Adoption and Deportation

The United States of America - land of the free?

Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,Send these, the homeless,Tempest-tossed to meI lift my lamp beside the golden door!

US law immigration laws and state adoption laws can be used to snatch kids away from their countries, send them helplessly back, and separate families against their will.

US law, until recently, relied on those who adopted internationally to file for citizenship for their children, some adoptees have been - or are faced with - deportation to a country now foreign to them.  These tragic situations dispel two myths: 1) that adoption creates "forever families," and 2) that adoption is "the same as if' a child is born to" their adoptive parents - despite falsified birth certificates that make it appear so. These adoptions are mere shams and are a shameful abuse of people's lives.

Shame, shame, shame on the U$A and our too lax adoption policies and practices that fail to protect innocent children we so glibly claim to "rescue" as we use immigration laws as a yet another excuse to create more faux "orphans" of living, caring parents.

Give me, give me, give me.... translates onto give us your children and we will discard them like garbage when we are displeased or simply we because we "forgot" or never got around to fining a paper that is vitally important for them. Or we take the kids and discard the parents like so much unwanted trash.

The laws requiring adoptive parents to file for citizenship changed in 2004, however, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), "a large number of adoptees have been deported in recent years. Many of them said they were unaware of their non-citizen status." 

Jennifer Edgell Haynes was adopted from an Indian orphanage by an American couple from Atlanta Georgia via American Aid for International Adoption. She was seven years old.


"Unfortunately the adoption was a fraud and within a year of arriving in the United States I found myself placed with a foster family who later adopted me, where I was sexually abused and physically beaten. Thereafter for the next ten years I was shuffled from foster home to foster home," she said.


All the while Jennifer had no reason to doubt her American citizenship. She married and has two children. But in 2008 she was deported back to India as a result of a minor drug charge and is now desperately trying to return to her husband and children. She was reunited with a brother in India but longs for her children.


Kairi Abha Shepherd faces a similar fate. Born in India, Kairi, now thirty and diagnosed with MS, was adopted by an American single mother from Utah in 1982. When Kairi was just eight years old her single adoptive mother died of cancer and Kairi was cared for by "guardians."


In 2004 Kairi was convicted of forgery to support a drug habit. The Indian government is begging for compassion but the US government, so far, says she must be deported simply because her adoptive mother or guardians never filed for citizenship on her behalf.


A Korean-born woman, unnamed by the press, was adopted at eight-months old to America was being held in detention in Arizona facing deportation in January 2011. Like Jennifer, this 31-year-old is also a mother - of three children!  The Korean consulate requested the deportation decision be withdrawn. But the US government insisted. She had been arrested twice for theft and the US was following standard protocol for ILLEGAL RESIDENTS. “Although [she] was adopted as an infant, she is only a green card holder and not a citizen.” 


Blanca Catt was born in Mexico and smuggled into the US as a toddler. She was then removed from allegedly abusive parents and placed in foster care in Oregon. She was placed with the Catt family when she was five and adopted by them 3 years later. Blanca committed no crimes. She found out when she applied for a driver's license at 16 that no one ever filed for citizenship for her and faced deportation.


"The state's not really denying that DHS messed up," said Blanca's attorney, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Catt and her mother. "The state's position is that because Blanca and Lisa didn't bring suit until October, 2009, it's too late." 

But Oregon's Department of Justice also says its responsibility for Blanca ended the day the Catts finalized her adoption, regardless of whether her legal status had been resolved at that time. "There's no statute that requires DHS to finalize the citizenship of children in their custody," said Kate Medema, an Oregon Department of Justice spokeswoman. If the Catts had gone to Mexico to adopt Blanca, she would have automatically become a U.S. citizen when she entered the country thanks to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. However, that federal law does not apply to anyone entering the country illegally. Blanca was just 19 and very frightened, facing deportation in 2010 without speaking any Spanish. 


Despite a great deal of press surrounding her case at the time (2010) I can find no follow-up on how it was resolved.


