Today the US Embassy, Hanoi released a summary of irregularities in adoptions in Vietnam that is the longest and most thorough, to date. Likewise they have also released a Warning Concerning Adoptions in Vietnam which states, in part (emphasis mine):
On April 25, the Government of Vietnam announced that it will allow adoption to be completed in cases where prospective adoptive parents have been matched with a child and received an official referral prior to September 1, 2008. It further stated that in accordance with Vietnamese law, the DIA will suspend the acceptance of new dossiers on July 1, 2008. On September 1, 2008 any dossier that has not received a referral will be closed and returned to the Adoption Service Provider. In view of the processing time required in Vietnam from placement to the Giving and Receiving Ceremony, an adoption process begun now cannot be completed before the current Agreement expires.
This finally puts the rest the last several months of speculation about deadlines for referrals and processing of adoptions in Vietnam. You can read the full warning here.
The Summary of Irregularities is too long to post in its entirety but I’ve posted highlights along with my own comments, where applicable:
Orphanage directors in four provinces have reported to the Embassy that there is a strong financial incentive to maximize the number of children available for foreign adoption in their centers. The donation provided per child (available for intercountry adoption) can be up to 10 times the standard government funding. Hospital and social workers have reported that orphanage directors offer them financial incentives for each child sent to their orphanage.
As a result of the autonomy given to orphanage directors by MOLISA, individual orphanage directors, in conjunction with representatives of their sponsoring ASP, have broad latitude in determining how donations will be made, what the amount will be, and whether applications from prospective domestic adoptive parents will be processed. For example, one orphanage, which is entirely funded by an American ASP, submits expense reports and receipts to the ASP on a monthly basis. The ASP then transfers funds to reimburse the orphanage for its expenses. The number of infants in this orphanage has remained steady for the past three years. The orphanage is clean, well stocked with medicine and has an RN on duty. This orphanage prioritizes reuniting children with their biological parents, and processes equal numbers of domestic and intercountry adoptions. By contrast, another orphanage receives a fixed monthly donation for each child in the orphanage who is available for international adoption and the payment is made in cash directly to the orphanage director. This orphanage has seen the number of infants in its care increase by over 2000% in the past year, but it has not made significant increases in staff and does not have an RN.
I think this is a very interesting comparison between an agency that is clearly doing things right and another agency that is not and how an agency, itself, has the potential to directly impact trends within an orphanage.
It goes on to discuss some of the negative consequences of the donation system that is enshrined in the MOU:
Two orphanage directors have confirmed to consular officers that they are feeling pressure to find more children for their orphanage to “compensate” ASPs for their donations.
Another effect of the donation system is that it can reduce the protections that Vietnamese law grants to birth parents, such as the required 30 day search for birth parents and/or domestic adoptive parents as described above. Since, in most cases, the ASP has a close relationship with the orphanage, the ASP representative may be informed as soon as a potentially adoptable child enters the orphanage. This can result in the issuance of a “soft referral,” where adopting parents are notified that they have been matched with a child before the completion of the two consecutive 30 day search periods. The DIA has stated that such pre-referrals are illegal. Nonetheless, in over 40 documented cases, DIA has taken no action to punish or prevent the issuance of soft referrals, noting that all they can do is to inform provincial or district officials of the law and request their compliance.
Indeed this is a practice we PAPs and APs in the Vietnam adoption community have heard about over and over again since the inception of the MOU, unfortunately.
An on the efficacy of finding ads:
Further, provincial officials have stated that the advertisements are made in a manner that significantly decreases the likelihood that they will be heard or seen by the birth families. Investigations by the Embassy have also confirmed that the ads are not effective. In 6 cases where investigations by the Embassy have located the birth family of allegedly deserted children, the birth families said that they never heard or saw any ads seeking the parents of the child.
And on domestic adoption as a priority:
Orphanage directors in two provinces have confirmed to the Embassy that while they receive applications from families interested in domestic adoption, they do not process these applications. They have said that the reason these applications are not processed is that their orphanage will receive a donation from an ASP if the baby is adopted internationally, but not if the child is adopted domestically.
The summary discussed the current figures of abandonments to relinquishments in historical terms and the concerns about the trend toward abandonment:
Prior to the suspension of adoption in 2002, 80% of cases were relinquishments, and 20% were abandonments. Since the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) went into effect in 2005, those figures have flipped with over 85% of the cases involving desertions. Orphanages not involved in intercountry adoption, however, have reported to the Embassy that they have not seen any increase in the number of deserted children, and the vast majority of children in these facilities are children in care . Post has received multiple, credible reports from orphanage officials that facilitators are deliberately staging fraudulent desertions to conceal the identity of the birth parents.
Also, while not in the statement I think it is beneficial to point out that not all ASPs have shown a similar 85% abandonment rate.
