"Baby Brokers play God, but ultimately it's for the money."
-Lori Carangelo
The
BABY
BROKERS
(Then and Now)
"Gertie's Babies"
(Black Market Adoptees, Montana)
Skip to "Baby Brokers Directory" (by state and alphabetical name)
Skip to FBI Help for Black Market Adoptees
Link for BABIES FOR SALE on eBAY !!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ADOPTION-Website-Business-For-Sale-ADSENSE_W0QQitemZ380029784359QQ ihZ025QQcategoryZ46689QQssPageName ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/ADOPTION-Website-Business-For-Sale-ADSENSE_W0QQitemZ380029784359QQ ihZ025QQcategoryZ46689QQssPageName ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Baby Brokers are unscrupulous doctors, attorneys, agencies and "humanitarians," including licensed or unlicensed "facilitators" such as clergy, midwives and others. Author of "The Cruelest Con" (http://thecruelestcon.com), Kelly Kiser-Mostrom, warns: "Unethical practices and adoption scams do not only happen to 'adoptive parents.' 'Birth' parents, adoptees and adoption professionals are also at risk. In order for a con to be successful, often the con will hide under the cloak of legitimate professionals." Baby Brokers handle the "Black Market" (illegal) adoptions which may or may not have been legalized in court but usually involve direct payment, or "Gray Market" (questionable) private/independent adoptions in which babies are transferred directly from their parents to would-be adopters and "expenses" are paid. In some states, "baby selling" is not even a crime. The Texas Supreme Court decided only a few years ago that baby selling is "a crime involving moral turpitude... and that attorneys could take advantage of mothers as well as persons adopting" since attorneys routinely represent both parties -- a conflict of interest according to the California Bar Association, yet the practice continues in California's private or independent adoptions (which is 80% of all California adoptions).
Methods of procuring the babies include obtaining signed relinquishments from mothers under duress or coercion, admitting a pregnant woman to a hospital under the name of the adopter or falsely telling the mother "the baby died" shortly after birth and falsifying the original birth record, actual purchase from economically disadvantaged parents in the U.S. and in third world countries and outright kidnapping (see U.S. OK's Child Theft ). For the benefit of searching adoptees, the following are known Baby Brokers, both dead and alive -- an ongoing project. Browse AmFOR's search/support pages such as "Search Worldwide, Free", "The Ultimate Search Book", and "Donor Offspring/Parent Registry".
Links to other web-sites will be provided as this page is expanded, and surfing for other web-sites on Internet, using the Baby Broker's name as key-word to search, will also lead to current search/support groups, registries specific to the doctor or institution that handled the birth. Some of these Baby Brokers have been convicted, some were not discovered until long after their deaths, while others still broker babies under protection of current state adoption secrecy laws.
NOTE: "If you call the FBI office in the state you were born, they will send you a "Freedom of Information Act" form to fill out to see if they can place you with being a BLACK MARKET baby. This is all new to me. I have been searching for 22 years. I just heard of this. Hoping it will help someone else, too. Much love for your input and helping me. " - Nancy Sharp Strong
Child of political prisoners sues adoptive parents...
FALSE IDENTITY?: The 30-year-old Argentine said her parents forged papers to hide her true identity after her parents vanished decades ago
AP, BUENOS AIRES
Thursday, Feb 21, 2008, Page 7
A 30-year-old woman is suing her adoptive parents for kidnapping in a case that opened in an Argentine court on Tuesday, becoming the first child of disappeared political prisoners to press such charges.
Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan accused her adoptive parents Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez Pinto of falsifying adoption documents to hide her identity. She made no comments on leaving court on Tuesday.
Thousands of leftists and dissidents vanished after being abducted by security forces during Argentina's 1976 to 1983 military regime, and human rights groups say more than 200 children were taken and given to military or politically connected families to raise. Sampallo, who in 2001 learned that she is the daughter of missing political prisoners Mirta Mable Barragan and Leonardo Ruben Sampallo, is one of 88 young people who determined their identity with DNA tests coordinated by the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on Dec. 6, 1977, said Sampallo's lawyer, Tomas Ojea Quentin. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture center. Ojea Quentin said former army captain Enrich Berthier is facing related baby theft charges in the case. He is being held at a military unit, while Sampallo's adoptive parents are reportedly free.
