Under pressure to clean up adoptions, Guatemala cracks down
Under pressure to clean up adoptions, Guatemala cracks down
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 16, 2007
ANTIGUA, Guatemala: Ann Roth mortgaged her Chicago home to adopt two 9-month-olds from Guatemala. Now the future of her babies is caught up in an international crackdown on a country that sent more than 4,000 babies to U.S. homes last year.
Roth's children are being watched by police carrying assault rifles after their raid on the Casa Quivira adoption home in this colonial tourist hub. Guatemalan officials argue the home's paperwork didn't meet legal standards. But parents and the home's directors say the raid was politically motivated after U.S. pressure to clean up a largely unregulated, multimillion dollar industry in which some brokers steal babies.
Since Saturday's raid, U.S. parents have flooded the U.S. Embassy with desperate calls and complained in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that the temporary caretakers were failing to provide the babies with proper food and medical care and clean conditions in the orphanage, allegations the government denied.
"PLEASE help us keep our babies safe. This is the scariest thing I have ever been through," Roth wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
At the same time, Guatemalan parents like Carlos Rivas are looking for their kidnapped children at Casa Quivira. However, none of the seized babies matched the picture Rivas carried of his daughter Esther Sulamita Rivas, who was stolen from his shoe store in Guatemala City in March when she was 6 months old.
"We thought that with so many children here, there's a good chance we would find her," said Rivas, adding he wants "a solution to this hell that many Guatemalans are living through."
The raid on Casa Quivira is the biggest in a string of recent raids on dozens of adoption homes. The owners of Casa Quivira, Clifford Phillips and his wife Sandra Gonzalez, a Guatemalan attorney, say all the babies have been properly surrendered for adoption since it opened in 1996.
The U.S. has pushed for a crackdown in an industry that has placed more than 25,000 Guatemalan children in U.S. homes since 1990, so many that every 100th baby born in Guatemala grows up as an adopted American. And the adoption process has slowed since the U.S. State Department warned in March about risks like conflicting laws, scam artists pressuring women to sell their babies and extortionists targeting adoptive parents.
But outside experts familiar with the situation say that Casa Quivira has a spotless record.
"The care and facilities at Casa Quivira are some of best we've seen in the world," said Shannon Mogilinski, spokeswoman for Embrace The Children, a St. Charles, Ill., nonprofit that works to protect destitute children in several countries. "There are other places but few have the ability, means or wherewithal to meet the needs of the children in Guatemala."
Guatemala's attorney general says his office is simply preparing for tougher rules that go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008, when the country implements the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. The new rules requires a government agency to oversee every case.
"What we've done does not mean parents will not be able to adopt. It will just take more time because the birth mothers will need to appear for DNA tests to determine their blood relation and so they can be asked again if they want to give their children up for adoption," Attorney General Mario Gordillo told The Associated Press.
The U.S. Embassy last week began requiring a second DNA test proving the adopted child in a visa request matches the child in the initial paperwork.
Casa Quivira appears to have fallen afoul of a previously unenforced 2003 law that requires caretakers of children in pending adoptions to obtain court-determined legal custody, not just papers signed by notaries. According to an U.S. Embassy statement, "no court custody orders were located for any of the children" at Casa Quivira.
Few involved have confidence that Guatemala's already-overwhelmed court system can rule on thousands of adoption requests each year.
But "the law is the law and we have to start enforcing it," said Carlos Azurdia, the federal agent in charge of the case.
Casa Quivira's lawyer, Sandra Leonardo, was arrested along with the home's notary, Vilma Desiree Zamora Perez, on charges of illegally processing paperwork.
"There is not one stolen child in the house, and we can prove the legality of all of them," Leonardo said. "They talk about illegalities and incomplete records, but they didn't give us a chance to show anything. They just took us in."
Phillips said birth mothers are given several opportunities to change their minds.
"We are shocked at the illegal raid on Casa Quivira, and are working to make sure that the 45 children in our care continue to receive the high quality, professional care that we work so hard to provide," he said in a statement.
Roth said in a telephone interview that all her adoption documents have been seized.
"It shakes your foundation to know you have no idea what is going to happen," said Roth, 37, a child educator at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. "I fear that the government is going to take these kids, and we won't know where they will go."
Roth and her husband, David, visited the home three times, and spent July taking care of the two babies, who are from different mothers. She described it as "a U.S.-style clinic," with nurses on staff 24 hours a day, nannies and daily visits by a doctor.
The Roths are considering flying to Guatemala. After dealing with infertility problems and preparing their nursery, they are determined not to give up on their children. "We just need them to get home now," she said.
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Associated Press Writer Julie Watson contributed to this story from Mexico City.