On the validity of relinquishments:
75% of birth parents who were interviewed by a consular officer stated that in addition to payments for food, medical care and administrative expenses, they received payment from the orphanage in exchange for placing their child in the orphanage. On average this payment was six million Vietnamese Dong, which is the equivalent of 11 months salary at minimum wage in Vietnam. Many of these families cited these payments as the primary reason for placing their child in an orphanage. The majority of these parents also state that they had not considered placing their child in an orphanage until a health care worker or orphanage official suggested to them that they should do so and informed them that they would receive a payment for doing so. Many of these parents also report that orphanage officials told them that the child will visit home frequently, will return home after they reach a certain age (often 11 or 12), or will send remittance payments from the United States. In these cases, the majority of birth parents have said they do not consent to the adoption if any of these conditions are not kept.
…..Accordingly, while MOLISA can confirm that the reported payments from orphanage officials to biological parents must have come from ASP funds, they do not have the ability to take action or to investigate reports of child buying.
Again this points to the all-important relationship between agencies and orphanages. There should be no incentive for an orphanage to employ a child finder and there should be no financial incentives offered by the ASP for such services.
On the increased abandonment rate:
Orphanages in 7 provinces report a 17 fold or greater increase in desertions. Officials at orphanages not connected with intercountry adoption, however, have not seen an increase in desertions.
Provincial records also document an unusual pattern of “desertion pockets.” For example, in one province in 2007 there were 77 cases of child desertion. Of these, 76 occurred at one particular orphanage…….The orphanage director attributed the growth in the number of children and the number of desertions to the fact that the orphanage was receiving funds from the American ASP. He also stated that the orphanage had hired contract employees to find children between zero and six years of age whose families were in a particularly difficult situation and encourage the families to put their children in the orphanage. The orphanage guards also confirmed that desertions were extremely rare before 2006, but now they “find five infants per month on average.
On those who find abandoned children:
In other cases, individuals report finding children in a field or by the side of the road. Often the individual who purportedly found the child (child finder) is a police officer, a village official or a member of their immediate family. These individuals are often related to the orphanage director or the local official who approves adoptions. Embassy investigations have shown that many of these reports are fraudulent. These include cases in which those individuals, who only months or weeks before had signed statements claiming to have found a deserted child, told consular officers that they had never in their lives found a deserted child. In one case, the child finder could not remember finding a child, even though the purported event had happened the day before. In another case, the child finder stated that the police told her if she did not sign a fraudulent statement claiming that she had found a child in 2007, they would arrest her for kidnapping in connection with a child finder statement that she signed in 2006.
In over 10 cases, Embassy investigations have discovered the identity of the birth mother in cases where a child was purportedly deserted. In all of these cases, the birth mother was known to orphanage or hospital officials, but these institutions fraudulently document the case as a desertion. In some cases, this was to conceal payments to the birth family. In others, children were declared to be deserted with unknown parents after the birth parents failed to pay outstanding hospital bills.
Both of these activities have been long happening in Vietnam. At least one agency has told PAPs that this happens, that it is just how it is done and that often – not just sometimes – the birth parents are known. I don’t believe this is the case for all agencies but I know that it is an admitted practice by some.
On Pregnancy Homes:
In five provinces, the Embassy has discovered unlicensed, unregulated facilities that provide free room and board to pregnant women in return for their commitment to relinquish their children upon birth. None of these facilities openly advertises its services. Women learn of the facilities existence solely by word of mouth. While the facilities are open and the women are free to come and go as they please, they incur a debt for each night that they stay that they have to pay if they do not relinquish their child. Recent Vietnamese media reports of such facilities have revealed that women often live in squalor and in many cases are forced to labor during their stay. In several of these facilities, there is a policy that the birth mother cannot see her child after delivery, in order to prevent bonding. Women in these facilities report receiving up to 6 million Vietnam Dong as payment for their children. While the source of funding for these facilities is unclear, they appear to have close connections with nearby orphanages.
When the Embassy visited these facilities, we saw up to 20 women living in a single home. These women reported that orphanage officials came to the house in order to have them sign paperwork relinquishing their children. The women would then receive the promised payments. Often, the child is then taken to a nearby hospital or orphanage where a second set of paperwork is produced stating that the child was deserted. This is the paperwork that is submitted to the DIA and to the Embassy to support the claim that the child is an orphan.
This is so incredibly reminiscent of the Baby Scoop Era back in the 50’s and 60’s in our very own United States when the culture of adoption was to vilify the “bad girl”, the Mother who sinned and had a child out of wedlock, poverty or violence. It is agonizing to read about such similar activity in 21st century Vietnam. When coercion of any kind – financial, emotional or psychological – occurs then the child is not legally orphaned. We like to think we’ve come a long way since those condemnation decades in the US. If that’s the case, we need to rally against practices such as these that vilify women for pregnancy and turn around and profit from it. We have now seen the full effects of the Baby Scoop Era on the mothers, the children (adoptees) and even the extended family members. There is no beauty or goodness that can come out of a woman being forced to give up her child, no matter how wonderful the adoptive parents might be.