Lawyers for Berthier and the Gomez Pintos refused comment when they left the courthouse. The case marks the first time a woman has taken her adoptive parents to court in Argentina. There have been at least three earlier trials involving suspected illegal adoptions dating to the dictatorship that resulted in convictions -- but the plaintiffs were not the adopted children.
Also on Tuesday, a former military officer wanted in connection with the 1972 killings of 16 leftist guerrillas surrendered, hours after returning from the US, government news agency Telam said. Carlos Marandino is the fourth former naval officer arrested this month on torture and murder charges linked to the "Trelew Massacre" of rebels who fled an Argentine prison, presaging the so-called dirty war. Marandino walked off a jet at Buenos Aires's Ezeiza Airport and was detained without resistance, Telam reported.
BABY BROKERS DIRECTORY
Katherine M. Cole
Lauryn Galindo
Marianne Gati
Mrs. Ruby Hightower
Ideal Maternity Home Babies
Attorney David Keene Leavitt
Gertrude Pitkanen
John Edward Robinson Sr.
Attorney James A. Shrybman
Lila Gladys and William Young
Alabama
- Reingold, Arlene, (NY-AZ-Mexico)
Worked with Arlene Lieberman as partners in an adoption business & together they worked through Attorney Mario reyes (Arizona), to "legalize" adoptions of 17 smuggled Mexican children and to defraud Mexican authorities by forging documents & havng women pose as the biological mothers in illegal adoptions for up to $22,000. Source: New York Times, August 4, 2005. See also "Adoptio Choice" agency in http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page673.html
Arizona
- Birth Hope, (see Kurtz, Seymour)
See Kurtz, Seymour (on this page) & "Baby Broker Watch: The Facts About Seymour Kurtz's Adoption Network," including Easter House at http://www.geocities.com/bernw5333/index.html Also Easter House Babies' registry is at: http://www.ehbabies.com - BURGUENO, Attorney Mario Reyes
Smuggled Mexican children into the United States for illegal adoptions, in conspiracy with a Medford, New York adoption agency run by Arlene Reingold and Arlene Liberman. Source: "Motives of Adoption Ring Suspect," 6-2-99 - http://www.friends-partners.org/ partners/stop-traffic/1999/0248.htm - Reyes, Attorney Mario, (NY-AZ-Mexico)
Worked with Arlene Reingold & Arlene Liberman who were partners in a New York adoption business. Attorney Mario Reyes (Arizona) handled the adoptions of 17 smuggled Mexican children & defrauded Mexican authorities by forging documents & having women pose as the biological mothers in illegal adoptions for up to $22,000. Source: New York Times, August 4, 2005. See also "Adoption Choice" agency in http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page673.html
California
- Doezie, J.
Doezie, from Villa Park, CA, pled guilty to recruiting pregnant Hungarian women to sell their babies to California couples. Source: LA Times-Orange County Edition 3-18-00 - http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/stop-traffic/1999/0739.html - Gati, Marianne
Hungarian-born Canadian/American citizen involved with a California baby selling ring. Source: CNN 6-23-96; Reuters 7-16-96. "Woman Accused of Selling Hungarian Babies": SANTA ANA, California (CNN) -- A Hungarian-born Canadian woman who allegedly brought pregnant women from Hungary to sell their babies in the United States.... Marianne Gati, 48, [was] jailed in California on charges of money laundering, tax fraud, harboring illegal immigrants unlawfully and conspiracy. Gati was arrested ... by federal agents working with the Hungarian National Police to investigate charges that Gati arranged to sell as many as 30 babies in the United States. She promised to pay each mother "$1,000 for a baby with dark features and $12,000 for a baby with light features," according to the complaint. An IRS agent investigating the case said Gati is suspected of turning a $20,000 profit on each adopted baby. Her court-appointed lawyer quoted Gati as saying she ran a legitimate adoption consulting agency." Source: http://www.cnn.com/US/9606/23/newsbriefs/ - Guzman, Nilda Gierbolini
See 11-24-97 excerpted story, "Raised in Peuerto Rico, Crystal Anzaldi To Meet Mother in California" on AmFOR's page at http://AmFOR.net/StolenBabies - Kenniker, Dr. Lorraine Eldine, (OB/GYN and adoption facilitator, Santa Barbara, 1960s; died 1972-3)
See "Baby Theft 1968?" Link on one alphabetcal list of page links this web page. - Leavitt, Attorney David Keene, (U.S. and Canada adoptions)
Leavitt was successfully sued for $8-million for conspiring to help a woman give up her child for adoption against the father's wishes. AmFOR intervened in the Kiefer case and in general, with regard to his prectice of soliciting pregnant women via newspaper ads nationwide to come to California where he is licensed to practice, then would advise them to deliver and relinquish their babies in Canada in order to prevent fathers from asserting their claims of parental rights. "The number of American children being adopted by foreign parents is a number that isn’t tracked, according to the U.S. Department of State. However, Canadian immigration statistics show that 600 U.S. born children have been adopted by Canadians since 1995... Experts speculate that the number of children placed abroad is growing; Indianapolis adoption attorney Steven Kirsh placed over 100 American-born children since 1991." Source: The Oregonian, Sunday, July 4, 2004 - Shrybman, Attorney James A.
