US Government Screws Over Loyda Rodriguez Morales and Kidnapped Child Anyelí Liseth Hernández Rodríguez UPDATED
Knew DNA didn’t match PRIOR to adoption? CHECK. US Government issues adoption visa anyway? CHECK. APs Completely know within 1 year of adoption that child had been abducted? CHECK. APs fight against victim-mother for 4 years(SHE IS NOT A BIRTHMOTHER!)? CHECK. Guatemala court orders INTERPOL to intervene? CHECK. US Government screws over family by citing Hague Abduction Convention.?CHECK! Special place in Hell reserved for APs? CHECK and CHECK!
It is time for a law firm in the US to step up and represent the VICTIMS in this-Loyda and Anyeli. Amnesty International has assisted Sobriviventes in Guatemala. How about now?
“A Liberty couple, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan, will not be forced to return a Guatemalan girl they adopted to her birth parents although the child was allegedly abducted from her birth mother’s [WRONG! She is NOT a BIRTHMOTHER] side in 2006 by what was believed to be a child-trafficking ring.
According to Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department,
Guatemalan officials had been informed that the Monahans would not be forced to return the child because the two countries had not signed the Hague Convention on Abduction. The treaty was signed Jan. 1, 2008, more than a year after the initial abduction took place but before the girl left the country bound for the United States.
Nuland said at a press briefing May 15 in Washington, D.C., that the United States was deeply concerned about allegations regarding stolen children and inter-country adoptions.
“Our primary goal in any kind of inter-country adoption is that they be ethical, that they be transparent,” Nuland said via an email link. “That’s why we push so many countries to join the Hague Convention on Adoptions.
“That said, we can’t accept cases under the Hague Convention on Abduction if the treaty was not in force at the time of the alleged wrongful removal or retention.”
Nuland said the proper venue for pursuing the case would be in state courts.
“They’re the competent organ for holding a full hearing on the merits and the best interests of the child,” Nuland said.
The child, Anyeli Hernandez Rodriguez who was born Oct. 1, 2004, was reportedly abducted on Nov. 3, 2006, when she was 2 years old, and whisked away in a taxi cab as her mother was opening the door to their home in San Miguel Petapa.
Last year a Guatemalan judge ruled in favor of the birth parents, Loyda Rodriguez and her husband Dayner Orlando Hernandez, and ordered the child be returned to them and her passport canceled.
The girl, now 7, spent time in an orphanage while her birth parents [WRONG they are VICTIMs and Parents not BIRTHPARENTS!] searched for her with the assistance of Survivors’ Foundation, a human rights organization. The child left Guatemala on Dec. 9, 2008, as Karen Abigail Monahan VanHorn. Jennifer Monahan’s maiden name is VanHorn. There have been no allegations made that the Monahans knew the child they adopted had been kidnapped. [THE DNA DIDNT MATCH THOUGH!]
When contacted last year by the Liberty Tribune after the story broke, the Monahans declined to comment and posted a note on the door of their upscale house on Woodbury Lane saying, “Please respect our privacy and do not trespass on our private property. Thank you.”
They also hired the Peter Mirijanian public relations agency to represent them. The agency could not be reached for comment, but earlier had released this statement: “The Monahan family will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child. They remain committed to protecting their daughter from additional trauma as they pursue the truth of her past through appropriate legal channels.”
Neighbors said the Monahans have three children, two of them adopted. Timothy Monahan is an orthopedic surgeon with offices in Liberty and staff privileges at Liberty Hospital.”
UPDATE: U.S. officials: Liberty couple won’t be force to return adopted daughter
[Liberty Tribune 5/16/12 by Angie Anaya Borgedalen]
“”The child herself needs to be a part of the decision,” said Dr. Linda Joslyn Bishop. “I can’t imagine any of us wanting to go through an experience like this, especially at her age.”
Nine people, including a Guatemalan judge, have been charged with kidnapping and fraud in connection with the events that led to the girl leaving the country. Guatemala’s Quick Adoptions [Seriously? Sounds like an Adoption Agency.]was once the top source of adoptive children for the United States, accounting for close to 4,000 adoptions per year.