Russell Green was born to a Korean mother and an American soldier and has lived in the U.S. for over 30 years. He arrived in Massachusetts from Korea as a 12-year-old boy, but after only a few months, his "forever parents" returned him to the adoption agency before his adoption was finalized. Russell was then placed with a single foster parent living in Brooklyn, New York who cared for older boys and who promised to adopt him. Although this foster parent renamed him "Russell David Green," he did not legally change Russell's name, adopt him, and facilitate his naturalization. Instead, he exposed Russell to alcohol, marijuana, and abuse and the state neglected to file citizenship papers.


A father of three, Russell currently faces possible deportation to Korea – a country whose language he cannot speak. 


For a complete list of 20+ such cases, see Deportation case at PoundPuppy Legacy.


ADOPTION & DEPORTATION - DEPORTATION & ADOPTION: Either way it shatter lives and destroys families


Felipe Montes is marred with two children he provided sole support of his family because of his wife's disability. She is a US citizen, he was not. On Dec. 3, 2010 he was arrested for driving without a license and sent back to Mexico and as of the last report, his children - all under five - were facing being placed with the state for adoption.


This is just one such case. The Applied Research report "Shattered Families" revealed that more than 5,000 children of deported parents or in ICE custody are currently in adoptive homes.

In just the first six months of 2011, there were more than 46,000 cases involving deported mothers and fathers who had left their U.S.-born children behind.

More than a fifth of the 391,000 undocumented immigrants deported last year were the parents of U.S. citizens.

Encarnacion Bail Romero, says her son Carlos was taken from her against her will while she was in federal custody for an immigration-related crime, and hopes to regain custody in a trial that starts later this month. Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage, Missouri who want to adopt the five-year-old boy have waged a court battle.

The case is being called part "a growing trend in which immigrants are being deemed unfit parents because they crossed the border illegally." More on this case here, and here where I first blogged about this case 12/21/10.

Threats of deportation also impact undocumented citizens and cause them to loose custody of their children. It happened to Vilma Ramirez, 35, from Brentwood, Long Island. Originally from El Salvador her lack of English skills coupled with threats of immigration caused her to allow a NYC couple to take custody of her child who she subsequently battled unsuccessfully to block the adoption of. Her story is here first blogged about here on 3/20/11.

After asking Adam Pertman yesterday why he has not spoken out about these atrocities, he has written this Huffington Post on the subject.

Reform Adoption & Safe Families Act of 1997

Sign this petition to stop Federal bonuses and eliminate incentives to destroy families!

Khrysti Martarello-Lunnar writes:

    Above you will find the link for our newest petition. As some of you know, we've created it to eliminate federal funding for children adopted from foster care. I made the decision to void the previous petition upon discovery that some of the people who signed it had, in fact, actually abused, neglected and even molested their children but signed the petition. My intention is NOT to pave the way for guilty parents/family members to regain custody of their children, nor is it my intention to eliminate CPS as a whole. CPS is needed for the children who are legitimately abused, neglected and molested at the hands of the people they love. I believe that abolishing the bonuses paid to state and local government for children adopted from foster care will eliminate the incentive to destroy innocent families. ....

Pass it along so we can quickly reach our quota for signatures. The sooner we reach our goal, the sooner some of these children may come home.

    I'm writing to ask you all to sign this new petition as this is the petition we will submit to the U.S. President and U.S. Congress. We do need a LOT of signatures but I have faith that if we all share and sign the petition, if you havent already as only ONE signature is needed, we can achieve this much needed change for our children and future generations.

PLEASE BE SURE TO USE VALID INFO IN THE NAME AND CONTACT FIELD OR YOUR INFO WILL NOT BE COUNTED BY CONGRESS!** I WILL NOT SHARE, GIVE OUT OR SELL ANY OF YOUR INFO!!

Petition Link

Thank you all so much for your support in our efforts to protect our Nation's children from abuse at the hands of the very Government assigned to protect them!! Should you have questions or concerns, you may visit our website at www.reformasfa1997.info , join us on FB at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Reformation-of-the-Adoption-Safe-Families-Act/355654914495219 , or simply reply to this email and I will personally get back to you within 24 hours. Thank you again and take care.