On Paperwork Irregularities:
Documents relating to adoptions in Vietnam, such as birth certificates, abandonment reports, relinquishment agreements, and investigative reports are generally issued by orphanage directors, local People’s Committees, Provincial Departments and the Department for International Adoptions (DIA). The facts asserted in these documents are not verified by the issuing officials. Attempts by U.S. officials to verify the accuracy of these documents have routinely uncovered evidence of fraudulent or inaccurate information. Therefore, all documents issued by the authorities listed above and any other documents containing information not verified by the issuing authority cannot be considered adequate evidence of the facts claimed and, at best, may be used in conjunction with primary and contemporaneous secondary evidence or must be must be independently verified by U.S. officials in Vietnam before they can be considered valid for immigration purposes.
….
Fraudulent police reports have also been submitted to the Embassy in connection with adoption cases.
On DIA’s oversight and authority:
DIA’s explicit position is that, as long as the appropriate papers have been signed by the correct officials, DIA will certify that the adoption complies with Vietnamese law. DIA has stated that it does not actually have the authority to declare an adoption illegal, revoke a Giving and Receiving Ceremony, or cancel a referral. The lack of verification and accountability regulations in Vietnamese adoption law creates a situation where an unscrupulous orphanage director or local official who fabricates a “desertion” or “relinquishment is also only that official who can investigate the alleged fraud in the case.
A provincial Department of Justice official told the Embassy of cases where under Vietnamese law children had been matched with adopting families and the cases were referred to her office for verification. In one case, hospital records stated that the birth mother had registered at the hospital under an assumed name and then died shortly after the birth. The child was listed as deserted. However, the DOJ official found a reference in the hospital file that the woman’s family had come to the hospital to claim her body. As a result the official contacted the family, who stated that the hospital had transferred the child to the orphanage without their consent and that the orphanage had denied them visitation rights. The family has now been reunited with the child, who is being raised by his maternal grandparents. However, the official noted that under Vietnamese law no one had technically done anything wrong in separating this child from his family. Only her personal interest in the case and her ability to persuade other local officials to do the right thing prevented this child from being permanently separated from his family.
On ASP corruption:
The Embassy has received credible reports from current and former employees of ASPs working in Vietnam regarding corruption in the adoption system, beginning with the licensing procedures. Several ASPs have reported that they were told they had to fund tours to the United States for DIA and other government officials in order to receive their licenses. According to ASP employees, these tours included shopping sprees, where ASP employees were expected to pay for all of the purchases of the Vietnamese delegation. Others have reported being asked to pay bribes in order to obtain provincial licenses.
In addition, statements from adopting parents and ASP employees show that many ASPs ask adopting parents to pay cash donations to orphanage directors and staff. These payments are illegal according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice, but the Ministry acknowledges that they are widespread and that they are a key factor in the irregularities seen in the adoption system in Vietnam. Further, ASPs have reported that cash and in-kind donations have been diverted by orphanage officials and used to finance personal property, private cars, jewelry and, in one case, a commercial real estate development.
On Refuting the Claims:
DIA has acknowledged that when it receives reports from the Embassy regarding fraud in adoption cases, they meet with the ASP or local facilitators to develop a strategy to refute the Embassy’s evidence.
….
The Embassy has informed the DIA of cases of potential fraud and illegal activity. However, the DIA has acknowledged that it has not taken any action, criminal or administrative, against any individual or organization for any violation of Vietnamese law or regulation concerning adoption. They have also stated that they have taken no action to address concerns or allegations of wrongdoing submitted to them by individuals, ASPs or the U.S. Embassy. Instead, DIA has stated that it is in the “humanitarian” interest of the Government of Vietnam to ensure that every proposed adoption is completed as quickly as possible. They note that the ASPs have made a donation for the child, and thus, even if they had the authority to revoke a referral or an adoption, they would not do so because they could not break their contract with the ASP.
Clearly we are looking at two very different cultural and political ideologies. If there is a presumption that both governments want to work toward continuing to offer international adoption from Vietnam to the US then a bridge must be built and work must be done to agree on some very most fundamental issues of human rights and rights of the child and methods upon which those rights will be legally enforced.
These are only some of the highlights of the Embassy’s incredible summary document. Please read the entire Summary in order to get the best feel for the climate that is and has been adoptions in Vietnam for the least 2 years.
45 Responses
wow.
For those who have been paying attention, there is really nothing new here. But it’s powerful to read it all in one place.
