SUCCESS OF SALVADORAN ADOPTIONS GENERATES BLACK MARKET OF BABIES

Miami Herald, The (FL)

SUCCESS OF SALVADORAN ADOPTIONS GENERATES BLACK MARKET OF BABIES FEES PAID BY U.S. FAMILIES FUND CHILD THEFT, PEDDLING.

Author: SAM DILLON Herald Staff Writer

Dateline: SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador

The adoption of Salvadoran children by U.S. parents has spawned child thievery, baby peddling and fraud in what has become a million-dollar business here.

Police recently charged the common-law wife of a military officer with stealing three children, including the son of her former maid. The woman allegedly delivered the toddlers to a child-procurement ring for $160 each.

A recent U.S. Embassy investigation discovered that the lawyer with the heaviest El Salvador-to-U.S. adoption caseload -- handling an estimated half of the 200 cases approved each year -- has consistently provided false addresses on adoption documents and has himself been implicated in baby theft.

Police have detained several other lawyers for trafficking in minors recently, Salvadoran newspapers reported. Municipal officials in several towns have been caught issuing phony birth certificates. Two men were arrested last week in Santa Ana, west of the capital, accused of buying children for $400. Convictions, however, are rare.

On the other hand, some honest lawyers and judges work overtime to match deserving U.S. parents with Salvadoran orphans. "It's a delicate balance between trying to help children and trying to turn a buck on children," an adoption lawyer said.

U.S. parents regularly pay $5,000 in legal fees alone to adopt a child, lawyers and U.S. Embassy officials say. A fair price for legal fees, U.S. Consul Fernando Sanchez says, is $1,000 to $1,500.

In addition to legitimate visa and legal fees, some of the dollars go to baby scouts who persuade destitute parents to give up their children, and to the keepers of clandestine nurseries where children are fattened to improve their appearance, The Miami Herald learned in a two-month investigation.

Most of all, the money goes to lawyers, who not only maneuver children and parents through El Salvador's byzantine maze of legal requirements, but in some cases manage the teams of baby agents and nurseries.

During interviews with lawyers, judges, police, U.S. consular officials, orphanage administrators, baby agents and an accused child thief, there emerged a picture of the system that produces babies for adoption by U.S. parents.

There are thousands of Salvadoran orphans; authorities refuse to estimate how many. Some are orphaned by political violence. Some turn up in baskets at garbage dumps. Some are abandoned in the teeming maternity ward of San Salvador's Rosales Hospital.

However, because of the complex legal paperwork necessary to establish their identities and transfer custody, only a few dozen of these children become available for adoption each year.

Instead, the majority of youngsters adopted by U.S. parents have been enticed from parents -- and often separated from brothers and sisters -- by paid agents who prowl the poorest barrios in search of children.

Sometimes the system breaks down, separating children from their poverty-stricken natural parents but failing to place them with adoptive families.

In one recent case, a mother gave up her two daughters to a baby scout. The children were found in a police raid on a clandestine nursery, turned over to juvenile officials and are now in a state-run orphanage. Their mother refuses to take them back.

"In order to have a clean conscience, I prayed and asked God to help me find kids," a baby scout said in an interview last week. The scout was paid $160 for each child he turned over to an adoption lawyer. "Whenever I prayed, I'd find a child," he said.

For three years, the agent said, he hunted children in "really poor neighborhoods." In that time, he said, he persuaded some 50 mothers that to give up their youngsters was a "great opportunity."

" 'You have to harden your heart a little, but it's for the child's own good,' " the agent said he told mothers. "I felt this was human work, exciting work, social work."

The system feeds off desperation.

"I'm living like a beggar and I can't feed my children," the young mother of a 16-day-old baby told the agent. "If you want me to give her to you I will, but please take her now. Do you want to see her undressed?"

She unwrapped the child. "There she was, legs, ears, perfect," the agent said.

After persuading parents to give up their children, the agent said he had them sign a legally stamped document bearing the child's name and birth certificate number. Later, the lawyer he worked for would fill in the documents as legal abandonment papers, the agent said.

According to Salvadoran adoption law, there is nothing illegal about baby scouts receiving money for children -- as long as the children's parents are paid nothing.

In many cases, while children are matched with U.S. parents and their documents arranged, they are farmed out to unlicensed, untrained and unregulated babysitters, often called "social workers."

