2004 high of almost 23,000, to 11,000 to 12,000 children last year (depending on whether you count the 1,000 or so children paroled in from Haiti). Consequently, the number of U.S. adoption agencies is declining. Adoptions to most other receiving nations are also declining in numbers, so that global intercountry adoptions are down considerably from the high of approximately 45,000 reached around 2004. Some of this “lost market share” is presumably going to various assisted reproductive technologies, the more “tech” orientated competition. (More on these high tech alternatives in later posts….)

If intercountry adoption were viewed as a humanitarian practice (a controversial supposition), it would be one of many such interventions that become mired in unintended consequences, incompetent execution, and ideological controversy. The humanitarian premise of the intercountry adoption movement has been one of providing families for orphans. The reality has too often been one of manufacturing orphans; needlessly separating children from families. Consequently, intercountry adoption has left a trail of needlessly destroyed and separated families sprinkled throughout the developing world. Further, intercountry adoption has all too often approached the delicate task of transplanting deeply traumatized special needs children across families, languages and cultures with all of the skill, competence and care of a drunk teenager high-jacking a car for a joyride. Consequently, intercountry adoption has also produced a significant degree of wreckage amongst adoptive families.

It is important to make the link between the disastrous record of intercountry adoption as a humanitarian intervention, and the declining numbers. A humanitarian intervention (or industry) with a deserved reputation for corruption, incompetence, and scandal will eventually decline.

Amidst these declining numbers and this unnecessary human wreckage, I think it is past time to start an accountability project. Intercountry adoption agencies and “advocates” have for too long gotten away with shifting the blame and maligning the messenger. Yet, it is precisely the adoption agencies and advocates—and the governments that have all too often capitulated to them—that are responsible both for the declining numbers and for this unnecessary human wreckage.

The obstacles to such an accountability project are clear. If you name names, you may get sued. If you name names, you may leave the mistaken impression that the problem is a few bad actors. Because of these limitations, my own work has not been about naming names, but rather about identifying systemic problems with the intercountry adoption system.

Nonetheless, without concentrating on individuals, I think it is essential to lay the blame squarely where it belongs. The worst enemy of the intercountry adoption system has been—and continues to be—the intercountry adoption system itself. Like a spoiled child that has manipulated his/her parents into allowing him/her to eat only sweets with the predictable result of rotten teeth and stunted growth, the adoption industry has been allowed to grow into an indulged, cosseted, undisciplined, and darling, yet self-defeating monster that only succeeds in destroying and harming itself by getting what it wants.

My intent is to never let the people and institutions responsible forget the harm they have done and are doing! And I hope that many of you will continue to join me in this accountability project!

David Smolin

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration

A group of adult adoptees has planned a protest for adoptee rights to take place at the National Conference of State Legislature’s annual meeting in New Orleans, LA on Tuesday, July 22, 2008. The National Conference of State Legislatures is a bipartisan organization that serves state legislators and its staffs.

The purpose of the protest is for adoptees representing all fifty states to hold a rally to demonstrate their commitment to adoptee rights, including unconditional open records for adult adoptees, and to meet their state delegation.

Everyone who supports the open records movement, adoptees, first families, adoptive families, friends and supporters, are welcome to join the protest.

Complete information about the event is at The Adoptee Rights Demonstration website.

Usha

Workshop 2.3: Adoptee Access to Records, History and Searches: Adopted People and the “Right to Know”

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during Workshop 2.3:

• How do current laws and practices support or impede adopted persons’ access to information about themselves?
• What “rights” should adopted persons have to such information? How should their “rights” be balanced against those of other parties to an adoption?
• How should access to records and history, as well as search, be thought about from an international perspective?

Panelists:

Frederick F. Greenman, Jr. is the legal advisor and former Director to the American Adoption Congress. He is also the Treasurer and a director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. A prominent adoption activist, he was the senior counsel to amici curiae in the historic case, Doe v. Sundquist, which upheld the 1995 Tennessee Adoption Act. He also assisted counsel in the Oregon litigation, Does v. Oregon, that upheld the ballot initiative and statute in that state which granted adoptees access to their original birth certificates. Mr. Greenman has participated in various state and federal lobbying efforts, most recently concerning ratification and implementation of the Hague Convention on International Adoption. His interest in the subject stems from having surrendered a daughter for adoption at her birth and with whom he reunited 15 years ago. Mr. Greenman, a Harvard graduate, currently is a sole practitioner specializing in copyright related litigation in addition to issues relating to adoption reform.