I think seeing it all in one place is what got to me today. Like you said, if you’ve been paying attention, and I’m sure most PAPs have, this is stuff we’ve been hearing about for a while now. But to see it all in one place and in an official statement, well, I find it heartbreaking. 🙁
It is powerful and also when that one place is the Embassy website, there is a certain official sting that comes with the news. It doesn’t seem to matter, to me, how many times we hear these stories, how many times they are reiterated, shared in their various forms, posted on lists. It hurts every time like it’s new news all over again.
Well, this has certainly been a depressing day. I have such a mixture of emotions reading all this, I don’t even know where to start. It seems that the US has managed to find evidence of corruption in every part of the adoption process, and it’s been – as Nicki noted – ongoing for 2 years. Quite frankly, given the severity and seriousness of the report, I’m surprised that adoptions weren’t shut down a while ago…
As an adult adoptee, I am also incredibly saddened whenever and wherever adoption is threatened. I do believe that adoption is the right choice at times for all concerned, but if stuff like this keeps going on, I suspect that eventually adoption will end.
What I dont understand is why CIS and DoS have yet to come forward with the number of denials of I600 petitions as a result of their efforts to find fraud. As I understand this situation, most of the cases on the DoS “white sheet” detail the stories of children who are now home in the US, after the sucessful appeal of a NOID. So, if it is really so bad, where are the NOIDs and where are the denials of I600s?
By DoS “White sheet” do you mean this summary that was published today?
Back in February the government shared with Ethica that there had been 11 NOIDs issued since Orphan First. (http://www.ethicanet.org/dosmtg_021508.pdf)
We’ve linked to it many MANY times here at VVAI but Ethica has a great article that explains how hard it is to issue NOIDs and how easy it is to overturn them. NOIDs are not at all a true representation of an ethical adoption or proof that an adoption is legit. (http://www.ethicanet.org/INSEvidence.pdf)
Does anyone get the feeling that part of the purpose of the DOS posting is to dispute some of the bad press and blogging that is going on regarding the majority of the NOIDS being overturned? There are certainly irregularities in Vietnam, and ethics are important. I am glad to receive specifics. It is also important that BOTH countries adhere to the MOU. Two wrongs certainly do not make a right. But what is the standard here? If the earlier NOIDS were validly issued, why were most of them overturned on appeal? Certainly CIS should investigate. But NOIDS should not be issued unless irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing is present. The standard for issuing a NOID should have TRANSPARENCY as well. There’s that magic word – transparency. Should the PAPs and APs be entitled to some transparency regarding when a NOID may be issued?
Maybe I’m crazy, but is anyone else upset that you don’t have names?
I want names! I want our government to share with us who exactly is participating in unethical behavior like this! Yes, I can take my guesses, but I haven’t done investigations. I don’t have the facts. I want to be given the chance to help drive those specific ASPs out of business forever!
I want criminal and civil charges pressed, and I want names!
Actually Alice this is an excellent point. I can feel the palpable shift from sadness to action in myself and I can feel it in others too. We are so not done with this fight. It has only just begun. I want names too.
I agree. I want to know the names too! My children will want these answers someday. We need to have all of this information. I think we will eventually know, but look at the damage that has been done. What part of our kids’ past was true…what was fabricated?
I so agree with Alice and Nicki about wanting names! I feel that adoptive parents/ PAPs can have a great influence in this process, but we need good information in order to act effectively.
I so agree with wanting names! PAPs/ APs can have a big impact on the ethics of this process, but we have to have good, accurate information in order to act effectively. Those with blatently unethical practices should be publicly exposed. We need to know all the facts so we can make informed decisions and advocate on behalf of the children, birth families and adoptive families who are being victimized by the greed of others.
Elaine
Absolutely, Alice. I want to know names and specific facts, too.
Nicki and Alice-
I am right with ya-
I want accountability- I want those responsible(including myself where applicable) to step up. I want to work to change the system. How can we AND our government better police agencies?
It seems that many(most) agencies at least took advantage of a loosely regulated system and made it work to their($$$) advantage…..How can that be stopped/regulated?
More even than I want names of the bad agencies(which IMHO are most) I want to know what agencies are getting it right- so that PAP’s and AP’s have something to look to and say- See it is possible to do this without compromising….
While I of course want better policing of agencies, based on the report, I think that if the US were ever to enter into another MOU with Vietnam, serious changes must be made to the MOU and oversight of the orphanages and provinces. The donation system is in the MOU and should probably be reworked. The finding ads is a requirement on the VN side, and if it is ineffective, VN needs to change that or the US needs to put something into the MOU.
Obviously, agencies did take advantage of every loophole or badly-crafted or short-sighted provision in the MOU. I fear that unless there are sweeping changes in Vietnam and how DIA oversees the provinces, the unethical will always find each other at the expense of the ethical.
I’m probably not making myself clear. It’s been a rough few days….I guess I’m saying that just making this an agency issue may not get us the solutions we want. But then again, agency issues are probably the only ones we as PAPs/APs can direct affect with activism and knowledge…
It’s all just so overwhelming…
My heart really goes out to those still waiting.