"The Puzzling Case of an Adoption Specialist," The Dominion Post via AP by Michael E. Ruane and Katherine Shaver Washington Post Staff Writers 11-12-98; Page A1 In one case, he refused to return a baby to a young mother who had changed her mind about the child's adoption. She sued, got the baby back and an almost $100,000 settlement. In another case, a jury ordered him to pay $50,000 to a mother who placed her child for adoption and then claimed he had misled her that he was representing her and had urged her to lie. Last year, the State Department said he was part of a Russian "baby smuggling" ring. And last weekend, he was accused by West Virginia authorities of pointing a gun at a baby in a kidnapping case. Yet James A. Shrybman, 48, the controversial adoption lawyer from Takoma Park who is currently being held in West Virginia on a federal kidnapping charge, is also described as a pioneer in the murky field of adoption law, as well as a hero to scores of couples for whom he has gotten children. He has battled to bring babies and parents together with an intensity that has made him enemies. He says he, too, is an adopted child. ....Shrybman was among the first, acquaintances say, to promote the nationwide advertising by couples seeking adoptions that is now commonplace. .....He has also pioneered the use of surrogate mothers to bear children for infertile couples – advertising for women willing to act as surrogates – and now has a Bulgarian law partner to help in international adoptions. ..... Candace and Mark Stull, of Parkersburg, told state police that Shrybman had pointed a gun at their baby's head and had taken the child during an Oct. 31 restaurant meeting where they were seeking to end adoption negotiations. .....Federal authorities have had an eye on Shrybman and his adoption business since at least 1994. ....The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service investigated Shrybman for seven months in connection with pregnant Russian women who came to the United States to give birth and place their babies for adoption, said an INS official familiar with the investigation. The official said the agency also investigated Michael Theriot, a Baton Rouge, La., adoption lawyer, in connection with Shrybman and the Russian women. Theriot is also the lawyer for the couple who planned to adopt the West Virginia baby..... last year a U.S. State Department bulletin titled "Fraud Digest" described them as "facilitators" in a "baby smuggling" operation. ....The women traveled to Louisiana, where they would have babies, and then returned to Russia. Federal authorities learned of the business in 1994 when one of the Russian women gave birth prematurely in Maryland while en route to Louisiana and gave hospital personnel Shrybman's law firm address as one of her U.S. contact addresses, according to the State Department bulletin. ...."He had what we called a 'coyote' cruising unwed mother homes in Russia. Somehow they were getting visas," the INS official said....