Marley Greiner is the co-founder and executive chair of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee rights organization in North American. Ms. Greiner’s work has focused on the right of all adult adoptees to access their original birth certificates upon request without restriction. She was actively involved in Ballot Measure 58 in Oregon and legislation in Alabama and New Hampshire which restored the right of adult adoptees to access their original birth certificates. Ms. Greiner also is considered an expert on “safe haven” laws. Since 2001, she has published and edited Baby Dump News, a weekly e-chronicle of newborn abandonment and neonaticide. Ms. Greiner’s additional adoption interests include the relationship between adoption and Biblical America and the portrayal of adoption in film. She maintains the blog, The Daily Bastardette . Ms. Greiner holds a BA in English and Political Science from Malone College, and an MA in American History from the Ohio State University.

Pam Hasegawa, born Rolande Sygne Hampden, has been involved with adoption reform since joining ALMA (Adoptees’ Liberty MovementAssociation) in 1973, NJCARE (NJ Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education) in 1991 and the American Adoption Congress in 1996. Her commitment to rectifying the injustice imposed by the sealed records system on persons living adoption keeps her involved as a grass-roots lobbyist and adoption educator. The “letter to the editor” has become her favorite genre; presenting experiential workshops for adoption professionals and parents with Betsy Forrest and Penny Partridge is an ongoing delight; and working with younger members of the adoption constellation who commit their hearts, minds and energy to adoption reform is a constant source of joy for her. She has been sustained in the long journey toward truth, both personal and communal, by the grace of God, deep friendships forged out of a common understanding of the need for truth in adoption and her family’s abiding support for her work as a “professional volunteer” in the adoption arena.

Elizabeth Samuels is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she teaches courses in the areas of constitutional law and family law. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago Law School. The subjects of her research and publications include the history of adult adoptees access to original birth records and the current state of laws governing mothers’ consents to the adoption of their newborn infants. Her public service activities includes consulting with adoption law reform advocates as well as other civil rights work.

Elizabeth Samuels

Elizabeth Samuels covered the history of adult adoptees’ access to their own records. Her theory is that it helps us to understand where we are if we understand how we got here. She became interested in this subject because her sister relinquished a child and they met when her birth niece became an adult. She wondered why it was thought beneficial to make records closed. To her amazement, it hadn’t been thought beneficial for adult adoptees and there were different reasons that had led to the closing of records.

Statutory adoption is relatively recent historically. The first state adoption statute was in the mid-1800s. It wasn’t until the 1920s that essentially all states developed a statutory process for adoption. Initially, all records were open. In the early 1900s there was a movement among the states to protect the privacy of the participants i.e., confidentiality (closing records to the public). In the 1930s and 1940s states began moving toward the amended birth certificate where the child was documented as having been “born to” the adoptive parents. It was also during this time that states began sealing records not just from pubic inspection but from inspection by the parties: adoptive parents and birth parents. The primary reason was to protect adoptive families from interference or harassment from birth families. Surrender papers during this time contained promises not to seek out the child or harass the adoptive family. Adoptive parents, on the other hand, were often given documents with identifying information.

In 1953, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws developed the first uniform adoption act recommended to states. They clearly recommended that court and birth certificate records be closed to the public and parties but that they should be accessible to adult adoptees and they were in most states at that time. And as late as 1960 in more than half the states, adults adopted as children still had access to records with identifying information. After 1960, 4 states closed records to adoptees, 6 in 1970s and 7 did not close until after 1979. Even in closed states, records could be opened by court order without notice to or participation by birth parents.

Obviously there was a huge change in attitudes from the 1950s to 1970s. Why? There were a complex confluence of factors that led to this result with no easy answers:

• Closing of records to public and parents helped create and endorse the idea that secrecy was a normal part of the process



• Post- WWII emphasis on women fulfilling traditional roles: staying home and having lots of children



• Psychoanalytic idea at least for young white unmarried women that they were suffering from a mental and moral disorder that led to their pregnancy that could be cured if they placed the child with a “normal” family



• Emerging idea that adult adopted persons who were interested in finding out about their origins were also suffering from a mental disorder.
  

Nowadays, substantial numbers of adult adoptees find out information outside of the government though many spend years and resources doing so. Looking at this history, it’s a relatively short period that adoptees have not had access. It was really an experiment that has proven more harmful than beneficial.

Marley Greiner

There are a number of reasons why original birth certificates of adoptees remained sealed in all but a handful of states:

• Well-funded industry lobbies such as the National Council for Adoption



• Powerful marginal lobbies such as the National Right to Life Committee, Family Research Council, ACLU, Planned Parenthood and various feminists who believe adult adoptee identity rights endanger their own social and political agendas



• Politically influential adoptive and birth parents



• Reactionary and back scratching politicians



• Political lethargy

Right to identity and public records have no traction in the political landscape unless they intersect with high priority issues such as abortion or privacy rights and then they intersect only negatively. Adoptees are expected to shut up and be grateful for allegedly being made middle class and not tossed in a dumpster or reared in a trailer park. Those who press for records access are blamed for “disappearing adoption privacy rights”. “Adoptees are destroying adoption.”

