The crisis in international adoptions from Cambodia is the latest in a history of
controversy over a practice that sees adoption agencies, facilitators and officials
all profit.
The Post recently obtained a letter from May 1999 in which Foreign Minister Hor Namhong
asked Prime Minister Hun Sen to investigate bribery allegations against a prominent
US adoption facilitator.
The letter, dated May 18 1999, requested an investigation be undertaken into the
"swindling" of children and accused Hawaii-based facilitator Lauryn Galindo
of paying $5,500 in bribes to the ministries of social affairs, foreign affairs and
the Council of Ministers.
The letter states that Galindo paid $3,500 per adoption to either the Cham Chao orphanage
- also known as the Women and Orphans Vocational Association (WOVA) - or a Kampong
Speu orphanage and retained $2,500 "for her companies". The Post received
no reply from Galindo to emailed questions about the matter.
"After the Royal Government of Cambodia approves proposals, the babies will
be handed over to adoptive parents and it is like selling goods," the letter
goes on to state.
The letter urged the government to improve adoption procedures and safeguard the
well-being of orphans. It led to an exchange of correspondence, obtained by the Post,
between Hor Namhong and the Ministry of Interior.
Among the follow-up letters was one dated August 10 1999. In that, co-Ministers of
Interior Sar Kheng and You Hockry wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister
of Social Affairs (MoSALVY) to request the processing of adoptions on behalf of an
"American family organization". The MoI's letter states that it was on
the back of a written request by Senate President Chea Sim.
Hor Namhong's response dated August 18 cited "intercepted documents" as
proof for the assertion that Galindo had "trafficked children to the United
States". It further stated that she "has not been supported, even by the
US Embassy".
The outcome of that case is still unclear, but almost three years on Galindo is still
active in Cambodian adoptions. Last December she managed to process the adoptions
of 16 children (15 of whom were from WOVA), despite the adoption moratorium, and
is now rumored to be fast-tracking an adoption for a high profile Hollywood couple.
Galindo's networks and connections run right through the Cambodian adoption "business".
Sometimes referred to on adoption websites as the "queen of Cambodian adoptions",
Galindo has been arranging adoptions from Cambodia for more than a decade. She is
currently an intermediary for the Nutrition Center, WOVA and Roteang, an orphanage
begun by some of Galindo's associates. Human rights NGOs have linked the first two
orphanages to numerous cases of child trafficking over the years.
Her associates have also been linked to other suspect orphanages. WOVA director Tith
Von started the Asian Orphans' Association (AOA) with Soeung Man, a former driver
for Galindo who was briefly detained on suspicion of trafficking in August 1999.
Man concedes that he gave a woman $40 before taking the child to WOVA but says the
arrest was a mistake.
"I had already returned the child before the arrest," he said.
AOA president Puth Serey became involved in WOVA in early 1999 before splitting with
Man.
WOVA's orphanage is adjacent to a facility run by Sea Visoth, another former Galindo
driver. He claims not to know Galindo and told the Post he was not involved in facilitating
adoptions. However Visoth is listed on websites as a facilitator for the state-run
Kien Klaing orphanage in Phnom Penh, which is used by US adoption agent Harriet Brenner-Sam.
A third ex-Galindo driver, named Sunny, also facilitates adoptions through state
run orphanages.
Visoth told the Post he had never been to the orphanage, although when it was pointed
out that the Cambodia Adopt website has a photograph of him standing outside the
center, he recalled he had visited once to pass on donations from US families.
Nannies caring for the babies at the orphanage said that while the children at Kien
Klaing were the responsibility of the state, infant orphans were cared for by an
NGO which they could not identify. Children at the orphanage said around two couples
a week visit the dilapidated orphanage at the old Carmelite convent on the bank of
the Tonle Sap.
A recent entrant to the Cambodian adoption business, facilitator Cassandra Kierstead,
had four families among those recently denied visas for babies adopted through a
state run orphanage. Families adopting through the AOA orphanage were also denied
visas.
The current crisis is the worst in years. And that is before taking into account
persistent rumors that Vietnamese adoption facilitators have come here to avoid closer
scrutiny at home.
Huge fees point to official fraud
An investigation by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
last month into adoptions resulted in the rejection of US orphan visas for at least
12 children.
The rejections were based on evidence of fraudulently issued documents; the embassy
cited widespread abuse within the adoption procedure.
Of 26 adoption agencies emailed to by the Post only Laura Godwin, director of the
Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency, responded to inquiries regarding alleged
corruption.
"We simply pay our facilitator a fee to conduct the adoptions and for his expenses
associated with the adoptions. Of all the countries we have worked directly with,
the fees paid to our facilitator are the lowest of any country," Godwin wrote.
Bill Herod of NGO Forum and Mia Bopha of Khmer Internet Development Services, recently
came to understand the system of gratuities well. Several months ago friends asked
them to help with a private adoption so the two investigated the adoptions system.
At the same time - and entirely by coincidence - another friend of Bopha and
Herod approached them in Phnom Penh and asked them to help find her baby a home.
"She was a vulnerable woman who felt she wasn't able to cope with another child,"
Herod says. They matched the couple with the baby and set about arranging the adoption.
While both were aware there was a range of "fees" associated with processing
an adoption, they were still shocked at the size and number of payments.
"It looked like it was going to end up costing around $10,000," Herod says.
However, the pair found that all fees were negotiable with officials prepared to
accept a quarter of the asking price to process the paperwork.
