ROMANIAN BABY-WAIT LONG A FAMILY`S NURSERY STAYS EMPTY WHILE GOVERNMENT DRAGS ITS FEET ON ADOPTIONS
Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
Author: DAVID PERLMUTT, Staff Writer
Dateline: (CHARLOTTE)
All Linda and John Melius wanted was a baby, a bright-eyed little Romanian girl named Monika.
All they`ve gotten is an international mess, nearly $20,000 in adoption fees - and their nursery is still empty.
It`s a story that changes daily. About 26 American couples who thought their dreams of becoming parents were finally fulfilled, but for months have been caught in the sticky process of international adoption.
It`s about three governments that hold 27 Romanian children in a Hungarian orphanage while they decide where they should go - to America or back to Romania, where 80,000 orphans or abandoned children live in orphanages in harsh conditions.
The adopting parents say their government has dragged its feet, and now they fear their babies have become bargaining chips in Romania`s quest to resume trade with the United States.
The Meliuses, who run a Mooresville insurance agency, can`t have children. So friends at their church - themselves adopting parents of international babies - led them to an adoption agency that specializes in Eastern European children.
Last October, they got the call. A baby had been found. She was part of a contingent of 27 babies born to Romanian mothers, many of them Gypsies, in Romania and Hungary. They were being cared for in Hungarian foster homes under the auspices of Adam Children`s Fund, a year-old California-based relief organization.
The Meliuses were thrilled at the chance to adopt Monika, now two months shy of her second birthday.
They`d met all federal Immigration and Naturalization Service requirements, and by Thanksgiving a nursery in their Mooresville home was waiting for Monika.
``She was supposed to be with us by Thanksgiving,`` Linda Melius said. ``Thanksgiving turned into Christmas and Christmas into January. Now, who knows when it will be.
``I think they just want us to get frustrated and go away. We`re not going away.``
Seven of the babies have been cleared for adoption, said Gary Sheaffer, spokesman for the State Department`s consular affairs bureau.
And Friday, it appeared that another obstacle had been overcome, when Hungarian officials said the children will be examined by a U.S. doctor, beginning Monday.
But Hungary and Romania are still deciding the fate of the children, even after both countries told the parents and agencies the children would be released.
And after six months of ups and downs, the Meliuses and the other American families aren`t raising their hopes.
They`ve felt so frustrated, and some often felt harassed, that they formed Parents Coalition for Adoption Rights, and have spent months pressuring government officials and running fax campaigns to free their babies.
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Hope, then complications
When Aloha Adoption Services of Honolulu and Tukwila, Wash., called Oct. 13, the Meliuses were told that Monika would be in their arms in six weeks, Thanksgiving at the latest.
That night, they faxed a photo of the girl.
``My God, she looks just like you,`` John Melius, 54, told Linda, 40.
She has the same dark complexion and large brown eyes that second- generation Italian Linda Melius inherited.
Monika was born in Romania, but her mother took her to Hungary and gave her up to a representative of Adam Children`s Fund, saying the girl was sick and needed medical attention.
Like Monika, 16 of the other children were born in Romania and legally brought to Hungary. Each had a passport before they left Romania. The other 11 were born in Hungary to Romanian mothers.
The mothers went to John Davies, Adam Fund`s Eastern European director who has done adoption work in Romania since 1988. Davies led them to Hungary, bypassing the Romanian Adoption Committee, formed last year to establish rules after widespread reports of baby-selling.
In Szeged, Hungary, they relinquished parental rights to Adam Fund, which enlisted help from two U.S. adoption agencies. Aloha was one, but is not sanctioned by Romania to handle adoptions.
That`s when the international custody battle started.
Soon, Romanian and American officials accused Davies and Adam Fund and Aloha of circumventing Romanian adoption rules, an INS cable shows.
``John Davies and ACF definitely circumvented the Romanian Adoption Committee, but never Romanian law,`` said Dave Peters, Adam Fund`s U.S. operations director in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. ``What we`ve done is absolutely legal.``
Then in February, the Hungarian media were reporting that Adam and Aloha were operating as ``baby smugglers`` and the American couples wanted these children because they needed their organs for their own sick children.
The parents accused INS and the State Department of spreading those rumors. The stories were retracted.
The American parents accused the State Department - in particular Arnold Campbell, the U.S. consular general in Budapest - of blocking immigrant visas for the babies.
The State Department denies that.
Before granting those visas, Campbell must determine if the babies meet the definition of abandonment under U.S. immigration laws, the State Department`s Gary Sheaffer said.
Only seven have been cleared.
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Babies as bargaining chips?
``There has been no foot-dragging,`` Sheaffer said. ``We are processing those visas, and as we have discussed with the families, this is a complicated case. It is not a straightforward adoption.``
Now, the American parents fear their babies have become a part of Romania`s efforts to regain most-favored nation trade status, which it relinquished after Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed on Christmas Day 1990.
They also are concerned that Hungary is using the babies to ``make Romania look bad`` so the United States denies it the trade status, said Adam`s Dave Peters. Hungary stands to lose billions if the status is restored to Romania. Ceausescu for 24 years ordered women to bear at least four children to bolster his country`s work-force. Thousands ended up in orphanages.
Romania`s poor treatment of its orphans is well-documented, and last week Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., introduced a resolution to deny Romania most- favored nation status until it improves orphanage conditions and removes barriers for Americans to adopt the children.
``They`ve thrown up a myriad of bureaucratic roadblocks to adoptions,`` said Steve Rogers, Gordon`s press secretary. ``And they`ve taken only small steps to improve orphanages. Thousands of children live in conditions that are little better than medieval asylums.``
Two American parents were recently allowed into the Hungarian orphanage where the 27 babies are being cared for, Linda Melius said. ``The conditions were very good,`` she was told. ``They each have their own beds and toys and a play area in the middle.
``So we feel good about that.``
Still she`d rather have her own nursery filled.
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Joyfully decorated nursery
The moment the Meliuses heard about Monika, they went to work on a nursery. They bought a bed just like Michelle has on the television show ``Full House,`` giant, colorful pencils for posts.
They also bought a round table to color on, a chest of drawers with lamp and shade that tells the story of ``Noah`s Ark`` and a bedspread printed with: ``Save a place for me.``
On the bookshelves that John built, Linda put a doll made for Monika and a floppy-eared rabbit.
Christmas approached, and Linda and John and relatives put gifts under the tree for the baby girl.
The gifts are still wrapped.
Linda Melius` mother, Norma Viana, kept her tree up in her home 1-1/2 miles away. ``It was her beacon of hope,`` Linda said. ``The tree came down in February.``
Mooresville has embraced the family. Everywhere they go, people ask for news of Monika.
``We have photos of her, we`ve seen her on video,`` Linda Melius said. ``Now we just want to hold her. Smell her. Make her ours and part of our church family. If we don`t get her, it will be like a death to our family.
``It really will.``
Caption:
1. Staff Photo By LAURA MUELLER: Linda and John Melius have been trying to adopt Monika, a 1-year-old Romanian baby, for six months. 2. Monika PHOTO-2