As far as getting “names,” I think there is one problem with that…It may be hard to sort out what an agency knew and when they knew it (the famed Watergate line for those of you as old as me). Some agencies most likely DID know that unethical activities were going on, but I would wager that other agencies really did not know every detail of what was being done in the orphanages or hospitals. If they were to release names of agencies, a) it might be so broad that it would cover most of the 42 or b) there would be no way of proving what the agency personnel did or didn’t know. Just because a case related to one agency is found to be fradulent does not necessarily prove that the agency is at fault. I’m not defending agencies, just pointing out how widespread and murky the situation is. When you’re talking about illegal or unethical activities, there is deception at many levels.
And honestly, I think that anyone following VN adoptions closely for the last 6 months knows exactly which agencies were referring lots of infant girls on a fast basis. That should be all you need to know. Do you really need for names to come out now? It would be great to see prosecutions but that’s another story, more about the lack of gov’t oversight of adoption agencies in general.
Please don’t flame me; I’m just connecting the dots between the DoS’s reports of corruption and the fact that some agencies had access to orphans that others did not. If you were with one of those agencies, I’m not implying you are a bad person. We all did the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time. But it’s time to face the facts as they are and I don’t think we need much more info than what we already have.
Personally, I’m moving on. As a PAP waiting for my first child, I need to focus the time and energy that I have left (not much) on now finding another option. I thank all of those who do have the time and resources to continue to research and advocate and fight, for what they have done to date and will continue to do. This forum has been a great resource for me. Thanks, Nicki & Christina.
I understand that not every agency involved with unethical adoptions had knowledge of the unethical actions that were occuring. Frankly, I don’t care. I still want names of agencies, and I still want names of provinces. The agency is a PAP’s first true resource for information in a country. It is the agency’s business to 1.) know who they are dealing with in a country and 2.) know how adoptions are being accomplished in that country. Yes, that is a difficult job. Yes, there is a strong possibility of an agency being “duped”. Yes, an agency may or may not have knowledge of certain activities at a certain time. However, that is why I, as a PAP, am willing to pay the $5, $10, $15, $20, $30 grand. I want to see it done RIGHT. It is the agency’s job to know HOW to get the process done RIGHT. If they can’t get it done RIGHT, then this warrants, at the VERY LEAST, a better business bureau complaint. Because when said agency has allowed baby selling to occur under their noses, it is clearly not as an effective “adoption expert” organization as it claimed to be.
E- I’m not trying to “flame” you personally. I understand your wanting to stand up for agencies, and I do understand your pointing out that the situation is complex. I agree; it is complex. I feel like my agency is one of the “good ones,” and I’d be extremely upset to find out otherwise or to seem them ruined. However, I’m just tired of the excuses. I want a chance to exercise the only real power I have as an American PAP and that is the power of a consumer who bought adoption processing services.
I absolutely agree. I want to know which agencies were involved and I want to know what those agencies have to say for themselves. Most importantly, I want to hear what those agencies are doing to fix the problem. I think the anonymity is nothing but harmful to both the ethical agencies and the PAPs. It’s harmful to the ethical agencies because it breeds mistrust, and it’s harmful to the PAP because it allows unethical agencies to continue to operate in secret. Can we figure out which agencies these are? Perhaps, but it’s ridiculous that a PAP would have to have kept up on all of this news and heard via the internet grapevine which agencies were referring the abandoned baby girls (for example) and then try to put two and two together themselves. The fact is, many PAPs don’t know that they should be doing this research (assuming that an accredited agency is safe) or choose to look the other way when anonymous rumors/reports arise (“surely that’s not MY agency!”) or when something doesn’t seem right. As long as they’re allowed to be anonymous, unethical agencies have no incentive to clean up their acts. I think we should bring all of this out into the open and name names, and then let the agencies show and prove what they’re doing to fix the problem. If they are unwilling to do that, they shouldn’t be in business anyway, and then we’ll all know who to avoid.
This has my heart pulling in all different directions! Just what can a person do who really wants to help the orphans of the world?! At one time I thought adoption was the answer, but it just opens up a whole new set of problems. I thought that working with an ethical agency might solve some of them, but this leaves me wondering just how wide-spread the issues are. Is it possible to ever be sure that our daughter was an orphan? Do I need to fly to Vietnam and try to verify the information myself? Any ideas guys?
You are not alone in your thoughts Laura.
I’m so disappointed today. So sad for our children.
Laura-
For me, I am moving to from a place of grief and fear to a place of action. I am not there yet, but like Nicki, I can feel it coming.
As my dh and I process all this information, we are going to pray.
We are going to do all we can to find our son’s first family.
