stealing children from their families in haiti

[kalmn]

http://www.startribune.com/world/99914694.html

here's a few key quotes.

The normal safeguards for child placement were lifted because of the scope of the disaster.
...
At the end of last year, American authorities denied the petition of a Baxter couple, Marc and Teresa Stroot, to adopt the brother and sister after their biological father opposed relinquishing custody.
...
Under a sparingly used immigration program, called humanitarian parole, adoptions were expedited regardless of whether children were in peril, and without the screening required to make sure they had not been improperly separated from relatives or placed in homes that could not adequately care for them.
...
Some Haitian orphanages were nearly emptied, even though they had not been affected by the quake or licensed to handle adoptions. Children were released without legal documents showing they were orphans and without regard for evidence suggesting fraud.
...
But they acknowledged that the administration's priority was getting children out of harm's way, not the safeguards the United States is obligated to enforce under international law.
...
After the quake, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive summarily signed off on their adoption -- as he did with all humanitarian parole petitions submitted to him by the United States -- without checking the Groens' qualifications.

the groens, that last family mentioned there, is adopting three children under the age of three, one 2 year old, two 1 year olds, and they are also pregnant. adopting multiple kids who aren't birthsibs at the same time is tricky. artificial twinning (when you adopt multiple kids at the same time who are the same age) is tricky and not recommended and you can just read that "not recommended" in full minnesotan. having another baby when you are in the process of adopting is so not recommended that most reputable agencies will kindly suggest that you put your application on hold until the baby is born, and you can read that one in full minnesotan understatement mode, too.

eta: the stroots, the first family, live in baxter, minnesota, which according to wikipedia-- "According to city-data.com, Baxter's prevalence of whiteness makes it the 81st least racially diverse city in the US."

i do not think i can express how angry this makes me. this is theft of children, pure and simple.

Comments

[ailbhe]

It's abduction, kidnap, child trafficking. Ew.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Oh, Minnesota. My agency explained that they would automatically put your app on hold if you got pregnant, no discussion.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i think mine said "let us know if you get pregnant and we'll help you put your app on hold". as at that point it would have taken a miracle for me to be pregnant, i didn't pay much attention, but i recall that they did want to know in a rather urgent way.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

You know, I like how they contrast "getting children's out of harm's way" with "international law" as opposed to, say, "helping them find their families."

I think it's ok to break the law sometimes. I don't think it's ok to take children away from their families without due process. (And I say this as someone who would have been a very, very good candidate for being removed from my family's so-called care.)

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

No, it's not theft pure and simple. It's desperately trying to safeguard these kids for the long run. Even in only a week there I could see how bad it was for the hundreds of unaccompanied children and children who had been left in orphanages. No health care to speak of, inadequate food and shelter, if any at all. I suspect the teens were given some say in how things worked out with their biological father- if we'll listen to them in custody cases here in the States, I think it's appropriate that we listen to them in adoption cases like this. If they say "No, I choose NOT to be raised in poverty in an institution. I choose to have a two parent family that can provide a home, adequate health care and nutrition, and an education for me," who are we to say "Sorry. You'll just have to go back to rice and beans once a day in an institution where you sleep on concrete. Yeah, we know there were people who were willing to provide what you really had a right to. Tough about your Dad not wanting to give up custody when he couldn't even raise you/provide for you himself." Mind you, I'm saying this as both an adult adopted child and someone who had to SERIOUSLY consider the welfare of her child when she was born and figure out if I actually COULD raise her on my own, rather than in bone-crushing poverty. I think these kids got a chance and took it- much like a high school senior getting a full ride to college when Mom and Dad want them to stay home and work the farm instead. Is it right in every instance? No. But overall I think more good than harm is being done in the long term for these children, and I'd like to think that as a parent I'd be willing to sacrifice what I wanted for the long-term best interests of my child. Money isn't everything, but it isn't nothing either. If you want to get irate, get irate about Blackwater, who are STILL in business and bypssing every safeguard that is currently in place by smuggling children out. Seriously- we ran into them. Big, beefy guys wearing polos who told members of our team "Yeah, we know we screwed up in Baghdad, so we want to make up for it. If there's anything you want in or out of the country- money, vehicles, weapons, equipment, children, just let us know, and for a price we can do it." Those are the folks you REALLY have to worry about. No home study required- just the highest bidder.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

did you read the article? the part about how most of the kids came from areas not affected by the earthquake, in particular?

also, i do in fact have the ability to be irate about multiple things at a time.

