ATTEMPTS TO ADOPT ABROAD BREAK THEIR HEARTS

Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)

Author: MARY JO PATTERSON

Ever since they were married, Doreen and Jim Vitale dreamed of having a baby. After 10 years of trying in vain, they signed up with an adoption agency that promised them not one, but two babies - much faster, and more cheaply, than they had ever dared hope.

Today, 18 months later, the Brick Township couple have lots of promises, but also broken dreams. The babies, now toddlers, are still somewhere in Honduras.

The Vitales paid nearly $9,000 to get the adoptions going and have been told they owe over $10,000 more. Each month, they say, the agency bills them $600 for foster care, $200 for cloth diapers, and $50 for medical care. The Vitales and five other New Jersey couples or individuals who contracted with the same adoption agency for Honduran-born babies filed complaints with the state. A licensing bureau has substantiated every one of their allegations, and uncovered additional violations.

And the prospective parents - all childless - wait, placing weekly calls to the American Embassy in Honduras, which is sympathetic but powerless to help.

"I am told by Children's Social Welfare in Honduras that the birth mothers surrendered the children in November 1991 and that they are legally mine. From the adoption agency, all we get is lies and runarounds, stories that the paperwork is not done," said Doreen Vitale, 37. Her husband is 43. "We're desperate for information, to know what is happening with our boys."

In the United States, a country where abortion is legal and thousands of childless couples urgently seek adoptable children, the demand for healthy white infants is high. The search often leads to Third World countries like Honduras, where unwed mothers often give up children in order to give them better lives.

Many of these adoptions are successful, bringing joy to parents and creating new families. Yet some, as these six households have discovered, bring frustration, heartache, and - worst of all - a still-empty nest. They also raise questions about the baby market, about baby-brokering, and about the circumstances under which birth mothers surrender parental rights.

The Vitales, like the other individuals who contracted for a baby with the newly formed

of Freehold, believe their children will soon be in their arms. But they are frightened by the delays and uncertainties.

"I want my baby here in New Jersey with me," said Ruth Larkin of Hazlet, a 41-year-old single working woman who signed up with the International Adoption League over a year ago. Larkin, who had run out of money trying to become pregnant through artificial insemination, said the agency promised her a baby in three months.

Like the Vitales and the others, she spent two days with her baby in a Honduran hotel last year while completing preliminary paperwork and taking the requisite psychological test. When the time came for her to give the baby back, she cried. A few hours later, Larkin said, "There I was, flying out over the ocean, realizing that I wouldn't see him for a long, long time. Suddenly, I had a million questions."

International Adoption League, specializing in Central and South American adoptions, opened last year, according to the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), the licensing agency. Since then, it has placed 12 foreign-born children, DYFS reported.

Its license shows that

is director of the agency, but the Vitales and the others said they knew nothing of Ponczek until they asked the state to investigate. They said they dealt exclusively with a woman named

, who they believed founded and ran the agency out of an office in Freehold.

Doreen Vitale said she first learned that Ponczek was the licensee this summer. DYFS, she said, told her "MaryAnn should not have been talking to us because she is not a social worker." Ponczek, a social worker in Pennsylvania, is Cacacie's sister-in-law, according to Vitale.

Cacacie, who moved to Florida in August, could not be reached for comment.

Ponczek said she could not discuss cases because they were "confidential." She added, "Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances do arise when it comes to adoption. But these people have not made any allegations of wrongdoing, and most of them will be having their babies by the end of the month. They know this."

Ponczek said her agency placed "40 some children" last year, and will place 30 more by the end of this year.

Rosalie Karpinski, a schoolteacher who lives in Jackson Township, applied for a Honduran-born infant from International Adoption League last year. Karpinski, who filed a complaint with DYFS after months of confusing delays, said she dealt only with Cacacie, too.

Karpinski said the agency had one contact in Honduras, an attorney who identified birth mothers and attended to legal matters in Honduras. Cacacie, according to Karpinski, has never been to Honduras herself.