I am going to see if/how I can get more involved with PEAR(parents for ethical adoption reform)(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PEARnewsletter/)
I am going to question, question and re-question our agency about their policies, what they knew when, and what they did about it. Thankfully, we have worked with an agency that answers our questions and when they don’t know the answers, they get them.
Funny you should mention PEAR, Jena. I went there immediately as soon as grief turned to action. I had been putting off membership out of laziness, waiting for them to release their online membership feature but I don’t really want to wait anymore. My membership form will be going out Monday.
Even though doing a birth parent search isn’t right for my family, I respect those that feel it is right for their families. But I am really just wondering what will you do with the answers that you find? Hopefully (if you find a family at all) you will find out everything was exactly as stated in your paperwork. But what if you find the parents and they say they changed their mind (which I think some have said during Embassy interviews-I may be wrong there), what if they say they were paid off….all of those things in my mind would be bad to hear, but livable. BUt what if you find out your child was stolen and they never intended him/her to be adopted? What then? And isn’t it better to know what you would do BEFORE you do your search (because I know if I did a search I would really be doing it to ease my mind that my child was not bought/stolen), but if the atmosphere is really as bad as the Embassy says any of us could find out something we may not want to know.
I guess when you think of having a referral then most (hopefully all) would say there is no way you would adopt a child if you found out the birthparents still wanted them. But what about those of us that have already had our children in our homes? I know we SHOULD all want to know the truth, but if you know your child was stolen how do you NOT give them back, but also how DO you give them back? I feel bad even saying I wouldn’t want to search because of what I might find (even though I don’t think there would be anything to find-but who really knows??) but I guess I’m saying I am not a strong enough person to have that information in black and white in front of me.
Sorry if that rambled-I seem to be doing a lot of that on this subject.
Tracy – these are all great and important questions that every PAP needs to ask themselves. I’ve been asking myself these questions for about a year so I’m pretty comfortable with my own answers (which I’ll share with you privately if you are interested) but I imagine the answer will differ for everyone. But still, a birth parent search is not something to be taken lightly or to be done without a LOT of soul searching and preparation for what you might find. Along with the things you wrote, there is also the fear that you might embarrass, further ostracize or humiliate the birth mother if her baby was born in secrecy and your search outed her experience. There are also ethical concerns related to offering money and support. There are a lot of issues, for sure.
Laura wrote…..” Just what can a person do who really wants to help the orphans of the world?!”
My two cents….I think familes should stop looking for as young as possible infants. There are LOTS of older children who are legitimate orphans who need families. We are leaving on Friday to adopt a five year old boy. I know of six other familes with our agency adopting older children. I keep hearing Assistant Secretary Maura Harty’s statement in my head…..”We’re not here because parents want children, we are here because children need families. That’s a very important difference.”
I don’t think AYAP is the only problem here. I mean the Embassy site said baby buyers were looking for children birth to age 6-so that could include some of the “older/toddler” adoptions. And didn’t the APV post -about the failed match- (where the Embassy told them what had really happened) involve a SN child? Who would think a SN child would be involved in all of this.
For those of you wanting to know which provinces are having problems, they are listed on http://www.bringourchildrenhome.org. As far as I know, agencies are not listed on that website.
[…] Summary of Irregularities in Adoptions in Vietnam […]
Tracy,
I didn’t mean that AYAP was THE problem. It is clear from the report that there are problems with the way “system” is structured. The relationship between the agencies, orphanages and their staff is wide open for abuse.
I was only commenting on how maybe we as PAP’s may need to make a mental shift from find me the baby I want……..to what child out there needs a home?”
You know what, I think we are ALL effected by this now-PAPs and APs and we are all partially responsible for what happened. It doesn’t matter if we adopted from the right agency, an older child, a SN child etc. We were ALL willing to pay approx. $30,000 -total-for an adoption and that kind of money in a country like Vietnam is astronomical. Most of us chose our agencies without knowing 100% where that money was going to and I don’t know of a single agency out there (good or bad) that chose to cut the fee down significantly and only take as much as was needed to complete the adoption and support humanitarian aide. None of them said $30,000 will create a breeding ground for corruption, they all took as much as they could-some may have put that money to better use than others-but they all charged basically the same (correct me if I am wrong and someone was able to complete an adoption at half that cost). We (PAPs/APs) are as much responsible for what has happened as anyone (IMO). We were willing to pay whatever was being asked knowing it was too much. My in-country agency fee was $14,500 for Vietnam while my China in-country fee was $3,000. I paid it because I knew you had to if you wanted to adopt a child. So all of us that were willing to pay what it took have to share some of this responsibility. I’m not saying Vietnam, the agencies and our own Gov. aren’t to blame also. I know some tried harder than others, but very few of us chose to walk away.
PAPs are upset that they may never be matched, but AP are just as upset because look at what this has done to our children. This is forever part of their story, it’s official record now. To me it’s put a stain on almost all adoptions (I know there are a handful of people (I have heard Christina is one of them) who probably went above and beyond what most of us did to ensure her child was legit but that still leaves an awful lot of us out there worried and wondering if this has touched our children/families.