Disenchanted with the corruption, they eventually helped the adoptive family process
the adoption through the courts, a method that Herod says was professional, diligent
and by comparison cheap. At around $3,000 the adoption cost around a quarter of what
the lowest priced US-based agencies charge their clients.
Herod says that corruption in the system is endemic and emphasizes that he will not
help broker more adoptions.
"Ultimately the question is: Why hasn't the US Embassy raised all these questions
long ago?" he says.
He blames agents for driving the trafficking of babies and does not believe Cambodian
women are motivated by profit when they surrender their children. He argues that
trickery is a more likely explanation.
"We have been approached [to adopt a child] half-a-dozen times and there was
never any suggestion that the mothers were looking for money - they were just trying
to find a good future for their children," he says. "If a woman was really
looking to give up her child, she's not going to go to a facilitator, and if she
wants to sell her baby she could probably get a lot more money than they are offering".
In June 1998 Herod assisted in finding an infant who had been kidnapped and then
sold for $300. The distraught mother was suicidal at the loss of her child and Herod
distributed the child's photograph via email and newspapers, and made numerous appeals
on Beehive radio. After ten days the child was recovered. He suspects the motive
was adoption.
"If a woman was selling her baby, my first suspicion would be: Is this really
your baby?" he says.
It's not the only encounter with the adoption business that Herod and Bopha have
had. In 1997 Bopha adopted three children who had come to her through three separate
incidents. Bopha said that shortly after the adoptions she found Lauryn Galindo in
her home.
"I went home and she was already in my house with a Khmer man. My mother said
they had already taken the children for blood tests. She [Galindo] told me she wanted
to find homes for them in Hawaii, but I told her she could not have my children,"
she says.
When Bopha refused to let her take the children, Galindo insisted, offered her $700
and produced an album of photographs of children living with families in the US.
She told her that her children would visit Cambodia and bring her money.
"I think I was very lucky. If I had been 15 minutes later I might have lost
my children," Bopha says.
A troubled history
International adoptions from Cambodia began in 1989, but were halted less than
two years later after controversial adoptions arranged by an NGO called the World
Family Foundation.
Adoptions officially began again in early 1994, although some had gone through during
the moratorium. In mid-1996 the government banned adoptions from the Nutrition Center
and suspended them again during an "adoption rush" in the lead up to the
1998 elections. The most recent suspension lasted from mid-2000 to March 2001.
Despite the regular shutdowns the number of children being adopted out of Cambodia
has continued to climb. With the rise in demand has come a growing number of orphanages
and facilitators, the less scrupulous of whom have caused problems for those involved
in legitimate adoptions, as well as NGOs working with local orphanages.
Jean-Yves Fusil of French NGO ASPECA, says his organization was forced to pull out
of funding the Nutrition Center a few years ago to avoid being associated with international
adoptions.
"We are very careful about this because we really want nothing to do with adoptions,
and Foreign Affairs in France didn't like us working there," he says.
NGOs were warning that adoptions were 'out of control' in 1996 when there were only
around 40 processed per year. This year has seen at least 600 adoptions just to the
US. The Cambodia Adopt website lists 26 agencies that facilitate adoptions to the
US.
ASPECA, which sponsors children in 20 orphanages and 30 schools in Cambodia, recently
moved to put even more distance between itself and international adoptions.
"I wrote to the directors of all the orphanages to inform them that ASPECA has
nothing to do with adoptions, and that we only sponsor children," says Fusil.
A notice dated October 8, 2001 in both French and Khmer has been posted in Cambodian
orphanages emphasizing that ASPECA does not allow its staff to get involved in adoptions.
The adoption process is not governed by any law, only the March 2001 sub-decree.
Brigitte Sonnois, a program officer with Unicef, says that a draft bill on adoption
has been with MoSALVY since late last year.
The draft bill was produced with technical assistance from Unicef and is designed
to bring practices in line with the International Convention on the Rights of the
Child.
That states that inter-country adoptions should only be considered where there is
no option to care for an orphan in the country of origin. It stresses that all care
should be taken to ensure that birth parents give informed consent to adoption. Article
21 states that adoptions should not result in "improper financial gain".
"We are looking forward to the government taking action on the law," says
Unicef representative Louis-Georges Arsenault. In the meantime, Arsenault says Unicef
would welcome another moratorium.
"We think it would make sense to take the time to put a better process in place
and have the legal framework to regulate adoptions properly," he says.
There are no accurate figures available on how many orphans there are in Cambodia,
but those involved suggest there are insufficient healthy infants to meet overseas
demand. It is an imbalance that invites abuse.
Internet war
THE battles over adoptions are being fought not only in Cambodia, but across the
world and on the internet.
Feuding adoption agencies have been trading insults on Cambodia Adopt's email
list as the crisis here has intensified over the past three months.
There appear to be two camps: pro-Galindo and anti-Galindo. The various agents
in the US regularly trade blows and allegations over their counterparts, making the
internet a vital forum in a Cambodian turf war. Rival agencies have jumped in to
defend their facilitators, on whose ministry connections they depend.
The website, which is administered by a former Galindo employee, has flagged facilitators'
names with a ratings system. Those of whom "serious concerns have been raised"
get a 'thumbs down' sign, others a 'thumbs up'. AOA facilitator Serey is in the first
group, Galindo in the second.
A spokesman for the US Embassy said they would be proceeding "much more slowly
than before".
With the reopening the squabbles between rival agencies have died down.