Adoption reformers continue to defeat themselves by compliantly accepting less than what they want: baby steps that lock out people. They feel that compromise is progress, something is better than nothing. But there is no precedent for these bad laws to be changed later. Compromisers tend to legitimate and frame their arguments in the ideology and language of the opposition. They accept the faulty social construct of the triad and its false doctrine of competing rights, balanced rights and special rights. Without the core ethic of an absolute right to birth certificates and identity for all adoptees, reformers support institutional protectionism. Their compromise is obstruct rights and information for all and the opportunity for reunion for those who seek it.

Leave no one behind. 10 years ago Bastard Nation was founded on the guiding principle that access to original birth certificates, identity and history is a natural right, not a privilege doled out by the state. Reasons for wanting birth certificates are immaterial because they are based on desire not the right to possess them and the unredacted information in them. We have the right to the facts of our births, origins and adoptions. Adoptions were imposed and contracted upon us without our knowledge and consent by the state, then that same state seals our information and refuses to acknowledge our right to that information or even that we existed prior to our adoptions. The non-adopted need not justify why they want their vital records nor are they forced to ask for their parents’ permission, grovel before a judge, join a government registry, seek mental health counseling or spend years getting a bill passed to get them. They have a presumed right to their own birth certificates and can do with them what they please. All arguments for access then must flow from the presumed right of all adoptees to unrestricted access and possession of their true birth certificates, not just the majority class. Otherwise the right of anyone to possess their own birth certificates is not a right but a favor the state grants to some.

The real issue therefore moves from personal desire to political rights and adoptees’ relation to the state. Who owns your identity, you or the state? In Oregon, two years after Bastard Nation (BN) was founded, it had its first victory with the passage of Ballot Measure 58, in which the people decided that Oregon adoptees had a right to their own birth certificates. When BN initiated the campaign, adoption reformers wrung their hands and said “you’ll throw us back 20 years!” They forgot to mention in their 20 years of activisim they had failed to open one single state to full access and in fact had mucked things up so badly with compromise legislation such as contractual birth parent disclosure vetos and tiered access that it will be virtually impossible to gain unrestricted access in those states without major league wrangling, if ever.

BN's victory in Oregon was followed by legislative restoration in Alabama in 2000 which was BN's bill and New Hampshire in 2005 where BN worked with others to pass unrestricted access. Earlier this year folks in Maine unconnected to Bastard Nation who previously considered compromise got a clean bill passed which will open records for all in 2009. Exact figures are unavailable, but since at least 1999, at least 14,000 adoptees have received their birth certificates under the Just Say No to Compromise Policy. Holding the line works. Conversely, compromise legislation slugs endlessly through the pipeline amended out of recognition in a vague attempt to please an unpleasable opposition that insists the status quo continue ad infinitum.

False triad concept. Adoptee rights advocates are bogged down with the concept of the adoption triad: the first parents, the adoptive parents and Baybee Bumble, the adoptee, all of whom allegedly have competing rights that must be balanced. Translation: adoptees lose. The triad characterizes the entire adoption structure as a nuclear unit; in reality, it hides information as well as people: for example, grandparents, cousins, siblings, fosterers, and institutions central to the adoption experience -- agencies, social workers, facilitators, marketers, politicians and the marketplace. There are a myriad of complicated relational permutations concealed by “the triad.” Once the other actors are introduced, we see hidden power relationships based on chronology of events, economics, class gender, race, market demand and other factors. The triad concept moved from a sociological to a political discourse where it became manipulated by those living below the water line: private business, adoption professionals and their government security force: the state which ultimately defines what adoption is and can force its will on the rest of us. For example, first mothers were morphed from threat to the adoptive family to courageous women who need protection from their adult offspring. In response, the state and the adoptocrasy colluded to develop an aggressive claim of bureaucratic promises to first mothers asserting that their anonymity is protected by sealed records, thus creating a new privacy right which has nothing to do with privacy. When documented evidence of these promises or even the desire for them was not forthcoming, the adoptocrasy countered that although there was nothing in writing, promises are implied.

These and other claims to make records sealed are ludicrous. Surrender does not equal adoption. Privacy and confidentiality do not equal anonymity nor do sealed birth records. Under normal circumstances, competitive rights and their balancing is a problem only when there are a conflict of rights. Since there is no right to anonymity to one’s own offspring and there is a presumed to one’s own birth certificate, there is nothing to balance except in the minds of the secret keepers. What adoptocrats really want when they toss around competing rights, implied promises and confidentiality is protection from their commercial misdeeds and their continued control over other people’s personal information. This is all about institutional power. The false doctrine of competitive balance, special rights discourse foisted by the below the water line players on the above the water line people most affected by adoption is a false flag operation. Ron Morgan in his essay “Adoption is a Five-Legged Stool” writes: “The beauty of the Triad, at least to the fourth and fifth leg, is that it renders their agency invisible. The state and its quasi-agents, the professional adoption class, can float divinely over the pell mell and gore, offering definitive commentary and altering the rules of the game. It's a tidy racket."