Canada
- Ideal Maternity Home Babies, (Nova Scotia -- See Young, Lila and William, and Photo of unidentified babies, a)
- Peacock, Reverend, (Quebec)
- Young, Lila Gladys and William, (Ideal Maternity Home and "Butterbox Babies," Nova Scotia)
For detailsed information on the Youngs and their black market baby brokering in the 1930s-1940s, go to: http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/bhartlen/PAGE1.HTM
Colorado
- Levenhar, Attorney Jeff, (Small Miracles Foundation)
Disbarred in 1977 - Source: http://www.geocities.com/shasmith95/
Connecticut
- PAGANO or PAGLIANO, Mrs., (Midwife-abortionist)
Mid-wife who performed abortions in New Haven, CT, late 1930s til arrest in 1938; suspected of black market adoptions; collected fees for "burial" of allegedly "stillborn" babies but there are no birth or death records on these babies, according to one of her victims. Source: Anna & Alfred Carangelo. See "Baby Theft 1938?" page link, on list of alphabetcial page links on this web page.
Delaware
- Niles, Dr. Jerome D., ("Niles Babies," Delaware, 1930s-1940s)
District of Columbia
- American Friends of Children, (Washington, DC - See also Kurtz, Seymour)
See Kurtz, Seymour (on this page) & "Baby Broker Watch: The Facts About Seymour Kurtz's Adoption Network," including Easter House at http://www.geocities.com/bernw5333/index.html Also Easter House Babies' registry is at: http://www.ehbabies.com
Florida
- Abel, Dr. Bernard, (Jackson Memorial Hospital, Jacksonville)
- Barkan, Estelle Katz, (Florida-born; adopted in Philadelphia, NY, NJ; many finalized in Juarez Mexico)
Estelle was a friend of Helen Tanos Hope, trained by her. Estelle worked securing Florida-born babies being adopted in the Philadelphia-New York-New Jersey areas, primarily representing Jewish families. These adoptions followed the same M.O. as Tanos-Hope's, with adoptions often being finalized in Juarez, Mexico. Estelle admits to performing only a few of these adoptions, admitting to "maybe 70 or 80", but is suspected of many more, as she was active throughout the 1970s. Juarez attorney Vincente Gonzalez Santillan claimed that he finalized adoptions for Barkan and Tanos-Hope at an average rate of one or two per week throughout the 1970s. When Estelle was accused of finalizing adoptions in Juarez to make search difficult later, she denied doing it on that basis. She said she did it that way because she was finding babies for people who wanted to be parents, but the legal system at the time would not allow them to be adoptive parents. By way of explanation, Estelle said it was people who were either too old to adopt because back then there were age restrictions, or there was something about their family which would cause them to not be able to pass the home study. Estelle is still alive, and when anyone calls to inquire about their records, she , tells them that she has no records because they were all lost in a move, or a fire, or she never had them, or whatever excuse she chooses. Estelle posed as an attorney, but she was never an attorney, as she couldn't pass the bar. Her husband was an attorney, and although they are now estranged, he still practices law. She ran the adoption paperwork through him. - Cole, Katherine M., ("Cole Babies"/Cole's Clinic, Miami)
Cole Baby Registry is at: http://www.stormpages.com/colebabies/ColeReg2.htm Dr. Cole was a "naturopathic physician" in the Miami-Coral Ganles area who allegedly ran an illegal adoption/abortion clinic in her apartment house at 4725 SW 8th Street, Coral Gables, FL, from 1927 to 1963. Young pregnant girls would come to her clinic and leave without their children. The babies were either sold to parents who, for some reason were not able to adopt through normal adoption agencies, or otherwise aborted. The doctor (a.k.a.: Granny Doc) died in 1981 and left no records behind to help us find our real biological parents. Cole delivered thousands of babies between 1927 and 1963 in her clinic in Coral Gables. She housed pregnant girls, delivered their babies and basically sold those babies to couples who were desperate enough to pay her price. She stole the pasts of all those babies by falsifying the information on the birth certificates she signed. Not only did she list adoptive parents as birth parents but also changed dates, even the sex of the babies to prevent her work from being traced. She practiced for decades. Cole was arrested at least 7 times. In 1955 she was questioned in Washington, D.C. in the Kefauver hearings, which focused on black market adoptions. She admitted to "placing" 32 babies. (No records on her placements exist.) Authorities had to know what was happening. Newspapers wrote about her during that time. Her name on a birth certificate coming through the Florida Department of Vital Statistics should have been a red flag. She was arrested 3 times for the illegal abortions that she performed, once for attempted manslaughter, once for unlawful possession of barbiturates, and once for failure to file a birth certificate. She was eventually cleared of all charges except a charge related to an illegal adoption, for which she spent less than a year in jail. - Fielding, Lenora, (and husband, Jacksonville)
