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]]>The Government of Guatemala's Consejo Nacional de Adopciones (CNA) has agreed to a process for certain adoption applications pending under the CNA's processing authority. The U.S. Department of State and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will contact affected families to provide detailed information regarding the next steps. We anticipate that the CNA may identify additional cases for processing at a later time. The general outline of the planned process is as follows:
The CNA will initiate the process by providing the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City with the names of children identified as ready to be finalized.
The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City will then notify the USCIS Guatemala City field office. USCIS Guatemala City will contact U.S. prospective adoptive parents individually to provide detailed instructions regarding the CNA application requirements and final USCIS processing.
This process applies only to cases pending with the CNA's processing authority and not to cases pending with the Procuraduria General de la Nacion (PGN) as "notario" cases. We anticipate that the CNA will process cases on an ongoing basis. Families who have questions about the process may email the Department of State at AskCI@state.gov.
Processing questions related to a Guatemalan Form I-600 petition that qualifies as a grandfathered petition under U.S. law should be directed to USCIS at Guatemala.adoptions@dhs.gov.
Erin Siegel researched this story for years. In the many discussions I had with her, I found her to be open-minded and very interested in really understanding all the dynamics that were going on. She didn’t investigate from afar and she put herself at risk in her determination to document what really happened. In my mind, all of these things were evident in the book.
The sad truth is that this underbelly in adoption from Guatemala did exist. The story details how the worst-of-the-worst operated. It also dives into how half of the problems with adoption are a manifestation of ills that plague Guatemalan society as a whole in ways that are difficult for us to imagine.
We can’t run away from, deny, or create excuses for what happened to Fernanda, her family, and the Emmanuels. There is no one claiming that this case represents the whole of the adoption system. And there is no way to justify a single such case because it was the exception. In my mind, we collectively need to realize it and fight to ensure adoption systems can function without these criminals being able to consider such heinous acts.
I realize this isn’t much of a review. But what can I say? It was easy-to-read. It did a good job of describing the system so all readers could understand it without generalizing so much that people like us are screaming about it missing things. Factually, I found two minor errors that I have since shared with Erin, neither of which is relevant to the main story. My biggest issue was honestly that there were too many typos, something which I find plagues all print media today. The worst of which was of course my last name being misspelled once
With all that said, the depiction of me and Guatadopt did not “make me happy”. Up front, I am not claiming any bias or any inaccuracy about either in the book! As I read it, realizing it isn’t a book about Guatadopt, I put my ego aside to be objective. So what follows is not a “my side of the story” because that’s not necessary. What it is, though, is a chance for those of our readers to better understand what Erin would have written had she unwisely decided to delve deeper into my involvement in this case and overall at the time.
Unlike most families I communicated with years ago, I do vividly remember Elizabeth Emmanuel contacting me. It was just a day or two after the Dateline NBC story aired and I was in New Mexico for a sales meeting talking to her in a hotel lobby that was under renovation. At the time, I was unaware that Elizabeth was a little skeptical of Guatadopt and as a result didn’t share 100%. Please don’t read any animosity or anger into that because there is none and if I was in her shoes I may have been the same. (For the record: Guatadopt never received a penny from ASG for the ad on the site. We put it there because so many people asked us for their contact info and because they had helped many families with basic info free-of-charge.)
To speak of skepticism, I admit I had some about Sobrevivientes. At the time, we had never seen evidence of a kidnapped child actually being adopted. We knew attempts had been made, but we wrongly believed that the Embassy approved doctor offices doing DNA samples were secure. We had become very concerned about the number of cases we saw turning into abandonments because it was a trend that stood in the face of conventional wisdom that “judicial” adoptions were not the problem.
Back to Sobrevivientes… When they got into the press, Guatadopt reached out several times trying to help, offering to post the pictures of the abducted children. At the time, we had the best vehicle available to reach the group of people most likely to (a) recognize one the children if they were in the adoption system (b) want to ensure this child returns to his/her family. For example, even if the adoptive parent chose not to come forward, there were good odds that someone else in the Guatadopt community would have seen the person’s referral pics. I mean let’s be real, we all loved to share pics of our children-to-be. Despite numerous attempts, Sobrevivientes never replied. Maybe it was our ego or maybe it was healthy skepticism in a politically charged environment, but it seemed to us that if this was all legitimate, they’d have taken up any offer of help. As such, we were not sure if the stories being presented were exactly as they appeared.
