Owner of Guatemalan adoption agencies denies wrongdoing

Owner of Guatemalan adoption agencies denies wrongdoing

August 14, 2007

The Associated Press

ANTIGUA, Guatemala: The U.S. owner of an adoption agency under government investigation denied any wrongdoing Tuesday as a judge ruled that 46 children may stay there while their legal status is being determined.

Clifford Phillips of Deland, Florida, who runs the Casa Quivira with his Guatemalan wife, lawyer Sandra Gonzalez, issued a statement to the news media expressing shock at a Saturday police raid on the home.

"I do not know why the Guatemalan police decided to raid Casa Quivira and to malign our work and our staff," Phillips wrote. "I do not understand why they fail to recognize or even mention that the statutes of Casa Quivira are duly recognized and approved" by the government.

Phillips and Gonzalez were out of the country but expected to return in a few days.

A Guatemalan judge decided Tuesday to allow the agency's current children, who range in age from a few days to 3 years old, to stay put under the care of the Presidential Secretary of Welfare while investigators attempt to clarify whether any were stolen or coerced away from their mothers. On Monday, the judge had ordered them to be sent to shelters.

"It's not a good idea to move them," said the Secretary of Welfare's deputy director, Sully de Ucles. "These are babies that have special care needs and here (in Casa Quivira) they have all they need."

Concerned would-be adoptive parents in the U.S. sent several e-mails to The Associated Press seeking to keep the children from being moved and even offering to pay the Guatemalan government for private care during the investigation.

The judge said the children may stay in the home until the government can find a suitable facility for them or until their legal status is determined, whichever comes first.

Police, soldiers and investigators from the prosecutor's office raided Casa Quivira after neighbors complained that foreigners were picking up children there every day.

The search warrant cited suspicions of "a clandestine nursery where there are stolen children."