COUPLE SUES OVER FAILED ADOPTION EFFORT

Akron Beacon Journal (OH)

Dateline: RAVENNA

A Portage County couple has sued an adoption agency in St. Louis over the agency's handling of the couple's unsuccessful effort to adopt twin Peruvian girls a year ago.

Patrick and Diana Keating of Suffield Township say in their suit that they gave Family Network Inc., formerly known as Family Adoption and Counseling Services Inc., almost $20,000 and spent more on air fare, lodging and other expenses in trying to adopt the girls.

The suit, which asks $400,000, says the couple went to Peru in March 1992 and found the girls living in the village of Iquitos with their birth mother, instead of in Lima in foster care as the Keatings had been told.

The girls were underweight and in poor health, the suit says.

The couple paid a Family Network employee in Peru to move the girls to Lima for medical attention and foster care. They returned to Ohio after being told that adoption proceedings would take only a few weeks longer, the suit says.

In mid-August, the Keatings were told by a Family Network official that the adoption had been finalized a week earlier but the girls had died of cholera. Along with $400,000 in damages, the Keatings are asking the court to force the agency to prove that the girls have died.