I will correct you. I don’t know who you are using to adopt from Vietnam but it is not our agency. We don’t charge $30,000! Our fee was the same when adoptions reopened as it was when adoptions closed at the end of 2002, $12,000. Only in the last few months have we increased it to $14,000. This pays our staff here and all office expenses, our staff in Vietnam and all their expenses, our commitments through the MOU’s that we have with the five orphanages we work with, and other incidentals along the way like typhoon humanitarian relief, medical care when needed for the children, sending kids to school, help for the elderly, surgeries, etc.
I am tired of the broad brush that has been used to paint all Vietnamese adoptions as tainted. It is simply not true. We have worked in Vietnam for 18 years. Are there unethical adoptions in Vietnam? Sure. Are all of them unethical? No. Are there unethical adoptions in all countries? You bet there are. Should all international adoptions be stopped because some are unethical? Maybe you think they should, I don’t because we will never have 100% perfect adoptions. The saying don’t throw the baby out with the bath water applies here. Most of the agencies working in Vietnam are good ethical hardworking people who have devoted their lives to helping not only the children being adopted but the other children that are left behind.
Well now it has finally happened. Vietnam has had enough of the United States and will be pulling all US agency licenses in Vietnam on September 1. End of the problem except for all the children and orphanages that depend on the aid form the US agencies. By necessity, since we will have no funds available to give for humanitarian aid, our aid to them will stop on September 1 as will most other agencies.
It a very sad final chapter to all the hard work agencies and their staff have put in over the last 20 years. When I first went to Vietnam in 1990 I saw children with rags for diapers laying on newspapers like they were in a bird cage, I saw orphanages cutting the formula in half because they did not have enough to go around, I saw orphanages without clean water, I saw children die of diarrhea, and orphanages in total disrepair. There was little or no aid to the orphanages. As the years passed and we were able to bring more aid to them, the conditions at the orphanages improved and the children’s health improved. We saw positive results everywhere. I hope we do not see a reversal in the results achieved over these almost twenty years. We will provide what little we can but it will be up to the agencies from other countries to step in and fill the void.
Dick Graham
IAAP
I’m not sure we all knew it was “too much.” This was my first adoption. I attended a large adoption conference at Rutgers University in November 2006 and collected information from a bunch of agencies for a bunch of countries. I didn’t see any significant differences in overall costs among the various countries. I did note that the international fee for Vietnam was very similar among all the agencies I looked at, so I assumed – perhaps naively- that that was simply the cost as set by Vietnam.
Certainly if I ever do a 2nd adoption, I will not be as naive as I was this time.
This is all just so overwhelming. I know we are all full of emotions and our heads are spinning. I do have 2 questions though…if any of you have any insight (even if just speculation) or info from your agencies, please share…..
1. Has anyone heard anymore about the DNA issue? With all that was just released, I’m still wondering about that.
2. Any thoughts on what this Sept. 1st deadline will do to the rate of referrals. Do you think they will “speed up” as agencies try to get as many children referred as possible before Sept. 1st. Will that cause more corruption…will that cause the USCIS to move even slower processing I-600’s because of fear of quick referrals?? Or, do you think referrals will basically come to an end at this point?
Everyone please join me in prayer for this situation, the children, the families, and all the Veitnamese and American officials making these decisions.
I take offense to the comment that we are “ALL” responsible. Like pp mentioned, this is my first adoption, the costs were comparible to other countries, and we (my husband and I) have suffered enough through infertility to then read someone’s post implicating us as guilty for corruption in Vietnam.
[…] have to if we had details, if this report were not so broad. A number of people have left comments on VVAI stating that they want names and specifics. Me too. I want names and specifics, […]
Tonya, good questions about the rate of referrals due to the looming 9/1 deadline. I suspect that whether referrals speed up, remain constant, or slow down may depend on what the agencies did in response to the previous warnings from the Embassy. I know my agency – and I would assume other agencies as well – stopped sending dossiers before the turn of the New Year. I suspect that the dossiers they currently have logged in will be matched because they controlled how many were sent. Once those dossiers are matched, there are no more for that agency and unless the province is working with other agencies, there is no more “need” for referrals. However, I would also suspect in the problematic provinces and problematic orphanages and problematic agencies, there may well be a “mad rush” for referrals. And that’s just not good, imo.
I’m wondering – did anyone’s agency know that this report of “irregularities” and warning was coming? Mine apparently didn’t, given that we haven’t received any information or reaction from it, although they did send out an acknowledgment of the Embassy releases and told us they were working on an informational statement for us. I remember the last time the Embassy issued a warning, most agencies told us on the Friday before the Monday it was issued it was coming. IIRC, JCICS asked the Embassy to hold the statement (the previous one) for a day so agencies could talk to PAPs. That doesn’t seem to have happened in this case.
