16 on trial in Vietnam adoption scandal
Submitted by Kerry on Tue, 2009-09-22 13:03.
See also:
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- Guatemala: a baby factory no longer?
- Sierra Leone: Opinion - Over HANCI-MAPS Adoption, Who is Deceiving Who?
- Joint Council on International Children's services on the wrong side of history again
- American mother caught in Pakistani child trafficking nightmare
- Italians make best parents for adopted Indian children
- Baby trafficking and other adoption secrets
- New regulations make international adoption harder than ever for Americans
- Nepal comes to terms with foreign adoptions tragedy
- Adoption treaty sets up double standard in U.S.
AFP
September 22, 2009 / canada.com
HANOI - Sixteen people accused of falsifying papers for adoption went on trial in Vietnam on Tuesday, in a case that raised fears of international human trafficking, a court official and local media said.
Among the accused are two directors of social welfare centres in northern Nam Dinh province, Thanh Nien newspaper reported. Doctors, nurses and local officials are also on trial, it said.
They are accused of "abuse of power in the exercise of their public missions", a court official in Nam Dinh said, requesting anonymity.
The accused allegedly assembled false documents of abandonment to allow the adoption of 266 infants by foreigners between 2005 and 2008, according to reports in both Thanh Nien and the Phap Luat (Law) newspaper.
The arrests of the two key suspects came in July last year, three months after the U.S. embassy in Hanoi detailed endemic baby-selling and graft in Vietnam's adoption system.
That U.S. report led Vietnam to suspend a bilateral adoption agreement.
The U.S. probe found that some American adoption agencies had paid 10,000-dollar "donations" per child to orphanages after officials had forged birth certificates and wrongly identified the infants as abandoned.
In some cases, the natural parents had been cheated into giving up their babies, while other infants had been procured from illegal centres that paid pregnant women to give up their newborns, the U.S. investigation found.
Vu Duc Long, head of the Vietnamese Justice Ministry's International Adoptions Department, said then that most children sent for overseas adoption from the two Nam Dinh centres had ended up in France and Italy, and some in the United States.
The children came from a disabled children's home and a social protection centre.
Vietnam and the United States had resumed adoptions in 2006, three years after the program was suspended over similar concerns.
The trial is scheduled to last until next Monday, a court official said.
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Common adoption practices
I'd like readers to compare this practice to what's taking place in Guatemala, Ethiopia, and China (just to name a few).
I'd also like readers to see how selling children from maternity home-services (like Bethany, Gladney, and Adoptions First ) and orphanages benefits many an adoption agency operator. [See: Executive compensations at adoption agencies ]
SomeMany (adoption advocates) would like to believe adoption is a humanitarian effort -- the sort that is saving lives and building families. I believe far too many "advocates for change" are trading children for cash because it brings great salaries and benefits to those who know how to work a very dirty corrupt system.Doctors and nurses sold hundreds of babies in Vietnam
Doctors and nurses sold hundreds of babies in Vietnam
250 children sold for adoption by doctors, nurses and welfare workers
Posted: 22 September 2009
by Tessa Watkins
A baby-selling group made up of doctors, nurses and welfare workers has gone on trial in Vietnam for selling more than 250 children for adoption, reports Sky News.
The sixteen defendants allegedly solicited infants from unmarried mothers and desperately poor families and created false documents claiming the babies had been abandoned. This made them eligible for adoption.
The defendants are accused of sending 266 babies for foreign adoption between 2005 and 2008, but the nationality of the adoptive parents is unknown.
They are said to have earned up to £338 each and face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.
America is one of Vietnam’s largest recipients of adopted children, but the two countries have yet to renew an adoption agreement, which expired earlier this month. In April last year, the US embassy said in a report that Vietnam had failed to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.
http://www.madeformums.com/baby/doctors-and-nurses-sold-hundreds-of-babi...
Vietnam is not alone
Sadly, this doctor-nurse involvement in wrongful removal is neither new nor limited to Vietnam. It's widely known, for instance, in Ireland/UK and Canada, babies born to unwed mothers were whisked away by workers associated with certain charities -- charities that had orphanages and charities that facilitated adoptions. Where did these babies go? The healthy ones got sold to wealthy buyers. The not-so healthy ones... well, there are stories, very grim stories that could chill a person to the bone. [These stories don't get told as select governments prepare to issue formal apologies to the victims of institutional abuse.]
Unfortunately, many want to believe deceptive practices related to the selling of an unwed mother's baby is part of (and limited to) the dark history associated with the Closed Era of adoption. [And people really want to know why birth-records/original BC's were sealed and kept from curious eyes?] The practice has not only not stopped; the practice has expanded to married mothers in non-white countries. [See: Some Chinese parents say their babies were stolen for adoption ]
People MUST remember, deceptive practices take place anywhere money from adoption can be made. In fact, just to help illustrate doctors in Vietnam are not the only ones doing dirty-deeds, all one has to do is read a few investigative reports like Baby trade booms at hospitals and Newborn baby sold by doctor recovered to see how some babies from India are delivered to the waiting arms of anxious PAP's.
It's sad... it's sad to see how deaf and blind people can be when it comes to the adoption industry. It's sad to know many corrupt operations could be stopped if only more people would take the time to follow the money-trail. If more did their homework, more could easily see just how wrong adoption services have always been and how bad they continue to be. The question is, how many eager-beaver PAP's "on a mission to adopt" are willing to stop, look, listen, and learn?