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jlburke1274 Moderator Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Last Visit: Oct 16, 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Seacoast NH View All Posts By jlburke1274 |
I am just sick over this.. I hope this doesn't personally impact any members here!  ANTIGUA, Guatemala (Reuters) - Guatemalan police found 46 children, some just 3 days old, in an illegal foster home in the tourist city of Antigua on Saturday, the latest scandal for the country's corruption-riddled adoption system. Carlos Azurdia, an official from the country's adoption regulator, said two women were arrested in the raid. "There are newborns and children up to three-year-olds," Azurdia said. "None of them had the proper paperwork to be given up for adoption." Guatemala has the highest per-capita adoption rate in the world, a lucrative business for private lawyers who run the trade and are sometimes accused of forging papers or paying mothers to sell their children. Close to 5,000 babies and children were adopted from the small Central American nation last year. Adoptive parents say some lawyers charge up to $40,000 to handle adoptions. Police and soldiers who stormed into the house on the outskirts of Antigua, a colonial tourist town an hour's drive west of the capital, found babies and children kept in three rooms divided by their age. After the raid, children could be heard crying through the windows as officials and doctors examined their health. Over the weekend, the government will decide where the children will be transferred. Under pressure from Washington, Guatemalan lawmakers ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption earlier this year. This will strengthen adoption rules in the country. The international treaty does not take effect until January 1 and the United Nations has called for adoptions to be suspended until that time. Newspaper articles about suspected child traffickers have fueled rumors of baby-snatching. Several communities have attacked suspected culprits, in a few cases beating or burning them alive. The United States recently announced it would require two DNA tests on Guatemalan babies being adopted by Americans before issuing visas, in an effort to clean up the process. |
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Julie Coastal NH Adoptive Families Network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNHAF Safe Passage http://www.safepassage.org |
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jlburke1274 Moderator Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Last Visit: Oct 16, 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Seacoast NH View All Posts By jlburke1274 |
Little more info Guatemala Adoption Information and News August 12, 2007 Casa Quivira Raided Casa Quivira was raided yesterday by the Guatemalan police and PGN. Based on the story, it appears as though the situation was that the hogar itself did not have whatever licensing is required and that there was not proof that the cases had been presented/registered to the government. There is nothing written in the story on this that would indicate the relinquishments were invalid or illegal. www.Guatadopt.com for more info and comments |
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Julie Coastal NH Adoptive Families Network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNHAF Safe Passage http://www.safepassage.org |
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jlburke1274 Moderator Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Last Visit: Oct 16, 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Seacoast NH View All Posts By jlburke1274 |
From BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6943527.stm Forty-six children in Guatemala, believed to have been taken from their parents for illegal adoption abroad have been rescued, officials say. The children's ages range from three years old to just a few days. They were found at a house in Antigua, close to the capital, after neighbours reported seeing foreigners collecting children there every day. Police are investigating whether the children were stolen, or their parents were coerced into giving them up. Last year, couples in the US adopted more than 4,000 infants from Guatemala, second only to China. Stricter regulations The Guatemalan attorney general's office said that few of the children had the necessary paperwork to be in the custody of anyone other than their parents, and the house did not have permission to operate as an adoption centre. The 46 children have remained at the house, being looked after by police, while the case is being investigated. Latin America correspondent Daniel Schweimler says adopting from Guatemala can take half the time and cost considerably less than it does elsewhere. Earlier this year, the Guatemalan Congress ratified The Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoptions which sets out a series of measures guaranteeing greater transparency in the process of adoption However, the US state department is advising against the practice because of reports that many Guatemalan mothers face pressure to sell their children into adoption. Last week, the US embassy in Guatemala tightened up the visa regulations for couples trying to adopt there. Rumours Guatemala-based journalist Martin Asturias told the BBC that adoption had become big business in the country. Prices range from around $25,000 (£12,500) up to about $60,000 (£30,000) depending on how complicated the process was and how specific the adoptive parents were in their demands, he said. The business of adoption has also had a wider effect, Mr Asturias said. "Guatemala has fallen into what I would say is a 'social psychosis'. "Rumours can spread, especially in small Mayan villages or towns, that children are being stolen to be sold as adopted children." The anxiety and anger caused by such rumours have in the past led to people believed to be involved in the adoption business being lynched or stoned, said Mr Asturias. Haiti raid In a separate development, on Friday, 47 Haitian children whose parents gave them to traffickers in return for promised financial help were rescued, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. The children, aged between two and seven, were freed from a rogue adoption centre in the Caribbean country's capital, Port-au-Prince, following government intervention. The IOM said the children are offered to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for money. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Julie Coastal NH Adoptive Families Network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNHAF Safe Passage http://www.safepassage.org |
