Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / July 2008

I can see it now, pro-adoption wags will be doing
the "Oh the humanity!" plea about how horrible
this must have been for the adopters to find out
they were in receipt of ""stolen goods"".   <sarcasm>

http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-guatemala-stolen-baby,0,9824
26.story

DNA tests confirm first stolen baby in troubled Guatemalan adoption
system

By Associated Press 5:21 PM EDT, July 23, 2008
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) _ DNA tests for the first time have confirmed
that
a baby was stolen from her mother and adopted for profit in
Guatemala.

The baby, Esther Zulamita, was taken by armed men in 2007 at her
family's shoe shop. Her mother, Ana Escobar, has spent the past year
searching for the child.

In May, Escobar saw the toddler with an American woman who was
adopting the girl.

She pressed authorities to check the DNA samples on file, and they
found they were falsified. New tests proved Escobar was the mother.

It has long been suspected that some children were stolen to be put
up
for adoption in Guatemala. Adoption official Jaime Tecu announced on
Wednesday the first hard evidence of the practice.

http://www.aol.co.nz/news/story/DNA-tests-provide-first-confirmation-of-stolen-b
aby-in-troubled-Guatemalan-adoption-system/759001/index.html

DNA tests provide first confirmation of stolen baby in troubled
Guatemalan adoption system
24-07-2008 - 08:43

Adoption officials said Wednesday that DNA tests indicate a
Guatemalan
baby reported stolen from her mother was being adopted by a U.S.
couple, the first strong sign that the Central American nation's
troubled adoption system relied in part on abducted children.

Authorities have long believed that children were stolen or bought to
supply Guatemala's US$100 million-a-year adoption industry before
thousands of pending adoptions were frozen in May.

Previously, dozens of mothers reported stolen babies and at least two
were found in orphanages, although they had not yet been put up for
adoption.

But adoption officials revealed to The Associated Press on Wednesday
that DNA tests identified toddler Esther Zulamita, who was reported
stolen on March 26, 2007. The girl was in the process of being
adopted
to an unidentified U.S. couple.

Jaime Tecu, director of a team of experts reviewing all pending
Guatemalan adoptions, said the DNA test results represent the first
time officials have directly linked a baby reported stolen by its
mother to the fraud plagued adoption system.

"This is the first time that we've been able to show, with
irrefutable
evidence, that a stolen child was put up for adoption," Tecu said.

The baby's mother, Ana Escobar, said armed men locked her in a
storage
closet at the family's shoe store north of Guatemala City and took
the
6-month-old.

"When I got out, my daughter was gone," she told the AP in an earlier
interview about the case.

She spent months searching hospitals and orphanages, looking for the
child.

In May, Escobar says she was sitting in the National Adoption
Council's offices, hoping to get access to the babies whose adoption
cases were being reviewed. She looked up and saw a toddler who looked
like her baby.

The image of the child being carried by an official haunted her, and
she asked officials to see more photos. Soon she was sure the baby
girl was hers.

All of the girl's papers were in order, including DNA tests showing
that her birth mother was someone other than Escobar. But Escobar
convinced officials to take new DNA tests.

"She was so sure that the child was hers that we agreed to search the
house where the baby was kept," Tecu said.

The baby was placed with a caretaker while her adoption was pending,
but Escobar convinced a Guatemalan judge in May to let her care for
the child while the new DNA tests were performed.

"I can't explain how excited and happy I am," Escobar told the AP on
Wednesday. "It's a miracle."

Tecu said officials will investigate the lawyers who handled the
adoption, the doctor who signed the falsified DNA tests, and anyone
else associated with the process.

"This was run by a mafia, and we going after them," he said.

Guatemala froze all 2,286 pending adoptions in May, and officials are
reviewing each case to confirm there is no fraud.

At the same time, Guatemala is just starting to adopt babies under a
new, more stringent system run by an independent adoption commission.

Before the reform, foreign couples, mostly from the U.S., paid up to
US
$30,000 to adopt children.

The previous system was so quick and hassle-free it became the
second-
largest source of foreign babies to U.S. couples after China.

For more on this discussion see thread in  alt.adoption  newsgroup.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.adoption/browse_frm/thread/df9505c3791f3f4c