Bishop said it’s a difficult decision even in situations where there isn’t a cultural difference.
“The negative effects about just hearing about this transition would make any child, adult, teenager anxious and very sad,” she said.
She said it would leave the girl in a state of bereavement.”[Are you kidding me? She was 2 when kidnapped and she would remember her REAL parents who are victims as she is. She will be MORE bereaved when she finds out that her APs KNEW that her DNA did not match and the 100s of stories that she will read in the future! Of course the transition would require bilingual therapists. She is a kidnapping victim!KIDNAPPING VICTIM]
Adopted Guatemalan Girl To Stay In US
[KMBC 5/15/12]
Our previous coverage can be found here.
REFORM Puzzle Pieces
Update: Two opposing viewpoints.
“Loyda Rodriguez says she can still remember the day her daughter was taken.
What began as a simple walk home from a shopping trip more than five years ago became a nightmare, she says.
“November 3, 2006, is when they stole my daughter,” she told CNN Thursday. “I had left to go shopping. When I came back, I did not realize that a woman was following me. When I entered my house, my daughter stayed on the patio, and that was when she was taken.”
But that account is not what she has told other news organizations in describing what happened that day.
In 2008, she told ABC News a woman appeared in her backyard and grabbed her out of her arms, while she was trying to enter her house.
Last year, the Associated Press reported that Rodriguez felt someone tug at her daughter as she tried to enter her home, and then turned to see a woman get into a waiting taxi, along with her young daughter.
And the El Periodico newspaper reported that Rodriguez said she left her daughter on the patio with other children while she went to deal with clothes on the terrace.
Reached Friday by phone, Rodriguez told CNN she does not remember telling ABC or anyone that the girl was snatched from her arms. She said she’s given multiple interviews on the case, and stood by what she said earlier — that she left the girl outside after returning from a shopping trip.
It all happened in about two minutes, Rodriguez said.
Now, the 7-year-old girl is at the center of an international custody dispute. She is a child with two identities, in two countries, with two sets of parents who claim her as their own.
In Missouri, they call her Karen. In Guatemala, she is known as Anyeli.
Guatemalan authorities say Anyeli was snatched from Rodriguez and sold to an international adoption agency.
Last year, a Guatemalan judge ruled that the girl belonged with Rodriguez and not with her adoptive U.S. parents.
The Guatemalan government suspended adoptions in 2007 after authorities found multiple cases of falsified birth certificates and paperwork, as well as alleged thefts of babies.
This week, the U.S. State Department weighed in on the case of the 7-year-old girl, saying a U.S. state court would have to decide whether the girl should return to Guatemala, because when the incident happened, the two countries had not yet signed an international treaty dealing with abducted children.
“Our view remains that, at the time, this appeared to be a legitimate adoption. So again, our preferred course of action would be for any claims to be pursued in the state courts of the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Rodriguez told CNN she was devastated by the news.
“I feel very sad, and I am still suffering, because I had hope that the United States would respond to me and would return my daughter. … I do not know why they are unfair, because I have my rights, because I am her real mother,” she said.
In Guatemala at least 10 people have been charged with human trafficking in connection with the case of this adoptive girl. So far, two of those people have been convicted, and the others are awaiting trial.
That’s more than enough proof, Rodriguez says, that her daughter should come home.
“There is very important evidence, which revealed that she was stolen from me, and DNA evidence proves that I am her real mother,” she told CNN.
However, a source with knowledge of the case told CNN that while Rodriguez’s DNA matches the DNA of a child brought to the embassy in Guatemala, there is no evidence the child in question in the United States is the same child tested at the embassy.
Also, questions have been raised about whether the person presenting the child at the embassy was, in fact, Rodriguez’s sister, which casts doubt on the kidnapping story, the source said.
Guatemalan authorities say the adoption agency falsified documents to make the girl eligible for adoption, something that the adoptive parents in Missouri apparently didn’t know.