Many of the children from destitute families are brought in "almost destroyed," according to one babysitter detained recently by police. A medical certification is required for U.S. adoptions, and the task of the "social workers" is to feed the undernourished children to health -- and to "teach them manners," a source familiar with the system said.

To adopt a Salvadoran child, American foster parents must not only fulfill all the local requirements but also obtain a U.S. visa. The entire process can be frustratingly complex, often lasting a year or more. Most would-be parents work through one of the 300 U.S.-based international adoption agencies, which in turn hire Salvadoran lawyers.

Attorney Roberto Del Cid, 35, is the lawyer who has recently handled the largest number of U.S. visa cases, up to half the total, according to U.S. Consul Sanchez.

In February, Sanchez said, "we detected something unusual in Del Cid's cases -- irregularities." Investigating the nine visa cases Del Cid had pending that month, consular officials called the phone numbers listed for the children's donor mothers.

"Many were stores, and others were post offices. No one knew the mothers," a consular official said.

Del Cid was called in to the embassy for questioning, and Sanchez said he found the lawyer's answers "unsatisfactory." It appeared that Del Cid was using false addresses to channel adoption cases to friendly judges, a consular official said.

Sanchez has requested that the Salvadoran attorney general investigate Del Cid.

"There was enough evidence to indicate that Mr. Del Cid's professional standing and reputation was not high enough to be considered honorable in future visa cases," U.S. Vice Consul Louis Menyhert said after his investigation. "Mr. Del Cid's declarations clearly implicated him in the theft of children."

Del Cid has sought adoption cases through a Massachusetts- based social worker who has located clients for him through agencies across the United States, U.S. adoption officials said.

Last year, Del Cid's average adoption legal fees were $3,000, U.S. adoption officials and U.S. consular officials confirmed. This year, he is asking $6,000.

In a telephone interview Friday from Houston, Del Cid said the false addresses that appeared on his visa applications were the fault of his secretary. He said she had not known the correct addresses.

About the U.S. consul's decision to prohibit him from entering further visa applications, Del Cid said: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. The U.S. consul can do whatever he likes."

In the wake of the Del Cid controversy, Sanchez complained that his office is too understaffed to make thorough investigations of all adoption visa requests. Furthermore, in

violent El Salvador, he is reluctant to send his officers into the field to check out applications.

"I don't want them to get their heads blown off," Sanchez said.

In sworn court testimony recently, Rosa Rodriguez and Ester Salazar, both young, unemployed servants, accused the 28-year- old common-law wife of a military officer of stealing two of their children.

The two toddlers, as well as several other children believed stolen, turned up later in a police raid on a series of clandestine nurseries allegedly run by Roberto Del Cid and his brother Ruben.

The accused child thief, Marta Urrutia, has denied stealing the children. Ruben Del Cid has admitted under oath that he paid Urrutia $480 for three youngsters -- two of whom turned out to be the sons of Rodriguez and Salazar.

Rodriguez, who worked briefly as a maid for Urrutia three years ago, said her former employer visited her several times early this year, giving her gifts of cosmetics and food -- and doting over her five children.

In early March, Rodriguez said Urrutia asked to "borrow" four of Rodriguez's and Salazar's children, saying she would take them to a circus. Instead, Urrutia brought the children to Ruben Del Cid, and offered them for adoption, Ruben Del Cid said in a sworn statement later.

Although the boys had no identification documents, Ruben Del Cid admitted he paid Urrutia $320 for two of them.

Del Cid rejected two of Rodriguez's boys as too old for easy adoption and Urrutia returned them to their mothers, saying that the others were sick and were with a doctor.

After a week of waiting, Rodriguez went to the police. "That's when I figured out Marta was stealing kids," she said. Meanwhile, another mother had also accused Urrutia of stealing her six-year-old boy. Ruben Del Cid admitted paying $160 for that boy, too.

On March 14, police arrested Urrutia and two officials of a small town where she had allegedly used a false U.S. Embassy identification card to obtain phony birth certificates for the stolen children.

In raids on their legal office and three clandestine nurseries, police detained Roberto and Ruben Del Cid, one of their scouts, and several of their "social workers." All were later released without charge, except Urrutia and the two municipal officials accused of selling false birth certificates.

Urrutia is charged with child theft -- as well as theft of furniture from a former landlord. The child theft charge is punishable by three months to one year imprisonment. According to her defense attorney, the furniture theft charge is more serious.