I did receive some criticism around this time for how I reacted to the hunger strike. With hindsight being 20-20, I do apologize to all the mothers for the doubt I placed on the veracity of their stories. It was never intended to deny their rights to have their children back in their hands. It was never to deny that there were abuses in the system. It was more that kidnappings seemed unnecessary in the adoption system and near-impossible to move through the system. There were DNA tests showing a maternal connection. The requisite conspiracy seemed more far-fetched than the possibility that women had changed their minds and attorneys were unwilling to do the right thing in that event. But I was wrong and I feel horribly for it.
One of the things I did after Elizabeth contacted me was to check with some of my contacts to see what they knew about this case. Two sources came back to me with the same story. They had heard that Mildred (Fernanda’s mother) had relinquished the children but then had tried to offer them to other attorneys for more money. These two sources had both been proven trustworthy in the past and had no known connection to one-another. So we’re talking two “independent” sources saying the same thing. One of the sources was the investigator referred to as “Pablo Hernandez” in the book. While I won’t divulge who the other was, I think it is important to say that it was not Susana, who by that point in time was pretty upset with Guatadopt. It is clear now that, for whatever reason, what they told me was incorrect. At the time, it seemed more plausible than the wild story portrayed in the newspaper, which by supposition indicted the sacred DNA sample sites.
Elizabeth could confirm that my position if in fact this had been about a mother’s children going to the highest bidder, never once did I support anyone hiding the children or taking any action other than the attorney with the children brining them into the court system with full disclosure and transparency. And of course my position was irrelevant anyway
Not coincidentally, the meat of the book occurs during a period of time when my personal faith in the system was diminishing. If one could plot the tone of Guatadopt over the same period this would be clear. The truth is that things seemed to be rapidly deteriorating based on the number and type of things families came to us with. Things were getting ugly and we were doing what we could to help it. We were supporting the families who refused to be victims to adoption service providers they thought had wronged them. We were giving PAPs as honest and direct of advice as we could. In a few cases, we helped get information into the hands of those who could do something with it. And at times, those same sorts of folks came to us for help. Maybe I’m being defensive but the depiction in the book, without attacking its accuracy or intent, was more of someone trying to maintain the status quo and that was not the case.
What I have had to come to terms with since that time is this reality that children were kidnapped and made it through the system. No, I don’t believe there were many, however it is that one would go about quantifying “many”. But we now know it did happen and I regret it took me as long as it did to embrace that reality.
It’s important to point out a distinction in that last paragraph and that is the part about kidnapped children actually making it through the system. Sick and stupid people did horrible things. There was one mutilated child found where it appears some such monsters actually believed they could sell her organs. We knew from the Dateline story that kidnapped children had entered the system, but had no evidence that any had exited it and joined a family in the United States.
Most of our avid readers know that much of our work was done behind the scenes, helping individual families with an open ear, compassion, honesty, and experience. And when I combine that with how our status made us privy to pieces of other things, well maybe I should be the one writing a book. We pieced together many puzzles with some amazing results. Heck, Finding Fernanda is evidence of that. For while I write this defense-of-sorts, the reality is that Elizabeth Emmanuel first made the connection as a result of reading a Prensa Libre story posted on Guatadopt. Who knows where Fernanda would be today without the site. For that, I am immensely proud. But then there is the other side.
My children are my life. I cannot fathom someone taking them from me. And for that, combined with my combined Guatadopt experience, I shall forever live with something between guilt and sadness, maybe some remorse, for what I could have done. I know in my heart with 100% certainty that never once did I act in a manner that was anything but ethical. Never once did I knowingly allow anything that meant a mother would involuntarily lose a child unless a court deemed her unfit. Nonetheless, “if I had only known then what I know now” bears a toll.
It would take a full length novel to go through this all but I am going to share some things I’ve never before disclosed publicly as I get this off my chest. It involves kidnappings and all this what I now know stuff. And it revolves around the same time period as the book.
In the aftermath of the Mary Bonn arrest and Reaching Arms International investigation, we were helping many families. And what we found from those impacted was at times frightening. If one digs back through the state of MN decision to remove RAI’s license, I believe you can see some of the detail. But the long story short is that there were children involved whose history and origin was not certain. And based on what I know now, there were similarities to the scenarios in now verified kidnappings. To be clear, these adoptions were never going to happen. The process was not moving. We had no idea where the children were physically and so far as we could tell, odds were that some scumbags were renting out their kids to other scumbags to make it appear as though these children were relinquished. Today, I think at least some of the kids were likely abducted. I don’t know what we could have done back then even if we had thought them abducted. But this does not change my regret/remorse. For the record, none of those cases were directly tied to Mary Bonn and I have no evidence that RAI would have known their origin. I am making no accusations explicit or implied that either Mary or RAI were complicit in this.