It’s funny – all on one day – the AP article, the announcement of the 9/1 deadline from VN, and the summary of fraud. A very sad day. 🙁
I have such mixed feelings about this. I am devestated that we will never receive our referral from Vietnam (really – no kids and now I’m not sure how I’ll find them), but I am so entirely disgusted by what is in this report that I am also relieved that we will never receive our referral from Vietnam. We all know there has been corruption, but we only heard of incidents in isolation of each other. This report really puts it all together. And, I am afraid this is just the tip of the iceburg. I mean, the investigations did not even start until fairly recently, and we all know the USCIS is understaffed. There must be more. MUCH more. Ugh. And, no agency could possibly be completely above the corruption. Even if the wait was long (due to long wait lists), if the referrals were steady, something MUST have been going on, especially if you consider the fact that agencies working in the SAME provinces would receive NO (or barely any) referrals (and those agencies receiving no referrals must have at least been turning a blind eye).
Has anyone considered why the timing on this release of information? If this was information that the Embassy has been collecting over the past 2 years since the reopening, why release it all in one big report when the program is going to close again. Why not give out some evidence like this sooner so that parents could make more informed decisions about countries to pursue adoption from. I am sure it would have kept many families away, possibly limiting the demand, and maybe not putting so much stress on the program. Why not release all of this info when they gave out all the NOIDs last fall. Sure, we had all heard about many of these cases in one way or another, mostly from heresay or secondhand, but not from an official source that carries the kind of weight that the Embassy carries. The timing just seems odd to me, I have no conspiracy theory, just really wondering why not release this info sooner rather than later.
I was happy to see that Nicki and another poster references PEAR and Ethica in their comments. As one of the two people on the PEAR board who has been involved with Vietnam adoptions, I have more comments about this than can fit in one email! I will streamline my answers and would be happy to write in more depth later.
1- This isn’t just two years of corruption in VN adoptions. This has been going on long before VN opened up again. Old-timers like myself have been trying for years to warn people about the issues, but we were drowned out and shouted down by people who wanted their adoptions to go through….it was a discouraging time for us to know what was coming and not to be able to do anything about it.
2- It is time to do something about it! The numbers of families who’ve adoption from VN have grown, there are more people to help in this effort. PEAR certainly hopes to lead the way in this. All the heartache that everyone has been through should mean something…should result in something positive, especially since it might well be that this isn’t the last shut-down we will see in a sending country. I venture to say that this is hopefully the beginning of an overhauling of adoption practices in all sending countries, and our own. We start by collecting information,
3- Collecting information….you are asking for names, and I think you are exactly right. Don’t be surprised to see all 40+ agencies names on that list though. As others have pointed out, it is like the Watergate (I remember too!) who knew what and when. I have felt for a long time now that a few good agencies were trying to stand up to the practices of many not so good agencies, but that the tide was against them. But even the good ones can’t be 100% sure about each detail of the process. When you aren’t there to hear the conversations, how do you know if a birth parent was convinced to give up their child or not. Smart people that I trust 100% were duped too. For them, it was even more heartbreaking because they wanted so much to prove it could be done. Back to collecting info…we need to ask the VN adoption community to give “us” info, what agencies they used, what province, what their experinces were, etc. A few of us are working now on trying to come up with a system for how to do this, we hope VVAI will work with us on this.
4- PAPs always feel the lack of control so acutely, but no more so than in this case where many hopes and dreams have been lost. PAPs and APs don’t have a lot of control in a shut-down, but we could…we need to. We need to take the lessons of this situation and use it to avoid others. We need to hold agencies more accountable, we need to do a better job of educating PAPs and we need to learn how to do this so we can help the next country who goes through this.
Margaret
mom to 2 girls from VN, 1999, 2006
[…] other news that won’t be news to anyone in adoption-land, please check out this post at VVAI – it links to a long letter from the US Embassy concerning irregularites in Vietnam […]
[…] announcement on adoption irregularities in Vietnam, please take a look or read it on VVAI along with informed commentary. It is beyond disturbing to read the findings of USCIS’s […]
Excuse me, but I want the US Embassy employees under oath before Congress. I’d like to hear testimony on just what they did find, how many cases, and I’d like people to be able to ask questions of them.
You know why the US government would never give you names? Because it opens them to a lawsuit, particularly if the US hasn’t given people all the facts.
We have a broken US government, why is this issue any different than all the other messes created by the US. Until they provide facts and numbers and tell Congress in person the details behind their report, maybe this is all political or someone’s personal agenda.
[…] if you haven’t read the report from the U.S. Embassy in Viet Nam, please do so (actually, this is a better summary with excerpts from the Embassy report from VVAI). I was trying to explain to a friend today what that means to me, to us, to our plans, and I was […]