Rodriguez says she now hopes to go to court in Missouri to get her daughter back.
The adoptive parents were unavailable for comment, referring CNN to their lawyer in Washington, who declined to comment.
Last year a family representative said the adoptive parents would “continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child. They remain committed to protecting their daughter from additional traumas as they pursue the truth of her past through appropriate legal channels.”
Guatemalan mother seeks ‘stolen’ daughter’s return from U.S.
[CNN 5/17/12 by Maria Renee Barillas and Rafael Romo]
February 2012 blog post about Susana Luarca. The blogger thought it was a pleasure to talk to her. In fact, the blogger says “Having the beauty and poise of a Latina Meryl Streep, my brain could not process why such a woman would be subjected to house arrest or the accusations of human trafficking'”
Update 2: Karen Smith Rotabi keeps the story alive in a new editorial Child Abduction for Adoption: Poverty and Privilege Clash as a Child’s Return to Guatemala is Blocked [RH Reality Check 7/26/12]
Update 3: New developments on the Guatemala side. CICIG has taken this case to the courts.
CICIG June 26, 2012
http://cicig.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=183&cntnt01returnid=215
COURT LINKS JUDGE PERALTA TO PROCEEDINGS
Guatemala, June 26, 2012. The Fourth Court of the First Criminal Instance linked Mario Fernando Peralta Castañeda to proceedings on charges of human trafficking, malfeasance, unlawful association and denial of justice. Peralta is a judge at the Escuintla Court of the First Instance for Children and Adolescents and he faces the aforementioned charges because of his alleged involvement in the illegal adoption of the child Angely Liseth Hernández Rodríguez.
Judge Jisela Reynoso issued Peralta the following alternative measures: house arrest, ban on leaving the country without authorization and the obligation to sign the court attendance record every 30 days. CICIG will appeal against the decision and argue that Peralta be sent to prison because of the existence of the danger of absconding and thwarting investigations in the case.
In the hearing, CICIG argued that Judge Peralta acted arbitrarily, negligently and dishonestly, because in his position as the ideal person to protect children, he acted in way that violated the provisions provided for in the Constitution of the Republic and international human rights agreements for children.
Background
In the hearing, CICIG argued that Judge Peralta acted arbitrarily, negligently and dishonestly, because in his position as the ideal person to protect children, he acted in a way that violated the provisions set forth in the Constitution of the Republic and international human rights agreements for children.
CICIG acts as a complementary prosecutor in this proceeding
CICIG October 2, 2012
http://cicig.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=262&cntnt01returnid=215
PRESS RELEASE 077
LAWYER TO STAND TRIAL FOR ILLEGAL ADOPTIONS
Guatemala, October 2, 2012. The Fourth Court of the First Instance for Criminal Matters ruled to send Raúl Ticún Urías to trial for his alleged participation in the illegal adoption of the child Angely Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez. Ticún Urías will be tried on charges of human trafficking, criminal association and the use of false documents.
At the initial hearing, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) presented the evidence that demonstrates the accused party’s participation in facilitating the recruitment, harboring, reception and transportation of the child during the illegal adoption procedure of the adoptive parents. The lawyer and the adoptive family, however, were aware of the negative DNA result for the so-called mother and child.
The investigation determined that Ticún Urías, as the special judicial representative of US citizens Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan, facilitated and fostered the notarial adoption procedure of Angely Liseth Hernández Rodríguez in 2008 (falsely identified as Karen Abigail López García). Furthermore, as the representative, he appeared before the General Directorate of Migration to process the passport of the child so that she could be transported to the United States, where she currently resides.
In the proceedings, Judge Gisela Reynoso confirmed that the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) could act as a definitive complementary prosecutor.
BACKGROUND FACTS
The child was taken on November 3, 2006 from the patio of her house, located in the municipality of San Miguel Petapa in the department of Guatemala City. She was then handed over so as to begin the Monahan family’s adoption procedure with false documentation.