***Since the enactment of ASFA in 1997, the number of children placed in, as well as adopted from, foster care has risen at a disturbing rate. Children are being removed from falsely accused parents without tangible evidence of wrongdoing. Nearly 99% of all children in foster care are now deemed 'special needs', which further increases federal funding. The title 'Special Needs' was previously only assigned to children with documented physical, mental or psychological disabilities; it now encompasses children in therapy, those on psychotropic medications and suffering with attachment/abandonment issues as a direct result of being removed from loving parents and homes.

Bring Savaughn 2, and Amrbia, 3, BACK HOME to Their Loving Family

This story must be heard.  PLEASE FORWARD!  

Watch the imbedded video and you will see two loved and very well cared for little  for little girls. 

A relinquishment of parental rights was taken from a 17-year-old with mental health issues without the knowledge or consent of her mother and extended family who were supporting her and the children and helping with their care.

"At 16 and 17  you can't legally  sign a contract for anything EXCEPT to sign over rights to your children!!

Some laws need to be changed. They should have to check to make sure the girls are mentally competent at least.

Of course these girls aren't going to say "oh yes I have mental issues"

A lot of them don't really understand what they are doing, they don't know how hard it is to fight the system

to get your babies back.

Read the whole story and SIGN THE PETITION here

Family Adoption Services - do the right thing for these children and their family!

What's Wrong With Surrogacy

To Americans of means - especially celebs - how one chooses to have a child is a matter of choosing selections from a menu: chow mien or lo mien; red car or blue. "It's just another option."

But it is NOT. Not for the women who risks their lives to serve as Handmaids for those who use them as human incubators.

Renting out her womb to a US couple cost Amraiwadi resident Premila Vaghela, 36, her life. Trying to give a child to the couple, she died on Monday leaving her two sons motherless. But, her family has refused to demand compensation for her death.

Doctors at Pulse Hospital, where Premila was undergoing treatment, said that they would request the biological and adopting/contractual parents  -- who are overjoyed with their new baby that costs his mother her life -- to give more compensation to Premila's family.  Guess they hadn't thought to offer on their own, or were just too busy celebrating their good news.

Premila's mother, however, , more than 80 years old, had anger in her voice. "I have lost my daughter. Now, we don't want anything from anybody," she said. 

Dr Pravin Patel said that she was admitted in the hospital for four days after complaint of pain in the stomach. While she was waiting with her husband for a routine check-up, she got a sudden convulsion and had to be shifted to the operation theatre. "We controlled her fluctuating blood pressure twice and also revived her," he said. Premila's blood pressure was low and the fetus received less blood and oxygen but is OK.

BOOKMARK THIS PAGE, so you can reference it when someone lauds surrogacy as a fine "choice" or asks what's wrong with it!

And to Oprah Winfrey who hailed Indian surrogacy as a win-win, I hope you've seen this news article and make a  public retraction. It was shameful watching Winfrey chuckle about a photo of tiny little Indian woman carrying a child for a huge hulking six-foot plus man without a thought to the RISK. 

BEWARE OF TAMMY SMITH & Stones of Grace

Tammy Smith has been found guilty of forgery and conspiracy to commit custodial interference in the case of missing baby Gabriel.

Smith was not charged kidnapping or harming Gabriel, but with conspiring with the baby's mother to sever the parental right's of Gabriel's father, Logan McQuery, so Smith and her husband, Jack, could adopt Gabriel.

Smith, described as being obsessed with baby Gabriel, is also charged with forging a court document challenging McQuery's paternity.

In her closing argument Tuesday, prosecutor Angela Andrews slammed Smith as a manipulative liar, saying, "The defendant wanted this child for herself. She wanted to make Gabriel Johnson her own and she was going to do that at any cost to Logan McQuery."

During her closing argument, Smith's defense attorney, Ann Phillips, told jurors that her client "was not obsessed" and that "it's not a crime to want to adopt" a child.

But Gabriel is by far the only child Tammy Smith tried for. 

She tried for this mother's baby but failed.

AND...here's the scariest part. 

Tammy Smith, guilty of fraud and deceit in adoption practices is owner an operator of Stones of Grace whose mission is:

To give an incredible opportunity to young single mothers or mothers to be, who may feel helpless or hopeless in their ability to raise their child as a single parent and does not want to rely on the government to take care of them.  We want to give them the opportunity to raise their child in a drug free environment while going to school in order to gain a career as well as restoring hope, self love and self respect.