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SuzHarrison Administrator Joined: Mar 1, 2007 Last Visit: Nov 19, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: NH View All Posts By SuzHarrison |
This is absolutely horrible! |
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Suzanne Harrison |
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jlburke1274 Moderator Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Last Visit: Oct 16, 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Seacoast NH View All Posts By jlburke1274 |
More from Guatadopt.com yesterday  Embassy Statement re: Casa Quivira The Embassy has contacted some, if not all, CQ families. I applaud them for doing so as I know any piece of info is a help. I am posting the message here because it does bring something up regarding the controversy over CQ's "license". I am not familiar with the Guatemalan "Pina" law mentioned and hope that someone will shed some ight on it. Click on more to read what they have to say. On Saturday August 11, Guatemalan law enforcement authorities exercised a court order and took control of the Casa Quivira children's center near Antigua. The Guatemalan Solicitor General's Office (Procuradoría General de la Nación, PGN) informed the Embassy that the operation was the result of an ongoing investigation in response to complaints that the police and district attorney's office (Ministerio Publico) had received against the center. The U.S. Embassy is concerned about the well-being of the children at Casa Quivira. At this time we are advising families directly affected by this event to maintain close contact with their local lawyers in Guatemala in order to stay abreast of the status of individual children in the adoption process. When custody is granted to Casa Quivira parents with final adoptions, the Embassy will expedite immigrant visa interviews for the affected adopting families. For families without scheduled interviews, we will continue to keep the most current information and warnings regarding adoptions on our website. Please visit http://guatemala.usembassy.gov/adoptions.html for information updates in the future. As the Embassy and Department of State continue to advise, the adoption situation in Guatemala remains volatile and unpredictable. Prospective adoptive parents should be aware that the laws regulating intercountry adoption in Guatemala are conflicting. Nearly all intercountry adoptions in Guatemala are processed under a "notarial" system. Information the Embassy has received so far indicates that the children in Casa Quivira are in various stages of the notarial adoption process. However, the 2003 "PINA" law for the protection of children and adolescents, created additional requirements for adoption cases, including the obligation that caretakers of children in adoption processing obtain court-determined legal custody. These provisions established by the 2003 law have not been enforced previously. The Embassy has been informed, however, that one factor in the takeover of Casa Quivira is that no court custody orders were located for any of the children. The U.S. Embassy cannot act as legal representative for Americans in any legal proceedings, including adoptions. However, we stand ready to consult with parents on these cases and to provide the most current possible information regarding the adoption cases of children at Casa Quivira. The U.S. Embassy maintains a list of Guatemalan English speaking attorneys available directly from the American Citizen Services Unit or the Embassy website at http://guatemala.usembassy.gov/uploads/images/ZRzQeBYTqu9t0Gy4PD-nbA/acseattorneys.pdf The Embassy is unable to provide a listing of attorneys specializing in adoption as there are currently more than 600 Guatemalan attorneys participating in this process. Adoption Unit American Embassy Guatemala Posted by Kevin at August 14, 2007 07:51 PM |
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Julie Coastal NH Adoptive Families Network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNHAF Safe Passage http://www.safepassage.org |
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jlburke1274 Moderator Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Last Visit: Oct 16, 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Seacoast NH View All Posts By jlburke1274 |