Prense Libre article October 16, 2012
http://www.prensalibre.com/noticias/justicia/Envian-Fernando-Peralta-adopciones-ilegales_0_793120874.html (Spanish)
“Envían a juicio a juez Fernando Peralta por adopciones ilegales
El Juzgado Cuarto de Instancia Penal envío a juicio al juez Mario Fernando Peralta Castañeda, por su implicación en adopciones ilegales.”
My google translation:
“Sent to trial by judge Fernando Peralta illegal adoptions
The Fourth Court of Criminal Instance delivery trial Judge Mario Fernando Peralta Castaneda, for their involvement in illegal adoptions.
The crimes alleged against him the judge are trafficking, malfeasance, conspiracy and denial of justice.
Investigations by the Public Ministry and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), Peralta had participated in the illegal adoption of the girl Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez.
In the case of Rodriguez Hernandez, the small girl was subtracted November 3, 2006, from the courtyard of her house, in the Villa Hermosa, San Miguel Petapa. Then she was given up for adoption to an American couple with the name of Karen Abigail Lopez Garcia through the Primavera Association .
Peralta serves as judge of the children and adolescents of Escuintla and 37 other processes investigated for illegal adoptions.”
Update 4:”It’s unclear how the two-year-old broke her femur, Dr. Napoleon Castillo Molinedo told me. The Guatemalan pediatrician regularly saw the child, identified as “Karen Abigail Lopéz García” in his office records, for check-up appointments and vaccinations. Firing up a weary PC, the doctor retrieved Karen’s old records, printing out a list: ten visits in the first seven months of 2007 alone.
The adults who brought the toddler into Castillo’s office, members of the Bran family, were in the business of children. More specifically, they provided what most Americans call “foster care” for Guatemalan kids during their adoptions to mostly American families. According to Castillo, the Brans “didn’t overflow with love for the kids.”
“I charged them less per child, since they brought so much volume through my office,” the doctor said. He said the Brans claimed Karen “fell down” and broke her limb “jumping on a bed.” But he didn’t believe them.
Sitting in a dingy yellow office in one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in Guatemala City, Castillo explained, back in 2010, that it wasn’t his business to investigate or even report his suspicions. His involvement with Karen had clear limits. It began when she came through the clinic’s doors. It ended when she left.
The same unspoken boundaries applied to many other adults involved in Karen’s protracted, complicated adoption. Someone had found the child. Someone had offered her for adoption. Someone fed her, and someone changed her diapers. One person processed adoption paperwork in Guatemala; another did the same in the US. Some links in the chain knew each other, and some didn’t. The simple compartmentalization helped obscure a shared responsibility, as well as legal jurisdiction.
And there lies one of the myriad issues facing the exhausted prosecutors of Guatemala’s human-trafficking unit in what is now a high-profile criminal investigation. For the past six years, the child known as Karen has lived in Missouri with her adoptive parents, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan. But Loyda Rodríguez and Dayner Hernández, a young Guatemalan couple, are convinced the child is their daughter, Anyelí, who was kidnapped in November 2006. Although a Guatemalan judge ruled that Karen should be returned to Guatemala in 2011, the Monahans have kept her.
Today, both families hope to do what’s best for Karen. But understanding what that means is just as complicated as understanding what actually happened to the child.
In Guatemala nearly a dozen people, including government officials, have been charged with serious criminal offenses related to Karen’s adoption, including dereliction of duty, human trafficking, and falsifying documents. Two women, a nursery director and a lawyer, have been found guilty and are serving jail time for their involvement with the child.
The case pits American against Guatemalan interests, a family against a family. It can be seen as a study in the failure of cooperation and international diplomacy, or as an examination of influence, wealth, and power. The situation forces questions about the definitions of what is right, what is moral, and what, exactly, is criminal.
This story was reported over the past six years. I used over five thousand documents obtained and leaked from various sources in Guatemala, interviewed dozens of parties, and gained insight from criminal investigators and experts associated with the case in both countries.