Our vision is to instill Peace, Comfort, Joy and love in young mothers or mothers to be.  We are able to give them peace in knowing that they have adequate food, clothing and shelter for them and their child.  Comfort in knowing that they will get to go to college or career classes to make something of themselves and one day have their own home.  Joy in the ultimate love surrounding them as they grow through healthy friendships, Christian counseling, parenting classes, Christian classes, legal services, Church, Fellowship and leadership opportunities.  Love by helping in the restoration of their families, as well learning how to co-parent with the birth father and his family if the birth father & family desire that. 

Tammy, self-described "good Samaritan" believes that "Stones of Grace will help stop the possibility of child abuse, child abandonment, domestic violence and abortion as well as empowering these women to be loving, caring, independent individuals that can be a great example to their child and others, as well as making a difference in America for the better. " She forgot to mention empower "these women" to commit fraud against the fathers of their babies.


The Stones website provides this information:

Tammi & Jack Smith

2801 East Camelback Road
Phoenix, AZ. 85016
(623) 687-1887

I hope that the Arizona attorney general is investigating this "charitable" organization that is seeking donations via its website.

Finding Fernanda

Finding Fernanda: 

Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-border Search for the Truth 

by Erin Siegal

Book review by Mirah Riben

Finding Fernanda is a riveting, powerful, excruciatingly detailed view of the underbelly of international adoption, particularly in – but not limited to – Guatemala.  It is investigative reporting at its finest, deserving of a Pulitzer…and at the same time is a heartfelt drama that makes damn good reading as a real life mystery (which tops any fiction). The author’s passion and writing skill puts the reader right in the midst of every scene of this high stake tale of kidnapping, gray/black market adoption, and international child trafficking.

Despite the title, it is really the story of one mother and her two children taken from her by criminals and her unwavering battle against disbelief, accusations against her, bureaucracy, incompetence, and death threats. Mildred Alvarado is a young mother who lived in a middle class Guatemalan neighborhood with her common-law husband and 3 children. Becoming pregnant again and leaving her cheating man, thrusts the uneducated and easily manipulated Mildred into poverty and makes her the perfect victim of the baby broking adoption pimps who exploit ignorance and poverty for a living. She is at once quite and shy and an extraordinarily brave woman of “fierce dignity” and unwavering determination who at 34 refuses to put on makeup to go to court because her father would “kill her” if he ever knew.

The other mother in the title is a brave American named Betsie Emanuel who – in stark contrast to all other adoptive parents in the book – stands up to the corruption and helps solve the case of Mildred’s two missing daughters from her home computer in Gallatin, Tennessee. Betsie is a stand-out whistle blowing exception to all the other mothers she befriended along what was to be the adoption of her sixth child (including three non-adopted). Others saw the same red flashing lights, the bribery, the lies, the changed names and dates of birth, the duplicate photos of children…and made a choice to ignore it out of “fear” not of retribution, but that they would loose out on obtaining the brass ring they sought. “No one wanted to anger [Hedberg] or risk the chance of losing a referral.” They wanted a child, no matter what the cost or what ethics or laws were bent or broken to obtain their goal.

The other characters in the book are the bible-toting, Jesus-quoting, holier than thou, Sue Hedberg, CEO of Celebrate Children International (CCI) a Christian International adoption agency in Florida and a crew of her Guatemalan “contacts,” lawyers, physicians, intermediaries, and baby finders that comprise a chain of “not me” criminals, the majority of whom – including Hedberg – have gone scot free to continue selling children.  Hedberg earned a salary $209,750 doing “God’s work” and “saving” babies in 2004 with CCI netting $2.5 million. The following year, 2005, the net revenue reached of $4.5 million, and in 2006 Hedberg’s salary was over $250 thousand.  CCI currently has adoption programs in Ethiopia and is setting one up in the Republic of the Congo, inasmuch as Guatemala is closed to US adopters. Shame for the baby brokers and child traffickers, as it’s a country of known for criminal impunity and no law against child selling. On the upside for CCI is the Hague Convention on International Adoption's failure to prevent signatory countries from adopting from non-signatory countries making Ethiopia and the Congo prime targets for agencies like CCI which failed its Hague accreditation.