[tesseract26.livejournal.com]

o.O YIKES. that is some scary, scary shit. white privilege in action for reals.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read the entire article before responding. The biggest problem that's affecting the whole situation was pre-existing- poverty. People were already dropping their children off at orphanages in the middle of the night because they wanted their children cared for, but because of lack of room and lack of supplies, the orphanages were turning them away if there was any evidence of living family. So often there was simply no paperwork to be had. In other cases the paperwork was buried in the rubble of the orphanage, and many of the workers who might have had some clue about family of origin for the kids were killed in the quake themselves. The quake just made the situation worse by increasing volume exponentially. I'm not suggesting that we or anyone else should simply sweep in, grab all the kids "for their own good" and go, just that you're applying first world thought to a third-world situation which is worsened by natural disaster, a completely dysfunctional government, and an incredible amount of chaos and fragmentation of services. The vast majority of people there are living completely on the first level of Maslow's heirarchy of needs, even pre-quake.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I'm not suggesting that we or anyone else should simply sweep in, grab all the kids "for their own good" and go

But that's what happened in many cases.

Add in the fact that we are the reason they are so poor, and it becomes even more special.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

and that means that we should disregard their wishes and do what we think is best for them?

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

I believe it's primarily a matter of financial privilege, not white privilege.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Depends on who you're talking about. If you're talking about an infant or child with no quickly locatable family (within 2-4 months just as a number), yes. That child has a relatively small window of opportunity to be adoptable and to benefit from that adoption. Review video of children in orphanages in Eastern Europe to remind yourself what children institutionalized in poverty for long periods of time look like. In the case of the teens- ask the teens. I'd be surprised if they weren't involved in the decision. How long were they in that orphanage? The article refers to the guy as their biological father, not their dad, or even just their father. Suggests to me that he had possibly abandoned them long before the quake. There's just not enough information there to know.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Rescuing children from poverty without also rescuing their parents from poverty is problematic, particularly when an entire nation is existing in poverty. If children have a living parent who wants to keep them, and people really want to help those children, one way would be to help their living parent to provide for them. There are other ways. Not every child can be saved, but not every parent can be saved either, and breaking up families simply because of poverty is just exacerbating the crushing nature of poverty.

I do believe that most adoptions happen because of a crisis of some kind or other, and that not every crisis can be averted. And I don't think it's the adoptive parent's responsibility to figure out how to fix the underlying situation once the birth parent has chosen adoption...if we provide ourselves as resources after the choice has been made, I think that's as it should be. But if the birth parent has not chosen adoption, I think that's a line that should only be crossed if a crime has been committed against the child (child abuse, deliberate abandonment), and only with a LOT of court and government oversight in all of the involved countries.

[pants-of-doom.livejournal.com]

they are also pregnant.

they're both women?

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

Having seen their government in action, no, we're not so much the reason that they're poor. The US was stupid for invading in 1915, but Papa Doc and Baby Doc were local, more recent, and they were worse. I had a lot of conversations with local people about it, and that was pretty much the general consensus.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

ha! no, wouldn't that be nice. no, they're a m/f couple, she's pregnant.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't very often disregard the government of a nation, but in Haiti's case I think I could do so and not feel too guilty about it. They really are as bad (and worse) as it sounds. I personally ran into the governments theft of relief items. Some folks from Canada (First Nations) came down. They'd shipped their supplies and luggage to the Dominican Republic, and flew into Port au Prince. The Haitian government wouldn't let them bring the supplies in, and made them drive to the border to get their personal luggage. It was "Well, we don't KNOW that you're going to give away all these supplies. Maybe you're going to sell them instead. You'll just have to give them to us and trust us to get them distributed (which they don't) or pay import taxes. Oh gee, you're a non-profit or NGO? What a shame. Have a nice time trying to treat people with no supplies. I have no doubt that there are some very well-intentioned and honest people in the Haitian government and military. I also have no doubt that they're in the minority.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that, as bad as the Duvaliers were, they are not the reason Haiti is poor.

To clarify, by "we" I meant "the West," not just the U.S.; France had a lot to do with it. The U.S. was more than just "stupid" for invading, and we aiding and abetting those exploiting Haiti. The U.S. was not neutral.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the 90 million francs that france demanded in reparations is a good reason why they're so poor. that's US $21,685,135,671.48 in current money. they were still paying that off in the 1950's.

noam chomsky has also done some good analysis of the us's complicity in how haiti being poor and destabilized.

haiti doesn't need us swooping in to rescue them and then leaving again. they need people to go there, ask them what they need and want, and then help them get it.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

But you appear to be advocating disregarding the parents, which was the major point of marydell's comment.

Ok, Haitian government oversight cannot be trusted. I don't think anyone has argued that they are a model of rectitude. Just because the government there is bad does not mean that it's ok to take the kids from their parents just because you can.

Seriously, what does the Haitian governments' misappropriation of relief supplies have to do with kidnapping children?

