Scathing Review of Congo Adoption Corruption

Several media sources are quoting this new, scathing review. It names names and even quotes PAPs’ blogs. It is a must-read. See the entire post at CHRISTIAN SAVIORS & THE ADOPTIONS INDUSTRY IN CONGO EXPLOITING AFRICA’S MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE: CHILDREN [Conscious Being Alliance.com 6/18/13 by Jennifer Fierberg & Keith Harmon Snow]

Here are a few excerpts:

One of the Many on Trafficking

“One Congolese professor ‘Benjamin’ teaching at a university in the USA is equally outraged.  “Last summer a Belgian colleague of mine spent two weeks in Kinshasa and I booked him a room at [La Procure] Saint Anne.  He spent two weeks there and saw many American couples in the process of adopting Congolese children.  I knew about Saint Anne but I did not know that the adoption process was systematic until my colleague told me about it.”

This professor also wishes to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation against him or his family in Congo.  “As for the children, my wife’s nephew was given as an ‘orphan’ by his uncle, but when the family realized that he was missing the uncle had to disclose the whereabouts of the child.  When my wife went there she found lots of children introduced to her as ‘orphans’.  She was able to take our nephew back home.  Later we learned that the uncle left the child there in exchange for a few dollars.”

The uncle was paid $500 to declare his nephew an ‘orphan’.”

From DOS on False Paperwork

“Sarah Schaffer is a U.S. State Department agent who specializes in DRC adoptions.  Ms. Schaffer told us that “document fraud is widespread” and that “fraudulent information can be put on legal documents for the right price.”  She believes that there are legitimate orphans in the DRC, and in many of the adoptions programs, but she said that documents that are 100% legitimate and paired to the correct child are rare and uncertain.

The above statements should raise red flags with adoptive parents.  Instead, adoptive parents often subordinate the truth and consciously ignore the red flags to enable them to carry a child home to America.  They romanticize the poverty of underdeveloped nations, without accepting any personal role in relation to the entrenchment and perpetuation of that poverty and suffering.  This is structural racism at work, and it is being redefined, reconstituted and recodified in response to criticisms, critiques and challenges, further institutionalizing the structural violence.  Western (mostly) white parents — evangelical Christians or not — pat themselves on the back for rising above racism, and churches that once underpinned American slavery, for example, now gain credibility by supporting increasing numbers of adoptions of children of color, claiming that they are ‘integrated’ and ‘colorblind’ and racially ‘diverse’ institutions, when in fact they are as deeply biased, privileged and entitled as ever.  The evangelical international adoptions movement offers a newly enshrined and entrenched system of biracial inequality and exploitation….

…Ms. Shaffer stated: “DRC is the latest ‘hotspot’ for international adoption because it is the cheapest.”  Further, she confirmed that U.S. adoption agencies working in Congo need not be accredited in the U.S.: only four out of the twenty-five U.S. agencies working there are.  [emphasis Rally]

Further, agencies working in the DRC are not allowed to operate independently: they must be partnered with an attorney or orphanage.  Ms. Schaffer stated that many birth families have come to Congolese orphanages and retrieved their children during the DRC visits of prospective adoptive parents from the U.S.  These Congolese families have rescued their children from an international ‘adoption’ — trafficking — sometimes with and sometimes without the support of orphanage personnel.  The recent state department actions tacitly acknowledged the U.S. Government’s awareness of serious problems with DRC adoptions. ”

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