CCI has been investigated by the State of Florida three times, with 19 complaints filed since 2005. DFC, which has a 3,000 plus page report on their investigation of the agency has no authority in Guatemala and nothing but Hedberg’s total denials to go on.

Whatever CCI knew or didn’t know about Mildred Alvarado’s children or any other questionable adoptions such as that of Karen Abigial are among the “murky” unknown facts washed clean by the laundering of children through a massive chain of unscrupulous and occasionally naive characters. In nations as poor as Guatemala there is a pervasive see no evil attitude toward making a buck.

Other players of note for those within the adoption community include, in no particular order: Susana Luarca, the website GuatAdopt.com, Lauryn Galindo, kidnap victim Karen Abigail adopted by the Monahans of Missouri, the Joint Council on International Adoption, Marvin Bran Galino, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, Guatemalan Judges and government agencies both Guatemalan and American. An entire chapter (6) sidesteps the story-line to detail the depth of the corruption in Guatemalan adoption. 

Between 2008 and 2010, CICGI [the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala] found 90 percent of all children who left Guatemala in adoption had been relinquished, and in many cases, illegitimately so. Some relinquishments were not made voluntarily, one CICIG investigator said, or had been made by women who were not the true biological mothers. More that 60 percent of the transition adoptions contained abnormalities, including “theft and illegal purchase or sale of children, threats and deception to biological mothers, forgery of documents to carry out ‘adoption processes…’” Guatemala’s participation in international adoption in 2008-2010 was a “lucrative form of human trafficking,” CICIG noted…

If ninety percent were relinquished, that leaves 10% abandoned, taken by the state, or truly orphaned. And with a 60% rate of abnormalities, one is very hard pressed to find substantiation to the “anomaly” or “rare” claims of the pro-adoptionist profiteers.

Spoiler alter beyond this point:

Mildred is among a very small handful of Guatemalan mothers whose kidnapped children were miraculously found and returned because they were located before being sent to the US for adoption. However, the majority of the criminals involved have not been charged nor have Mildred and her children been given any compensation for their year-and-a-half ordeal during which the children report being hit and were left with long-term damages. No one in jail, no adoption agency closing, despite the very clear fact that an alleged relinquishment was dated a full month after Mildred had filed missing persons reports for her girls.

This book should be required reading for anyone considering international adoption. And three facts need to be recognized: 1) there is no line between gray and black market adoptions and perfectly legal ones; 2) ethical, reputable adoption agencies can - and do - all too easily unknowingly place children who have been obtained illegally; 3) these atrocities are not limited to Guatemala, which has currently closed adoptions to the US. Any internationally adopted child could be a kidnap victim!  With child trafficking for adoption documented in India, Nepal, Vietnam, China, Ethiopia and elesewhere, prospective adopters need to think long and hard if they want to risk being the recipient of a stolen child.

For more see: FindingFernanda.com 

Who Does Adoption Serve?

How can we as a nation - as a society with any ethics, conscience or moral compass at all -  pretend that adoption is a social service to help children in need when the children in most need are regularly ignored whole adopters pay tens of thousands of dollars for children who may have been stolen or kidnapped or coerced from loving mothers under pretexts? And we promote and encourage more and more family dissolutions via adoptions and reward those who reap the spoils with tax benefits and kudos; societies thanks for the 'good deed' they did in taking someone's child.

In "the old days" twins and triplets were separated by adoption agencies in order to garner two or three adoption placement fees instead of just one, and also so the children could be used as human guinea pigs - without the knowledge or consent of the children or their adopters - studied to help unravel the nurture/nature controversy. Oh, we've evolved!  That is no longer done (we hope).

Now, with domestic infant adoption privatized it's anyone's game!  I recently heard a story of a couple who, after five failed IVF treatments found a family with 3 or 4 kids who could not afford a new baby on the way and decided to place it for adoption. They housed the mother and her children for nine months and adopted the newest member of this family. Then, they shut the door behind them. No further contact with a family they had cared for all that time...full siblings to the child they planned to raise, and no interest in maintaining contact. Whose interest was that in?