In 2006, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan, an American couple from Liberty, Missouri, began the process of adopting a boy from Guatemala. They already had one biological daughter. To adopt, they used the Florida adoption agency Celebrate Children International (CCI). Like many CCI clients, the Monahans shared a deep Christian faith with the agency’s director, Sue Hedberg. The adoption proceeded with ease, despite CCI’s checkered history of complaints alleging unethical business practices.
When the Monahans visited Guatemala, they found the poverty there overwhelming, according to a chronology of events written by Jennifer Monahan and later obtained by criminal investigators in Guatemala. “…[O]ur family is burdened with the vision of ‘street toddlers’ and reports of children not having enough to eat or drink, and even being incarcerated with their mothers in jail,” Monahan wrote, upon returning to Missouri. “We pray for the opportunity to adopt another child.”
Like countless other potential adoptive parents, they skimmed through photos of children posted online. When they saw a picture of a girl listed as Karen Abigail Lopéz García, aged twenty-three months, they decided to inquire.
“We want to work with an ethical facilitator, although we know in Guatemala there are always things out of people’s control,” Monahan said, as recounted in an email she later sent to Guatemalan adoption lawyer Susana Luarca. “We also offered to help the birth mother if she needs help, since Karen appears to be extraordinarily well-cared for.”
At the same time, in 2006, the reputation of Guatemala’s international adoption industry was declining fast. Stories of baby-snatching and kidnappings for adoption peppered the pages of local newspapers.
Nevertheless, business was still booming. In 1996, the State Department reported that 542 Guatemalan children were adopted into the US. Ten years later, that number increased 663 percent to 4,135. Adopting parents paid agency fees ranging anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 per child. The money passed through various hands: those of child finders (buscadoras) and pullers (jaladoras), lawyers, specialized cabbies, pediatricians, civil registrars, judges, government officials, nannies, nurses, and more.
A few months after the Monahans signed up with CCI to adopt Karen, the hitches and hiccups began.
Yet increasing attention paid to Guatemalan adoptions meant that adoptive parents faced heightened scrutiny. “Guys,” CCI director Hedberg wrote in an email to dozens of her clients in October 2006, “there are again major problems with the police stopping families, foster moms and lawyers and harassing them and even taking the children away. This is not a safe time to travel to visit your children.”
A few months after the Monahans signed up with CCI to adopt Karen, the hitches and hiccups began. The required DNA test, meant to prove the parenthood of the relinquishing mother, kept getting delayed for various reasons. In January, the midwife’s license couldn’t be found.
At the time, the Monahans were still in the process of adopting their son. Jennifer Monahan wrote that in January, when they traveled to Guatemala to pick him up, she hesitated to meet Karen. The child was reportedly living with a foster mother, paid by CCI’s in-country facilitator, Marvin Bran.
Monahan told CCI she didn’t want to meet the child unless the adoption was certain to progress. She didn’t want to give her any false ideas. One of Hedberg’s volunteer staff members, acting as a case manager, warned the family not to meet Karen, since her requisite DNA test hadn’t been carried out yet. “She felt that this wasn’t going well, and that something might be going on,” Monahan noted. In her chronology of events, she wrote that she decided to pray about the decision.
But Hedberg insisted that nothing was wrong. The next day, against Jennifer Monahan’s wishes, a caretaker named Kimberly Bran brought Karen to the apartment the Monahans had rented, telling her to “kiss new mommy and daddy…” “Karen wept hysterically for the foster mother, then settled into our hearts,” Monahan wrote. By the time the visit ended, the Monahans had fallen in love with the child.
In May, however, CCI wrote to the family with bad news. Karen’s mother, who was listed on the child’s birth certificate as “Felicita López García,” was now suddenly “missing,” Monahan wrote in her chronology. No one could find her.
It was a problem. Without Felicita’s consent, and a voluntary sample of her DNA from which to establish a maternal connection to Karen, the child’s adoption to the Monahans would freeze—perhaps forever.