And then there is one case that is different. A case that we learned of shortly after Dateline aired and shortly after Elizabeth Emmanuel read about Mildred’s story on Guatadopt. But this is the case of a family who never went to the newspapers and who never got the attention of Norma Cruz. Imagine this scenario. At one point in time, you are helping a family get a child out the hands of someone who is working under an alias because he/she was banned by the embassy. The case is not moving. As part of this, the child physically moves to a safe hogar even though no one is confident the case will proceed. But at least we figured the child would be safe and in the courts if need be so. Months later, when we’d lost touch with the case, we discover that this child was kidnapped. This was not an infant and we were able to have the child’s parents verify it from pictures the PAP had when the child was at the hogar. Unfortunately, by this time the child had left the hogar and been given back to the adoption service provider, whereabouts unknown.
We went to great lengths to try locate this child during a period that was one of the most stressful of my life. We spent thousands of dollars out of our pockets (actually every penny of profit the original DoGood LLC made) for a private investigator and to keep the child’s family safe during the search. We made sure that the US Embassy and officials in Guatemala were informed. In fact, we were told that the inside of every Embassy window that does the visa interviews had the child’s picture taped to make sure the child didn’t slip through with a false identity. But we were never able to locate her. I can’t find the words to describe the permanent impact this has had on me. It is not guilt because we did all we could and acted properly based on our limited abilities, yet that doesn’t remove the wondering about how it could have turned out right. And as a father, that wondering is painful.
One last note of interest is that from everything I now know, every verified kidnapping had some connection to the same cast of characters involved with Fernanda. I can only hope that means they were the only such ring, though that is far from certainty. And of course there is a ton I don’t claim to know about all the public cases so someone can correct me in the comments if I am wrong about that.
So where does this all leave me? With all this remorse has my overall position changed? Do I now wish I had chosen to advocate for ending adoptions from Guatemala? Do I regret having been a ICA advocate and promoting the things I did?
The answer to those questions is almost entirely “no”. I support ICA and I think these laws that end the systems are wrong. We don’t disband the stock market when a few traders act illegally. We don’t end college football or the Catholic church because of child abuse. In fact, the real problem and answer is exactly what I advocated for many times –rigorous enforcement of laws and prosecutions of those that break them. If you read Finding Fernanda, this fact will be clear as day. Mildred’s courage is amazing and the lack of attention she received from law enforcement is inexcusable. The fact that the perpetrators are free today shows the exact issue – because even if caught little would happen. The same goes on the US side of the equation where we have been anything but proactive. If that changed, these people would think twice before being the rotten apple(s) that ruin the barrel.
Nonetheless, even as we realized that things were getting bad, they were obviously worse than we imagined. We only get to live each moment once and we can ask no more of ourselves than to always do the right thing as we see at the time. Even when we do that, even when we objectively know we have, it doesn’t make the heart fully recover from something like missing the opportunity to right a hideous wrong. There is more to that kidnapping case that I am not getting into here that would have definitively changed the end result. But those are things I can’t change and I am sure that have caused some others to share my “if only” pain.
In conclusion, read Finding Fernanda. Selfishly, please don’t use it to create any opinion on Guatadopt or myself because it’s not a book about either. I’ve written about any second thoughts I have in this post and as you have seen, they don’t involve looking the other way or creating justifications or ends-justifies-the-means explanations.
So how can you help?The total cost of an installed stove and training on the use and maintenance of the stove is $150.Please click on the below to download your pledge form and learn more on how you can give. We thank you on behalf of the the families in rural Guatmala who will benefit from your generosity.
]]>http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/06/world/americas/guatemala-elections/index.html?hpt=wo_c2
]]>http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/210694/group/Sports/
]]>This case is going to set precedent or at least is unlike anything before. A horrible shame for all involved who love this child, and the child herself.
http://www.kctv5.com/story/15215292/parents-ordered-to-return-adoptive-child
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/guatemala-sentences-ex-soldiers-12-060-years-jail-174709252.html
]]>You can read the report here:
http://www.ccainstitute.org/images/stories/ccai_20_20_vision_program_report_-_guatemala_2011.pdf
Story One - Susana Luarca's bail was revoked and so far as I know, she is currently incarcerated while awaiting trial on a string of charges
Story Two - A war of words between CICIG and Sen. Landrieu over just how bad the old system was or wasn't
Upfront, I'm not expert on either of these stories. So if I get something factually incorrect, post it to the comments.