Anne Roth is my friends sister.. Ughhh.. !!! How tragic.. what will the end result be.. imagine those babies being yours.. My heart goes out to the babies, waiting families and of course the birth parents.. !!! Somethings gotta change! Guatemalan adoption raid riles parents By Juan Carlos Llorca And Julie Watson, Associated Press Writers ANTIGUA, Guatemala — Ann Roth mortgaged her Chicago home to adopt two 9-month-olds from Guatemala. Now the future of her babies is caught up in an international crackdown on a country that sent more than 4,000 babies to U.S. homes last year. Roth's children are being watched by police carrying assault rifles after their raid on the Casa Quivira adoption home in this colonial tourist hub. Guatemalan officials argue the home's paperwork didn't meet legal standards. But parents and the home's directors say the raid was politically motivated after U.S. pressure to clean up a largely unregulated, multimillion dollar industry in which some brokers steal babies. Since Saturday's raid, U.S. parents have flooded the U.S. Embassy with desperate calls and complained in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Thursday that the temporary caretakers were failing to provide the babies with proper food, medical care and clean conditions in the orphanage. The government denied the allegations. "PLEASE help us keep our babies safe. This is the scariest thing I have ever been through," Roth wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. At the same time, Guatemalan parents like Carlos Rivas are looking for their kidnapped children at Casa Quivira. However, none of the seized babies matched the picture Rivas carried of his daughter Esther Sulamita Rivas, who was stolen from his shoe store in Guatemala City in March when she was 6 months old. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Chicago | US Embassy | Guatemala | Guatemalan | US homes | Casa Quivira | Juan Carlos Llorca "We thought that with so many children here, there's a good chance we would find her," said Rivas, adding he wants "a solution to this hell that many Guatemalans are living through." The raid on Casa Quivira is the biggest in a string of recent raids on dozens of adoption homes. The owners of Casa Quivira, Clifford Phillips and his wife Sandra Gonzalez, a Guatemalan attorney, say all the babies have been properly surrendered for adoption since it opened in 1996. The U.S. has pushed for a crackdown in an industry that has placed more than 25,000 Guatemalan children in U.S. homes since 1990 -- so many that every 100th baby born in Guatemala grows up as an adopted American. And the adoption process has slowed since the U.S. State Department warned in March about risks like conflicting laws, scam artists pressuring women to sell their babies and extortionists targeting adoptive parents. But outside experts familiar with the situation say that Casa Quivira has a spotless record. "The care and facilities at Casa Quivira are some of best we've seen in the world," said Shannon Mogilinski, spokeswoman for Embrace The Children, a St. Charles, Ill., nonprofit that works to protect destitute children in several countries. "There are other places but few have the ability, means or wherewithal to meet the needs of the children in Guatemala." Guatemala's attorney general says his office is simply preparing for tougher rules that go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008, when the country implements the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. The new rules requires a government agency to oversee every case. "What we've done does not mean parents will not be able to adopt. It will just take more time because the birth mothers will need to appear for DNA tests to determine their blood relation and so they can be asked again if they want to give their children up for adoption," Attorney General Mario Gordillo told The Associated Press. The U.S. Embassy last week began requiring a second DNA test proving the adopted child in a visa request matches the child in the initial paperwork. Casa Quivira appears to have fallen afoul of a previously unenforced 2003 law that requires caretakers of children in pending adoptions to obtain court-determined legal custody, not just papers signed by notaries. According to an U.S. Embassy statement, "no court custody orders were located for any of the children" at Casa Quivira. Few involved have confidence that Guatemala's already-overwhelmed court system can rule on thousands of adoption requests each year. But "the law is the law and we have to start enforcing it," said Carlos Azurdia, the federal agent in charge of the case. Casa Quivira's lawyer, Sandra Leonardo, was arrested along with the home's notary, Vilma Desiree Zamora Perez, on charges of illegally processing paperwork. "There is not one stolen child in the house, and we can prove the legality of all of them," Leonardo said. "They talk about illegalities and incomplete records, but they didn't give us a chance to show anything. They just took us in." Phillips said birth mothers are given several opportunities to change their minds. "We are shocked at the illegal raid on Casa Quivira, and are working to make sure that the 45 children in our care continue to receive the high quality, professional care that we work so hard to provide," he said in a statement. Roth said in a telephone interview that all her adoption documents have been seized. "It shakes your foundation to know you have no idea what is going to happen," said Roth, 37, a child educator at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. "I fear that the government is going to take these kids, and we won't know where they will go." Roth and her husband, David, visited the home three times, and spent July taking care of the two babies, who are from different mothers. She described it as "a U.S.-style clinic," with nurses on staff 24 hours a day, nannies and daily visits by a doctor. The Roths are considering flying to Guatemala. After dealing with infertility problems and preparing their nursery, they are determined not to give up on their children. "We just need them to get home now," she said. |
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Julie Coastal NH Adoptive Families Network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNHAF Safe Passage http://www.safepassage.org |
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SuzHarrison Administrator Joined: Mar 1, 2007 Last Visit: Nov 19, 2008 Posts: 7 Location: NH View All Posts By SuzHarrison |
Check it out... http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LA_GEN_GUATEMALA_ADOPTIONS?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT |
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Suzanne Harrison |
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