[tesseract26.livejournal.com]

white privilege is inextricably linked to class privilege for a million reasons. in the US, the examples include: people of color getting crappier primary/secondary educations, having less access to college and frequently poor preparation for it even if they get there, being legally excluded from GI bill-era benefits, having less financial education and thus more vulnerable to predatory lending practices, being judged 'poor credit risks' on the basis of skin color, still making (by and large) less money than white folks, and on and on. globally, colonial exploitation fueled by racism and hunger for resources, collusion with colonial oppressors by local aristocracies, near-universal negative stereotypes about darker skin even in countries where most folks are non-white, and on and on.

also, i have a realllllly hard time imagining this happening if the other country was predominantly white; note that the other two countries mentioned as having similar adoption sweeps were indonesia and china. i get a STRONG whiff of white man's burden here, especially since the most egregious actions are those of a couple described as missionaries.

i agree that it's a complicated situation, and of course i think that kids should have food, shelter, health care, and basic needs met if at all possible. and i think the obama administration's initial idea of expediting adoptions in progress was a wise one, but what's described here is an abuse of that generosity.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

If the government in the children's originating country cannot be trusted, it's doubly important that the US government and courts in the US act to safeguard the rights of all the vulnerable parties in the case.

Poverty is not a crime.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Did you get the "have you fully grieved your infertility" question? So many sarcastic answers came to mind for that one. But yeah it was part of our home study that you should not be trying to get pregnant, let alone adopting if you actually were pregnant.

[tesseract26.livejournal.com]

this is not a good comparison. a HUGE part of the problem with eastern european and russian orphanages is the extreme lack of human contact. by contrast, the article specifically refers to the haitian girls' relatives visiting them at the orphanage.

and i'm not buying your inference about the haitian father mentioned, either. "biological father/mother" is standard journalistic usage. it's the accepted way to disambiguate adoptive parents from genetic ones. and no editor would let anyone but a columnist use the word "dad" outside of a quotation; it's very informal language.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

President Clinton apologizing for destroying their economy in the 90s was a mirage, then?

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Why not simply direct the MINUSTAH army of occupation to round up ALL Haitian children, then, and ship them to First World nations for adoption?

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

They're why we can't have nice things!

Seriously it does add a lot of red tape to legitimate adoptions to to ensure things are on the up and up. People frequently ask us questions when they see things like this like "Well so and so got a child from here in less then a year, why can't you." Explaining Hague and that some of those programs are not options in our agency because of concerns with child trafficing and that I under no circumstances want my children to worry they were placed with our family illegally.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a thing where some people who try and try and try and can't get pregnant, manage it after they adopt, as if the thing that was stopping them having a baby was not having a baby. It isn't all that common, but I personally know two cases. But in both of those cases, the pregnancy happened after the adoption, so the adopted kid is the older sibling -- in one case by about a year, in the other by about two years.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

That does happen with surprising frequency, particularly in cases where the infertility doesn't have a cause. The old-fashioned theory is that one just needs to stop worrying about it in order to get pregnant, which if true would be very good contraception for all the anxious people in the world. But for some people it may just take 4 or 6 years to get pregnant for no apparent reason, and by the time their day rolls around, they've gone ahead with an adoption while still trying.

That's why the social workers want you to at least take a break from trying while you're in the adoption process, so that you don't end up with oddly-spaced or not-spaced kids. They "grieving" thing is probably about getting past the hope of having a biological child, because that can sometimes make the adopted child a consolation prize instead of "the real thing," although I have fortunately not encountered anyone who voiced a thought like that.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

This exactly! I haven't found a nice way to say "it took us longer than it took your friends because we did an ethical adoption."

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

bwahahah! if you figure out how, let me know?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

When we were waiting to get picked for domestic adoption, I said to a co-worker that it was taking a while because I'm not a great pick, because I work full-time and a lot of birth moms want someone who either will be staying home or take a significant maternity leave with the baby. Co-worker said "well, can't you just tell them that you're going to quit working?" I was totally floored. All I could manage was "uh, but that would be, uh, lying."

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry Ann but this is clearly not about safe guarding kids in the long run. If it was they would follow the legal process that is in place for safe guarding them. They could have just as easily arranged for these American's to become their foster family willing to adopt them if and when family could not be located to participate in the decisions for the future of their child.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

Seems like a bad way to start a relationship you will have the rest of your life even if it's pretty limited. That is the sort of thing that can back fire when you child who may develop a relationship with that birth parent finds out that that verbal agreement was violated. That said I can certainly see the temptation families face as it's very competitive to get chosen by a birth parent.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I guess I can see how it would be tempting, because trying to get chosen is really painful and uncertain. But since the whole deal with most birthparent-choice adoptions is that the birthparents are trying to give their child something they can't provide themselves, I think it's crucial for adoptive parents to be scrupulously honest about what they can and can't provide, so the birth parents can make a properly informed decision about what's best for the child.