Before I get into this any further, I want to be 100% clear, honest and open about where I stand with regard to Susana. It’s the same thing I’ve said for years. Susana was undoubtedly a huge friend to Guatadopt and everyone who adopted from 2003 on. Without her, my children would not be my children, it’s as simple as that. She didn’t have anything to do with my adoptions personally, but without her the system almost certainly would have ended before my kids came home. It was because of this work, and the manner in which Guatdadopt became the place she updated parents, that this site had its huge popularity for a long time. (I think I could kiss her and kill her for that.) None of that relationship or history makes Susana a saint. None of it means that we did not have very serious disagreements over very serious things in both public and private settings. And most importantly, none of those things would ever make me turn a blind eye to something like kidnapping!
So what’s my point? It is to give some background or legitimacy to my opinion that from everything I know of Susana, both good and bad, she would never be knowingly complicit in a kidnapping. Read those words very carefully. In no way am I refuting the stories of these children’s mothers. In no way am I even claiming that Susana was not the attorney who pushed through the abandonment case of a child who was kidnapped. But what I have yet to see is any evidence of what I say I have a hard time accepting - that she would have done so with knowledge that she was “laundering” a kidnapped child.
Now I move on to how this all ties with the Landrieu vs CICIG debate. For those not familiar, CICIG is a UN instrument in Guatemala to fight against corruption and impunity. CICIG has done a lot of great work and I will not disparage it or moreso the fundamental necessity of its purpose in Guatemala! With that said, it issued a report detailing its findings on investigations into adoption cases.
Its finding (a portion anyway) based on looking into approx. 3300 PGN files:
From the analysis of the data gathered, it was found that over 60% of the processes for adoption contained abnormalities such as theft and illegal purchase/sale of children, threats and deception to biological mothers, and forgery of documents to carry out "adoption processes” both before and after the entry into force of the Adoption Law (31 December 2007). In many cases there are multiple and clear indications that the illegal procedures were promoted by transnational organized crime who acted along with the participation or acquiescence of state officials. Currently, the Public Ministry investigates more than 325 adoption processes which present serious irregularities.
Senator Landrieu replied that she “does not share all of CICIG´s findings" and CICIG has asked to respond with exactly what it is she disagrees with.
For me, all of this is very reminiscent of what has been going on in this debate for far too long. So I will attempt to bridge the gap of linguistics and statistics for the benefit on CICIG, Sen. Landrieu, et al.
60% of cases contained abnormalities. Approx. 10% (325 out of 3342) presented “serious abnormalities”.
For years I have tried to walk a dangerous pragmatic middle ground on the 50% of cases that had what I will dub “non-serious abnormalities”. I take these to mean all those things that happened way too often, were not compliant with US or Guatemalan law, and happened for reasons good and bad stemming from both adoption specifically and the overall societal reasons why CICIG is necessary in general. Ultimately, I am making a leap of faith that the key difference in CICIG’s mind in deeming what is “serious” is whether or not it appears that the child’s mother intended for the adoption to occur. Other things could put something into the “serious” category but I think we can all agree that logically, CICIG would not consider any case “non-serious” if they felt the mother’s intent was violated.
Some examples of what might be the worst of “non-serious” abnormalities:
US law would not allow a married couple to relinquish a child for adoption into the US. So IDs get faked to make the mother appear single.
The child was born in a neighboring country like Honduras with no adoption program. So in order to relinquish in Guatemala, a phony identity is created.
A woman wishes to relinquish but is concerned over her privacy. She worries about what might happen to her if her local community finds out, so a fraudulent identity is developed.
And of course, what happened most often in varying levels and degrees, a woman is paid to relinquish her child – often the pregnancy being intentional.
Now, I am not defending any of these practices. And while all of them have the important attribute of the relinquishment being the intent of the child’s mother, they raise VERY serious issues about the child’s rights to his true identity/history, children being treated like a commodity, and exploitation of the poor by the rich among others.
However, in a world largely absent of social policy, in a country riddled with corruption where “tips” and “bribes” are commonplace, when the US has stupid rules that prevent a married couple from deciding to relinquish, where starvation and infant mortality are epidemic, the solutions to these adoption woes fall outside of the realm of adoption. And in my not-so-humble opinion, if treated solely within the confines of adoption law and policy, the solution may be worse than the problem.
So in essence, I am agreeing with both CICIG’s numbers as well as Sen. Landrieu’s assessment of them.
