Cashing in on the baby 'rescue'

Irish people were unwittingly involved in a baby trade from Romania in the 1990s, EU research reveals. The myth that Romanian children need to be 'rescued' by foreigners has been shattered since Romania banned international adoptions, writes Ann McElhinney in Bucharest.

The television pictures of Romanian orphanages and the children who lived there were among the most memorable of the 1990s. These shocking images sparked a huge humanitarian effort, particularly among the Irish. For many, though, the help they brought was not enough and they became involved in "rescuing the orphans" by adopting them.

However, these rescues unwittingly involved many Irish people in a baby trade. Most children were not orphans; they had parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandparents and these "rescues" were mostly facilitated by large sums of money. Many experts believe that, tragically, this trade from Romania condemned thousands more children to institutions and made reform of childcare almost impossible.

Today, Serban Mihailescu, the Romanian minister for children, says the effect of foreign adoptions was "extremely negative" and encouraged officials to keep the institutions full of children. "The number of children in institutions increased because more and more foreigners wanted to adopt Romanian children and more and more of the personnel in the institutions worked as dealers and they pushed the children for the inter-country adoption. It's like a business, a $100 million business," he says.

The business of foreign adoptions from Romania meant the institutions continued to fill up, despite the thousands who were being adopted from outside the country. According to Mihailescu, Americans paid between $20,000 and $30,000; for Europeans it was cheaper. To put these amounts in context, for those lucky enough to have a job, the current average wage in Romania is around $120 a month and the top prize in the local version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire is $30,000. As Alin Teodorescu, a leading Romanian sociologist and special adviser to Prime Minister Adrian Nastase says: "With money like that, even God would negotiate." A moratorium on all foreign adoptions was introduced in 2001 by Mihailescu's government, under pressure from Baroness Emma Nicholson, the EU rapporteur for Romania and a former president of Save the Children. She accused the country of "selling" its children on the international market to the highest bidder.

According to Nicholson, many of the children were not simply abandoned by their parents in institutions but rather, "improper pressure" was brought to bear on parents by local authority figures for whom the lucrative trade in children for inter-country adoption was financially irresistible.

According to Mihailescu, Romania's institutions became showrooms for children. "The personnel in the placement centers pressed the families to bring the children to those centers, to facilitate inter-country adoption because of the money." Mihailescu also says that because domestic adoptions - by Romanian couples - are free, the children were not found homes in their own country.

Nicholson agrees many Romanian couples found it almost impossible to adopt.

"In a country of 23 million people, there will be plenty of couples who are unable to have a child and who have a home to give a child and want a child.

These Romanian couples were turned aside," says Nicholson. "They weren't let know the children were there. In fact in some cases, I've heard of children being whisked away when a Romanian couple asked if there were any children available for adoption," she adds.

Air traffic controllers in Bucharest, Radu and Constanta (who didn't want their surnames used) get upset when they tell of their difficulties in adopting two children, in a country full of adoptable children.

According to Radu, the adoption agencies used "dirty tricks" to try to prevent the adoption of Irene, their first child, in 1998. Initially, the agencies said the couple could not have the child because they did not live in her home county. However, eventually, the agency admitted the real reason for the barriers.

"The lawyer said the child was worth $7,000 and was going to an older couple in Cyprus," says Radu. He and Constanta were eventually allowed to adopt after he revealed he had taped conversations with the agencies and threatened to go to the media.

For their second child, Radu e-mailed all 127 agencies involved in adoptions in Romania. Only one, which refuses to facilitate inter-country adoptions, replied.

The agencies which ignored Radu and Constanta were used by some Irish adoptive parents when they came to Romania. Unfortunately for Radu and Constanta, they were in competition with Irish couples offering hard currency. Therefore, the law which required that local adoptions were given preference was ignored. And Romanian couples who managed to fight the system were given older children. The more desirable - and therefore valuable - babies were reserved for the high-paying foreigners.

USAID, the United States government agency for international development, reported on the trade last year and found the two-tier system was flourishing.

"It is rare that Romanians are able to adopt infants because such children are reserved for foreign adopters. The data for the first 10 months of 2000 show that the average age of a child in a domestic placement was approximately three years old while the average age of a child placed through inter-country adoption for the same period was approximately 10 months," the report says.

Marian Connolly, the secretary of Parents of Adopted Romanian Children, an Irish support group, agrees many couples paid for their children. "I don't agree with what happened to Radu. I paid no money . . . But no one is going to say that money didn't change hands. I know fees were paid. But the system was set up by the Romanians, you were told so much of the money was going to the orphanage," she says. Since the ban on foreign adoptions and the end of the lucrative international trade, the number of domestic adoptions has doubled.

A social awareness campaign in Romania aimed at preventing abandonment and encouraging domestic adoptions has the slogan "Casa de Copii nu e Acasa" ("A Children's Home is never Home"). The EU-funded campaign provides a free phone number. So far, there have been 4,865 calls over seven months, 1,412 of them from Romanians wishing to adopt.

Jonathan Scheele, head of the European Commission in Bucharest, says the response shatters the myth that Romanian children need to be "rescued" by foreigners.

"There was this perception that Romania was unable to look after its children, which was obviously not true," he says. Efforts to maintain contact, establish contact or re-integrate children into their immediate family or extended family were not encouraged.

"The desirability of having, what is in practice a 'stock' of adoptable children means you don't really want to encourage too much contact with the natural parents because that might make the child less easy to move into adoption," says Scheele.

According to an Irish diplomatic source, about 1,500 Romanian children have been adopted to Ireland since 1990. Tens of thousands were taken to other Western countries, particularly the US, Israel, Spain, France and Italy.

There are now well-funded campaigns in these countries seeking an end to Romania's ban on foreign adoptions. US officials have warned the Romanian government that a continuing ban could jeopardise acceptance of Romania for NATO membership.

"Inter-country adoption is always the last solution we need," says Mihailescu.

One Irish adoptive parent, who does not wish to be identified, told me she paid $8,900 for her child. The child was in foster care with a Romanian couple while waiting for the papers to be completed. Ironically, the child's happy foster family life alarmed the Irish woman while she was in Romania.

"The foster mother is brilliant with her," she says. "When the father comes in to the house [the child] jumps up and down. I'm concerned she'll get attached to them. The house is immaculate. They are beautiful people, they couldn't be nicer."

Marian Connolly agrees that, ideally, Romanian children should stay in their own country.

"We all have to agree that if the Romanian people can look after their own children it will be a great day for them . . . However, I would love the Baroness to see the children that came here years ago. Some are here since 1990 and some are receiving treatment since this time, but some of the children, even though they are getting treatment, will never reach their full potential."

She claims many children would have died if they hadn't been adopted by the Irish parents. However, Nicholson says this was a ploy used by adoption agencies and carers in Romania to get parents to abandon their children for inter-country adoption.

Radu and Constanta succeeded in creating a family against the odds. They think that inter-country adoption should be the exception not the rule.

"Inter-country adoption has always been the first option in Romania. It should be the last. The absolute last," Radu says. "We have enough parents for the children. The politicians from outside want the children. We need the politicians' help. But it should not be a trade. We should trade something else, anything, but not our children."