See Michael Chalek's web-site which includes linked AP newsstories on his discovering he had been sold for $200 for black market adoption and his successful efforts to have his adoption annulled - http://ww.adoption-fraud.com - and- http://www.adoption-fraud.com/story.htm - Gaylord, Attorney, (private unwed mothers' home)
- Hope, Attorney Helen Tanos, ("Children of Hope," Miami area)
- Richardson, Mr. and Mrs., (Mt. Dora area)
- Suarez, Ephrain, (Suarez Clinic, Miami)
- Sutera, Ruby, (Suarez Clinic, Cole's Clinic, Miami)
- Thurmond, Rebecca, (Adoption Resources Inc., Coral Springs, FL)
Smuggled babies from Costa Rica for U.S. adoptions. - Tyre, Dr., (Waterman Hospital, Eustice)
- Weathers, Dr., (Jacksonville)
Georgia
- Hicks, Dr. Thomas Jugarthy, (abortionist, "Hicks Babies," Hicks Clinic, McCaysville)
Illinois
- Baby Farms, (Chicago, 1910s)
- Easter House, Chicago, (5-5-60 to present)
See Kurtz, Seymour (on this page) & "Baby Broker Watch: The Facts About Seymour Kurtz's Adoption Network," including Easter House at http://www.geocities.com/bernw5333/index.html Also Easter House Babies' registry is at: http://www.ehbabies.com - Kurtz, Seymour, (procured babies worldwide)
Used several agencies to procure babies worldwide, many placed via Casa del Sur, Mexico, & Tzyril Foundation in same offices as Easter House (Chicago), which he founded to legalize placements, & communicated availability of babies via Stitching Suzu in The Hague, Holland. Each of the aforementioned entities handled adoptees' "home studies." His Suku Corporation, a Delaware coporation, handled legal & immigration work involved in Mexico adoptions. He also used Friends of Children (Atlanta, Georgia), Birth Hope (Phoenix, Arizona), American Friends of Children (Washington, DC), La Sociedad (Tlaxcala, Mexico). See "Baby Broker Watch: The Facts About Seymour Kurtz's Adoption Network," including Easter House at http://www.geocities.com/bernw5333/index.html. Also Easter House Babies' registry is at: http://www.ehbabies.com
Indiana
- Shapiro, Lydia, (Ft. Wayne)
Kansas
- Glassen, Dr. Mary Townsend, ("Dr. Mary"stole 4,000 babies, most from Miami/N.Kansas)
- Robinson Sr., John Edward, ("Internet Slavemaster" Serial Killer and Baby Broker)
Killed 6 women over 15 years in Kansas and Missouri, taking the baby daughter of one of them for illegal adoption. In January 1984, Lisa Stasi and her 4-month-old daughter met Robinson while staying at a Kansas City shelter for battered women. While separated from her new husband, Carl, she still kept in touch with his family. She told them that a businessman named John Osborne, later identified as Robinson, had put her up at a local hotel. She also told them he promised to set her up with a job in the Chicago area and, ominously, asked her to sign her name to four pieces of blank stationary. Then she disappeared. The night of Jan. 10, 1985, Robinson hosted a joyous family reunion with his brother and sister-in-law. The childless couple had been trying to adopt a baby for years and Robinson had told them he might be able to help. That morning they flew from their home in the Chicago area to Kansas City, just a day or so after Robinson called to say he had finally found the perfect baby, a girl. Source: "Kansas v. Robinson: Internet Slavemaster Murder Trial," Court TV, 9-23-02, http://www.courttv.com/trials/robinson/background.html
Mexico
- Casa del Sur
See KURTZ, SEYMOUR, under Illinois - La Sciedad, (Tlaxcala, Mexico)
See KURTZ, SEYMOUR, under Illinois - Reyes, Attorney Mario, (NY-AZ-Mexico)
Arlene Reingold & Arlene Liberman were partners in a New York adoption business & worked with Attorny Mario Reyes (Arizona) who handled the adoptions of 17 smuggled Mexican children, & defrauded Mexican authorities by forging documents & having women pose as the biological mothers in illegal adoptions for up to $22,000. Source: New York Times, August 4, 2005. See also "Adoption Choice" agency in http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page673.html
Mississippi
- BALOUCH, Vickie
In 2003, Vickie Balouch was convicted in Pikes County, Missippi, for illegally "placing out children" for money, a felony crime in Mississippy.