Now let’s move on to where the attention needs to be paid – on the “serious abnormalities” and how this ties to Susana. There is no doubt that the Anyeli case would be a serious one. Her mother says she was kidnapped. I have no reason to doubt her. The child was presented in adoption as a relinquishment. The accounts I have read claim that Marvin Bran (who is a wanted man) was the attorney and that Celebrate Children Int’l was the agency. A failed DNA test occurred. At that point, the PAPs approached Susana to take over the case as an abandonment case. No one, to my knowledge, claims that Susana had any involvement in the original referral or more importantly, Anyeli’s entry into the adoption system.
You can click here for Susana’s description of the case but it’s pretty simple. In Guatemala, the process in a case like this was for an attorney and/or hogar to present the child to a judge who can then rule whether or not to grant guardianship to that attorney/hogar. The judge also ultimately hands down the decision on whether the child is adoptable/legally abandoned.
So the question becomes this as it relates to Susana - what evidence is there that she had any knowledge that this child was kidnapped? Because to me this is a major question. The case obviously falls into “serious” but might Susana’s crimes, if in fact she committed any, fall into the “non-serious” category of how, right or wrong, things got done. And if so, what should the penalty be for it?
If it was common practice to move a case to Mixco where there was an “adoption friendly” judge, is that or should that be criminal? What if the alternative was the likely Guatemala City judge who never grants an abandonment decree? Is that in the child’s best interest? Let’s remember that even Unicef has been extremely critical of how the courts leave children in limbo an average of 6-7 years unless there is someone like Susana pushing.
I am not here to say whether Susana did all she could to determine the child’s history before moving to abandonment. Given that the PAPs were her clients by this time, there is undoubtedly a potential conflict of interest. But it is one that was legal in Guatemala’s system and was often brought to the forefront of issues in need of reform in the system. Quite honestly, I doubt she did all that was possible to find her origins - the result here may be evidence enough of that in a moral, if not legal sense.
One can argue that there was a failed DNA test and that in and of itself should have raised red flags to dig deep and not worry about the speed of abandonment. While failed DNA tests happened they were not very frequent or common. When investigated, even UNICEF once found that the most likely causes were what I deemed “non-serious” – mom is married so a sister poses as her sort of thing. So given that, if a non-match comes in and there is no one connected to the original referral requesting the child back, what should Susana’s assumption have been?
I lack the answers. I lack a clear opinion in my own mind on some of this. The one thing I believe strongly is that it is wrong to prosecute someone for the ills of the overall system. Or at least, it is wrong to prosecute them for illegal acts they were not involved with or aware of. If Susana was negligent, but not in direct knowledge of Anyeli’s origins, then I believe it wrong to prosecute her as if she did have direct knowledge. If in fact the evidence proves that she did have this knowledge, then I can think of no punishment too severe.
And as CICIG and Sen. Landrieu, both deserving of respect for their work and passion, banter in their battle of linguistics, it seems to me as irrelevant as a debate over evolution vs. creation because in my mind the two are not mutually exclusive. The net effect of it is a dodging of the real central issues both short and long term. Short term is the hundreds of cases STILL in process and what should be done with them. How can they finally be resolved safely? Long term is how to find a way to create international adoption systems that don’t end up with the dark legacy that clouds so many, Guatemala included.
As things stand today, the problems move on to the next country when one closes down. Little is done to address the systemic reasons for the adoptions and the corruption in the first place. Those of wealth and power are rarely held to account for their actions and the victims are almost always those most vulnerable. And this is a shame!
Please take a moment to sign the petition and also put the word out to all family, friends, and supporters!
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/thank-you-senator-landrieu.html
Senator Landrieu is a longtime advocate and voice for children all around the world living outside of parental care. She is truly a person with an open mind and giving heart.
Signing the Thank You letter takes a minute and we ask that you consider sharing with your friends, family and supporters.
Thank you
ann
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/23309/Bar_Mitzvahs_With_a_Marimba_Beat/
Most of all, I say it is a must read because as I read this story, I thought aout how much the general nature of the "mystery" echoed how things went down in adoptions. I thought about all the times PAPs turned to us to help figure out the truth behind cases and how that truth turned out to be something logic would never have pondered, as occured in this Rosenberg story. And as we continue to see cases regarding the aftermath and corruption allegations with adoption, this story is a good one to keep in the back of your mind when trying to determine "the truth" and how with all things Guatemala Adoption (and beyond), things were not black and white.
http://www.newyorker.com/services/referral?messageKey=477aeafa8283b1bd5643b68fe4f69d15
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