"We found out she has never been to Honduras, and that she's never really investigated the lawyer, either. We also found out that the attorney was arrested once for 'child hoarding,' which means holding out a baby for more money," she said. "When I asked MaryAnn about it, she said, 'He was charged, he wasn't convicted.' "

Augie and Elaine Pairo, a Lodi couple in their early 40s, also filed a complaint with the state. They picked out their baby, like the others, from a group of photographs supplied by Cacacie.

Elaine Pairo said she contracted with International Adoption League because of the force of Cacacie's personality. Also, she said, Cacacie explained that she herself had adopted two children from Latin America. "She was very, very impressive, very strong, very convincing, very vivacious, very nice. It was like, we were friends."

Pairo, 43, a purchasing agent, said she was excited by the prospect of getting a baby within four months. "I wasn't too crazy about the idea of going to Honduras, but we knew it would be quick. My husband, and I too, wanted a boy, and we heard it was easier to get them in Honduras."

Their first delay came right after their introduction to the agency. Cacacie notified them that the "First Lady (of Honduras), who has to sign all adoptions in that country," developed a blood disease, Elaine Pairo said.

Court closings aggravated the delay. But the couple eventually saw the baby, whom they named Michael, in February of 1991. But in May, Pairo said, Cacacie told them the Honduran courts were closed again "due to an indictment of the Attorney General's wife selling babies."

In July, they despaired of seeing Michael again and filed a complaint with the state.

In all adoptions, there is risk. In intercountry adoptions, prospective parents have an additional risk because they are at the mercy of a foreign government that may be fickle, highly bureaucratic, or corrupt.

Doreen Vitale said that some couples who started the adoption process with Cacacie after her, now have a child. She said she and her husband wonder if they were expected to pay someone - somewhere-more.

"Maybe because we didn't offer to grease anyone's palms, maybe that's why our papers aren't moving. Well, we don't have the money. We don't even have the money for all this foster care," she said.

Sometimes countries decide, for reasons of national pride or image, that their children should not be adopted overseas.

Korea, which facilitated thousands of American adoptions, now considers adoption applications only for racially mixed, or handicapped children. In Romania, where hundreds of prospective parents descended after hearing that orphanages were overflowing with abandoned children, authorities eventually halted foreign adoptions.

Richard Danback, chief of licensing for DYFS, said that International Adoption League is one of several new agencies in New Jersey specialized in foreign adoptions. As the number of agencies specialized in foreign adoptions has grown, he said, so have the inquiries and complaints.

Danback said an investigation into the International Adoption League verified the families' complaints. Further investigation revealed that the agency lacked standard case records on children it had placed.

Also, the inspection reports state, "The agency failed to provide casework services to waiting families. The executive director failed to discharge her responsibilities. The social work staff failed to discharge their responsibilities."

Danback said the state's goal is to see that International Adoption League gets up to standard. Shutting the agency would disrupt the lives of families who are in the middle of the doption process, he noted. The state will re- inspect the agency later this month.

Danback said he always urges prospective adoptive parents to take adoption contracts to a lawyer. He said he tells them that they have little control over the adoption process, he said.

"We say, 'You are in the hands of another government. You can have a baby at the airport and be ready to leave, but if they have a coup or whatever, maybe you won't have the baby,' " he said.

Danback said he warns them to beware of promises that babies will be delivered fast, and he urges them to study an agency's track record.

Doreen Vitale believes families should be wary of an adoption agency that emphasizes price.

When she and her husband first sat down with Cacacie to pick out a baby, she said, Cacacie displayed three photographs of three boy babies. Once they picked out the photo of the baby they wanted, she said, her husband became upset about the welfare of the other two.

"He said, 'Are you going to find homes for these others?' Then he said something about maybe our adopting another, down the road," Vitale said.

"MaryAnn said, 'If you adopt the second now, it'll only be another $1,000.' I guess I should have wondered later, when we signed the contract, they told me to keep the discount secret from other parents."