About 16 months later, they received a phone call from the attorney who had arranged the adoption. They were informed that the mother was expecting again and wanted them to have the child so the siblings could be raised together.

The adoptive mother had just missed a period and didn't dare dream it was possible that after all the failed IFV she could be pregnant, but she stalled off answering the attorney until three months passed and she was sure it was true.

Well, now, about to have a baby of her "own" she didn't "need" an extra adopted one! It's like the furniture company called and said we just got in some chairs that match that couch you bought, would you like them? And she said, no I already have enough chairs.  This about-to-be-born child, a full sibling to a child she was raising, did not meet HER needs and so she let it go to strangers, never knowing to whom so that "her" adopted son could know his sibling.

A family member of this adoptive mother had two or three sons and said that is the baby-to-be was a girl, she'd like to adopt it. But other family members quickly talked her out of it saying how WEIRD it would be that cousins would be blood brothers. Yes, weird for brothers to be kept in the same extended family unit, but not weird at all to send them off to strangers? HUH?  I guess they feared they'd figure it out  eventually and  they'd likely want to know why neither of these relatives had thought to adopt BOTH of them! That would indeed be WEIRD... for the adopters!

My own family made similar choices. My sister told me decades after loosing my firstborn to adoption that she, newly married at the time, had considered adopting my daughter. The reason she didn't? She feared that I would get my act together and want my daughter back, and that would be too devastating FOR HER - my sister! Again, the prime consideration was what was best for the prospective adopter, not what was best for the child. Let your niece go to strangers in a closed adoption rather than risk some pain to help your sister and niece out in a time of crisis. Nice.

It is always about what was best for the adopters - the ones with all the money, power and control. And so the siblings - already severed from the rest of their family -  were separated from one another.  Against the wishes of the REAL mother who had the best interests of her children - as any King Solomon would note - in mind.  her wishes were ignored. She no longer mattered nor what she wanted. She has given up that right!  And her two children was placed in two closed adoptions and likely will go through life never knowing all the siblings they have, those kept and those placed.

Internationally, this happens all the time. First children are taken away from families and siblings initially and many times another sibling is offered for adoption. In the book Finding Fernanda, an adoptive mother turns down the opportunity to adopt a sibling of a child she is raising! What can an adoption agency do? They can't force anyone to take a child's sibling. The choice lies with the paying client to do the right thing or do what is in their one best interest.

Is such a decision not more reprehensible than a married couple with a kid or two aborting an unintended pregnancy? The child they are saying no to is not being aborted, it - and THEIR child - are being cruelly cast into lives with long-lost blood siblings without a thought to how that will hurt and effect them. Not even a self-protective thought that these kids might hate and blame their aps some day for this awful decision. Just do what it is most convenient in the here and now. Isn't that behavior that is generally - under other cirumstances (such as a pregnant young mother-to-be) defined as IMMATURE and SELFISH??? Doing what feels good right now without thought for future consequences or what is best for your child? But when APS do it no one tells them they are being selfish. 

And we pretend that adoption is serving the best interest of the children? How? How can anyone dare utter that description of adoption when there are no regulations in place to prevent such horrors from occurring? When it is a FREE open MARKET place and those who pay set ALL the rules and set them to suit THEMSELVES and no one else?!

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .” The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

What were these separated siblings allegedly saved from? There was no mention in the story of this family having abused or neglected nay of their children. No mention of drug use. No one suggested having the other children rmeoved to "rescue" or 'save" them.

No these kids were separated because of POVERTY!  In the United States of America! families loosing kids and having no control of their placement - simply because they lost their jobs. How do we justify this as in in the children's or the family's best interest? How do we as a society sleep at night tearing families part like this? Not finding other solutions for their problems?

I heard some hisses while this story was being told. Why did the $%&* mother get pregnant if she couldn't afford more kids - and the do it yet again?  We don't know how that happened whether it was  defective birth control or lack of knowledge as to proper use of birth control. But blaming the mother is no solution either. In Guatemala, for instance, women have to get birth control injections on the sly because it is such a macho culture that their husbands insist on keeping them pregnant and disallow any birth control use.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery."UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.