This tidy racket played out in Massachusetts recently when a reform organization packed with a professional adoption class rejected a clean bill and accepted a replacement pushed by politicians and a handful of adoptees that restored the right of access to some, keeps all future records open, but continues to seal the records of other adoptees between certain dates in order to protect the privacy rights of first parents who surrendered children between those dates. By doing so, reformers legitimated implied promises of confidentiality debunked years ago; a lie they insist we must respect. The message is clear: adoptees have no genuine right to their birth certificates or their personal information even their advocates agree.

The triad with its plea for balanced rights forces compromise and corrupts the core principle of adoptee rights to records, identity and autonomy. Without an ethical cannon of absolute inclusion and no compromise, the rights of adoptees will continue to be balkanized and adoptees will continue to be treated as a separate class undeserving of their own records.

Records access is a social justice issue and I think it needs to be framed that way.

Audience Discussion

What are the impacts of current laws that impede access?:

• Lack of medical history



• Not being able to have a copy of one’s own original birth certificate impedes knowing ethnic and religious heritage



• Files are different. Agency has one file, the government has its own files. The files are different or incomplete. Information is selectively edited.



• Inability to verify one’s own birth day, county in which one was born, lack of historical truth.



• In a private adoption, there is a record the lawyer has which is more likely to be thrown out earlier than a record in an agency.



• A lot of adoptees have problems getting passports. Person whose birth certificate is filed more than one year after birth can’t use that birth certificate as appropriate evidence.



• Closed records create a market for information because information is restricted.



• Information can be sold to those who can afford it or have connections to get it. That unequal access is unjust.



• Adoptees say it makes them feel like second class citizens, perpetual children.



• Totally discriminatory including within the adoption community, for example, foster children generally have access and some international adoptees arrive with their original birth certificates.



• Impedes access for future generations.



• Impedes guarantee of ethical practices.



• Those in open adoption say they have their children’s birth records, but if something happens to them, can’t get them back.



• Siblings do not know they are siblings. Possibility of incest being permitted.



• In international context, if government doesn’t keep records and agency destroys records, then there are no records. In Hague regulations, all open access provisions are governed by state laws in the US. So if adoptee comes from abroad into a state with closed records, then that record gets closed even if the Convention gives access.

What are ways to make changes?

• adopteerights.net is having a nationwide demonstration in New Orleans on July 22, 2008 to coincide with the National Conference of State Legislators.



• The American Adoption Congress has a legislative packet that is helpful.



• When any kind of law comes up about adoption, one can testify as a citizen. At least write a letter. In off years try to form relationships with representatives.



• From Ethica’s standpoint, people who oppose opening records have a sophisticated way of notifying all their supporters when a bill is coming up and they flood legislators with calls. There is potential to tap into the adoptive parent and other supporter communities who believe this is not right. We can work together to come up with a similar system to flood legislators with calls.

Fred Greenman

Several things have developed to deal with mothers who don’t want their identity known. Oregon and three other states have contact preference forms. In a closed adoption, a birth mother has no assurance or warning she will not be found. The only case of harassment he is aware of occurred in New York which has the most tightly sealed records. If her child wants contact and records are opened, all statutes set a minimum age of at least 18 – her feelings may change over time which is what typically happens. In states with contact preference forms, the experience has been no reported problems.

Current state of law regarding adoption access statutes. Originally had 48 closed records states (all but Kansas and Alaska). 6 have granted access. 4 of them subject to a contact preference form. Delaware has a disclosure veto -- 19 filed in entire state since 1999. In 1996, Tennessee because the first state to retroactively open records. Birth certificates had false or meaningless info because of Georgia Tann, so the Tennessee statute gave access to entire adoption file. In another 12 states, access to original birth certificates or identifying information depends on the year of birth based on the argument that birth mothers were promised confidentiality. A number of states have a confidential intermediary system.

The whole process of secrecy starts mechanically with the original birth certificate and sealing and alteration of it into an amended birth certificate which shows the adoptive parents as simply the parents. This practice was started in 1928 by Georgia Tann who was perhaps the most notorious baby thief. She sold at least 5,000 children and at one time was the most prominent adoption practitioner in the country. She is the origin of this problem.

All these varying systems are for better or for worse constitutional in the US.

Ontario passed a statute which granted retroactive access to identifying information to adoptees and birth parents. There was a decision holding that statute unconstitutional. Not clear if ruling will be appealed. The ruling is weak because in Ontario, adoptive parents have always had access to original birth certificates and one plaintiff is a birth father. Paternity suits are not defended on grounds of privacy.

Usha