Montana
- Pitkanen, Gertrude, (abortionist; "Gertie's Babies," Butte, 1940s)
Although not a doctor, Gertrude Pitkanan performed illegal abortions and sold babies in Butte, Montana for 25 years.
Nevada
- Magelby, Attorney Calvin, (accomplice to Dr. Wallace; Las Vegas, 1950s)
- Wallace, Dr. E Basie, (Las Vegas, 1951-1958)
New York
- Bernard, Bessie, (A Brooklyn housewife who procured babies from FL, sold in NY and surrounding are)
- Butterbox Babies, (see YOUNG, Lila Gladys, Nova Scotia/Canada)
- Fenichel, Attorney Seymour, (Child Haven of NE Pennsylvania)
Incited in New York City along with Fenichel's daughter Deborah Fenichel Greenspan and his adopted daughter Harriet Lauer and her husband Lawrence Lauer, on 144 counts including illegally operating Child Haven of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a private adoption agency through which they ran a baby selling scheme that lured pregnant teenagers and bilked 100 couples of $500,000 -- only 50 of the couples actually got babies. - Lieberman, Arlene, (NY-AZ-Mexico)
Worked with Arlene Reingold as partners in an adoption business & together they worked through Attorney Mario reyes (Arizona), to "legalize" adoptions of 17 smuggled Mexican children and to defraud Mexican authorities by forging documents & havng women pose as the biological mothers in illegal adoptions for up to $22,000. Source: New York Times, August 4, 2005. See also "Adoption Choice" agency in http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page673.html - Spencer, Attorney Joseph
- Springer, Dr., ("Springer Babies," Springer Hospital, Union)
Ohio
- Rosen, Dr. Oscar, ("Rosen Babies," Cleveland, 1950s)
Other Countries
- Association in Search of Disappeared Children, (includes Black Market Adoption - El Salvador, US, and Worldwide)
El Salvador: Association for the Search for ‘Disappeared’ Children [works in partnership with Save The Children Fund (SCF)] During the armed conflict in El Salvador, from 1980 to 1991, thousands of girls and boys were killed, tortured or ‘disappeared’. Some were taken away after their parents were murdered, or after becoming separated from them during army attacks. Some were taken to orphanages, or ADOPTED. Their families have been looking for them without any help from the government. The Association for the Search for ‘Disappeared’ Children (Asociación Pro- Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos) documents the cases and helps relatives searching for the missing children. Over the years it has determined the whereabouts of many girls and boys and sponsored family reunions. The organisation is also campaigning for the Legislative Assembly to establish a national commission to search for missing children. - Fratti, Nadezhda, (Arbaleno Adoption Agency, Volgograd, Russia)
Fratti was given a 7-year suspended sentence in Volgograd, in SOuthern Russia. Fratti facilitated about 600 adoptions of Russian orphans between 1993 & 2000. There were disputed allegations that some of teh children ended up in an Italian organ transplant clinic. Adoption is a sensitive issue in Russia, where more than 200,000 children live in institutions. Russian families rarely adopt because of the social stigma, yet Russian nationalists have often accused foreigners of "buying" Russian children, and cases of abuse by foreign adoptive parents have been widely reported in the Russian media. Russia imposed new registration requirements on adoption agencies in 2000 with the aim of rooting out corruption. Source: AP/The Guardian, Moscow, 12-31-02, society.guardian.co.uk/ intercountryadoption/story/0,8150,866994,00.html - Seattle International Adoptions, (Cambodia)
Between January 1997 & January 1999 Lauryn Galindo & Lynn Devin conspired to obtain visas for Cambodian children who were being adopted by parents in the United States falsely representing either the identity of the children or the fact that the children were abandoned or true orphans. The charges were part of an ongoing investigation into adoption fraud. The government plans to take no action which would jeopardize the residency status of children in the United States who are considered to be victims of the fraud. Families that wish to contribute additional information to the investigation may contact JCICS at (703) 535-8045 or at jcics@jcics.org. They can assist the party in contacting the Department of Justice investigator. Source: http://www.jci.org/Cambodia.htm - Stitching Suzu, (The Hague, Holland)