Guatemala is a small, brutally poor country. Almost half of all children there—and the majority of children in rural, indigenous communities—grow up stunted by chronic malnourishment. The nation was the site of the longest civil war in Latin American history: over three decades of brutality, during which the government massacred hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Trauma still hangs over the country, like a shroud.
Against this background, some Guatemalan families voluntarily relinquished their children to international adoption. Sometimes babies were given up to help siblings survive. For a woman with a starving family, selling a child might be an obvious, if heartbreaking, option.
Karla Ordoñez, a Guatemalan adoption facilitator who sometimes worked with CCI, told me pregnant women often called her, seeking help. “Most of the time they needed a house or food,” she said. Selling a baby was a way to meet basic needs: jaladoras, middlemen who identified children who could be “pulled” into adoption, reportedly offered pregnant women as much as $640 USD per unborn baby.
But sometimes, Ordoñez said, the women changed their minds. That kind of situation, she explained, was difficult to navigate. “Part of the money would have already gone to the woman, so you couldn’t get it back,” she said. Many American adoption companies, she claimed, weren’t interested in understanding the complicated details of individual situations. As with any business, after a deposit, goods were expected.
It was widely acknowledged that baby-selling in adoption was occurring, and had been since the early 1990s. The American government also knew. In June 1995, the US Embassy in Guatemala sent a highly disturbing cable back to the State Department in Washington, outlining what it called “a cruel international trade.” Some birth mothers, it noted, had been threatened with death after trying to get children back. “The issue is the following,” the cable stated. “Are we not morally obligated (if not legally) to prevent what is otherwise clearly reprehensible as well as criminal under any penal code—kidnapping, the illegal separation of biological children from their parents?”
Dayner Orlando Hernández, a bricklayer, and his wife, Loyda Rodríguez, had three children and were solidly middle class by Guatemalan standards. Unlike some of their desperate countrymen, they’d never been forced to consider selling a child. But on November 3, 2006, their daughter, two-year-old Anyelí Liseth, was abducted. The child, Rodríguez said, was snatched from their home in San Miguel Petapa, south of Guatemala City.
The next morning, after a fruitless search, Hernández filed a formal complaint with the local police, and gave them a photo of his daughter. In the report, he stated that two unknown women had seized Anyelí, fleeing in a white taxi. The baby had been wearing a simple light-blue canvas dress and toddler-sized white shoes. The day after, he filed another complaint with the local branch of the Ministerio Público, and the following week, he lodged a third report with the Procurador de los Derechos Humanos, a congressional office on human rights.
But the authorities didn’t help.
Winter passed. So did Anyelí’s third birthday. The young family filed complaints with various Guatemalan authorities, and still nothing happened. Spring came and went. Hernández engaged in his own kind of guerrilla investigations, working the neighborhood streets and questioning people as to whether they’d seen his baby daughter.
By early summer 2007, the couple still had no information about Anyelí’s kidnapping. Was the child dead? Why would anyone take their daughter?
By June 2007, Karen’s mother had resurfaced. In her chronology, Jennifer Monahan claimed that CCI gave no explanation regarding the woman’s earlier disappearance. When the family asked what had transpired, CCI staff told Monahan to be patient—and to stop asking questions.
The DNA test was administered in July. Documents show that Karen’s cheek was swabbed, and that the sample was then compared with one from her mother Felicita’s cheek. The DNA comparison test, first put into place in 1995, was supposed to be a fool-proof fraud detector that verified whether a woman relinquishing a child was indeed biologically related to that child. A strict protocol instituted by the US Embassy mandated how the samples were drawn, handled, and shipped to pre-approved American laboratories that performed the actual testing. That way, it was thought, no one could tamper with the samples.
By mid-July, the US testing facility LabCorp hadn’t confirmed receipt of Karen and her mother’s DNA samples. The Monahans, again, pressed CCI for information.
“Dear Sue,” Jennifer Monahan wrote to Hedberg, “…Labcorp hasn’t notified anyone of receiving the sample—should we be concerned that it didn’t happen?” She tried calling LabCorp directly, to no avail.
