Baby selling?
By Tom Grant
KREM2 news in Spokane
After my investigation into the so-called Wenatchee child sex ring began, I noticed that one or two Child Protective Service agents were always the ones involved in key sex ring interviews done by Detective Robert Perez. As I began asking questions about those CPS workers, I learned that one of them, Laurie Alexander, had a second job as an adoption counselor for New Hope Child and Family agency, an adoption service. She was apparently paid a salary by New Hope, but not a commission.
People in the Hispanic community perceived this as a conflict of interest and had raised concerns about it a year ago. They thought it improper that an agent of the state who had the power to remove children from families should be making money by placing children in new homes, especially if she dealt with the same families in both her professional capacities. However, the State of Washington said that was not a conflict of interest. Yet, they assured members of the Hispanic community that Laurie Alexander had voluntarily left her job with New Hope.
My investigation led to a Hispanic father who wanted his baby back. He had a child with a 17-year-old girl. The girl was living with him in California when she got pregnant. At about four months pregnant, she came back to Wenatchee to her mother. While she was there, she fell in love with another fellow. The day before she gave birth, she was put in contact with Laurie Alexander.
Ms. Alexander came to the hospital, brought a guardian ad litem for the girl, got the documents signed and the next day her baby was taken away. The girl signed a document saying she didn't know who the father was or where he was. However, she says now that she told Alexander the father's name, where he was working in California, and that his parents lived in Wenatchee. New Hope never contacted the father. It simply placed an ad in a Seattle paper, an ad in English for a man who speaks only Spanish.
Now, New Hopes attorney says it normally takes 3-4 months after the birth to get the adoption papers all taken care of. I found a witness at CPS who says the father of this baby came to the CPS office approximately two months after the baby was born. He was trying to find Alexander. He thought she had taken his baby in her capacity as a CPS worker. And he thought this was the place to get his baby back. However, Alexander refused to talk to the man. Based on my inquiry, it seems quite possible that if Alexander has spoken with the father at this time, he would have had a good opportunity to get his child back. But as my witness said, she wouldn't give him the time of day.
Then comes the truly puzzling part. The father says he had no other contact with Alexander or New Hope. There certainly is no documentation about such a contact in the adoption file, according to New Hope. But when the child is 10 months old, after the adoption of finalized, the father gets a letter from the adoptive parents, mailed to him at a Wenatchee address by New Hope. It says, "Thank you for the wonderful gift." The father does not think it's a gift. He thinks its a theft. And if New Hope didn't know who he was or where he was when the baby was born, or when the baby was age two, how did it know how to find him when the baby was 10 months?
New Hope and Laurie Alexander declined to comment on most of this. I have spoken with other mothers who tell horror stories of their own, however. In one case, the mother was an illegal alien. The counseling she got from Alexander was that she wouldn't be able to keep the babies since she couldn't work in this country and couldn't make money. I don't understand how the counseling was handled, however, since the girl couldn't speak English and Alexander can't speak Spanish. Even more puzzling is how the girl understood what she was signing. It was written in English and she swears there was no translator to tell her what she was signing.
Can you call all this "baby selling?" The father who lost his child says it is. He says children are not animals to be bought and sold. He is now in contact with an attorney in an effort to try to get his child back.
One other note: the regional administrator with CPS assured me that Alexander no longer was associated with New Hope. He said she'd left New Hope a year earlier. The CPS office in Wenatchee said that Alexander no longer worked for New Hope. But when I called New Hope, they did confirm that she still worked there. The regional administrator insists he wasn't being disingenuous, he just didn't know. I see it as just one more example of the misinformation I've encountered in my dealings with CPS.
Tom Grant tgrant@comtch.iea.com
Reporter, KREM-TV, PO Box 8037, Spokane, WA 99202
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