See KURTA, SEYMOUR, under Illinois - Villatoro Morales, Attorney Javier Oswaldo, (Guatelama City, Guatemala)
Elivia Ramírez Caño lost her baby moments after giving birth August 13, 1997, in a Guatemala City hospital. The nurses took him away, saying he had been adopted. The arrangement had been made by an attorney, Javier Oswaldo Villatoro Morales, who found the pregnant 29-year-old Ramírez unemployed, abandoned by her husband and homeless. She says Villatoro Morales loaned her money and, during the birth, tricked her into signing adoption documents. A Spanish couple had contracted him to obtain the baby. Casa Alianza, a children’s rights group based in San José, Costa Rica, waged a legal battle that eventually convinced a Guatemalan Supreme Court judge to order the baby, Pablo Ramírez Caño, back to his mother. By then, he was 12 months old. The Guatemalan government offers birthmothers few protections against a burgeoning international adoption industry that took shape during a military dictatorship two decades ago. Unprincipled attorneys, adoption agencies, foster home networks and even smuggling rings help produce 2,300 children a year for adoptive parents, mostly in the United States. The adoptions pump at least $25 million a year into the local economy. International adoption of Latin Americans began on a large scale in the early 1980s, when wars and dictatorships wracked the region. Today Guatemala, Colombia and Belize are the only Latin American countries that still allow relinquishment from birthmothers directly to private parties. The Guatemala system all but invites adoption practitioners to abuse the birthparents. Other countries have reformed their adoption laws, but still struggle against a black market in babies. The child “abandonment” rulings behind many legal adoptions, meanwhile, tend to discriminate against poor families. The driving factor in all cases is a growing North American and European demand for Latin American babies. Every year thousands of couples part with huge sums, as much as $30,000, to get a healthy one. The United States, in particular, plays a pivotal role in the global adoption industry. Last year, 16,396 children immigrated here via adoption, according to the State Department. That’s more than double the number of a decade earlier and more than to all other nations combined. Washington’s ability to choke the demand by approving fewer visas gives it enormous power to reform the industry. A significant step was a September vote by the Senate to ratify a seven-year-old treaty that creates the first global ground rules for international adoptions. The stakes are high. Children adopted into the United States gain a significant material advantage over what was in store for them in their birth country, but they lose their name, family, language, nation and culture—rights enshrined by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Searching for personal identity may be a lifelong struggle. And the suffering of birthparents unwillingly separated from their kids is immeasurable. Source: http://www.americas.org/item_278
Tennessee
- Kelley, Judge Camille, (accomplice to Georgia Tann, 1920s-1940s)
- Tann, Georgia, (stole 5,000 babies, TN Children's Home Society, Memphis; sold to KY, NY, CA coup)
See 3/91 story, "The Woman Who Stole 5,000 Babies" excerpted on AmFOR's page at http://AmFOR.net/StolenBabies
Texas
- Hightower, Mrs. Ruby, (Texarkana, TX)
- Leviton, Attorney Albert
Involved in "legalizing" a kidnap & sale for adoption in Dallas. See 10-2-92 excerpted staory, "Years Later Mom Says Stillborn Child Alive" on AmFOR's page at http://AmFOR.net/StolenBabies - Salmon, Attorney Robert F., (deceased)
See HIGHTOWER, Texarkana, Texas (under TEXAS listings on this page) - Thacker, Attorney Leslie Hazlett, (convicted of baby selling)
Washington
- Davin, Lynn, (See "Seattle International Adoptions" under "Other Countries")
- Galindo, Lauryn, (See "Seattle International Adoptions" under "Other Countries")
- Seattle International Adoptions, (See listing under "Other Countries" on this page)
Wisconsin
- Adoption Choice (agency), (under ongoing investigation)
See http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page673.html
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