“We just want you to know that after spending time with Karen, we know she is our daughter and we will do anything to bring her home,” Monahan wrote in a separate email, also included in the chronology. “We want to do the right thing through this process and not put undue pressure on anybody, but we are so concerned about how slowly things are going with no apparent explanation.”
Then new information arrived. On August 1, 2007, the Monahans learned that the DNA test had failed to establish a maternal match. Felicita Antonia López was an imposter.
According to the Monahan chronology, Hedberg said she’d ask LabCorp “…to bury this [DNA] result, like they used to do for her, but LabCorp said…they couldn’t do that any more.” Monahan noted, “She said she could get LabCorp to delay reporting for a week.” It’s unclear whether or not the reporting was delayed. Neither LabCorp nor Hedberg responded to requests for comment.
Hedberg, Monahan wrote, said there was now “zero chance” of the family succeeding in adopting Karen. The adoption was effectively frozen, since the child’s origins had been called into question. Via email, Hedberg urged the Monahans to drop the matter and move on. Their down payment on Karen’s adoption could be transferred to another child’s adoption.
In a cable from a decade before, when DNA tests became mandatory in Guatemalan adoptions to the US, Embassy officials noted that children with problem cases simply “disappeared into the same foggy background from which they came. It has been anguishing to all parties involved…”
Would Karen also disappear? If the Monahans followed Hedberg’s advice and chose another child to adopt, what would happen to her? Who would buy food and diapers for her if no one paid the Brans? Would Karen end up on the streets of Guatemala, transformed into one of the urchin children that had haunted their dreams?
Monahan reported begging Hedberg for help; she wanted to find Karen’s real birth mother in order to figure out what had happened. But Hedberg balked.
“Sometimes they didn’t have the money to pay the mothers and maintain the children. Which is why they passed children around like ping-pong balls.”
The agency head subsequently turned on her Guatemalan partner, adoption facilitator Marvin Bran. Then twenty-six and a law school dropout, Bran had originally been described to the Monahans as “a Christian, a good man who specializes in toddler girls,” someone Hedberg often worked with. She’d recommended him “without reservation.” But now, the agency director began weaving another story. Bran and his mother, she allegedly told Jennifer Monahan, ran “an illegal orphanage” out of their home. It was staffed with household help, working double duty as foster moms. Bran was “emotionally unstable.” It seemed as if the two business partners had a troubled relationship.
“Sometimes they didn’t have the money to pay the mothers and maintain the children,” said one of the Brans’ caretakers, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity. “Which is why they passed children around like ping-pong balls.”
Bran “might just dump her [Karen] somewhere where nobody could find her,” Monahan recorded Hedberg as saying, in her chronology. “Of course, this was terrifying.”
With the revelation of the failed DNA test, a chasm of unknowns emerged. The same day they learned about the imposter birth mother, the Monahans decided to hire Guatemalan private investigator Wilbert Reyna. They wired him $400. He started digging for information.
Five days later, the Monahans recorded in the chronology, Reyna reported back to them that the Brans were “cheaters,” and that “this is their usual MO.” Further, Karen’s birth records were “based on lies and false statements.” He thought that the child’s true mother was an “alcoholic and a prostitute,” information he said he got from talking to supposed neighbors of Karen’s real mother and sister.
Reyna offered up a theory: perhaps the imposter who failed the DNA test was Karen’s aunt, posing as Karen’s mother to protect her real mother’s reputation.
“This is an elaborate scam,” Reyna said, as recorded in Jennifer Monahan’s chronology. “…[A]n agency fwd[s] the [adoptive] parent’s money to the Brans, they take a case as far as to the DNA test, the DNA test blows…[and] by then they have already collected the first payment [for the child].”
Reyna also had a warning for the Monahans. If the family continued trying to adopt Karen, “…the odds are high [that] somewhere on the way something illegal would come out.”
Then the investigator abruptly quit. Reyna said he’d received threats from the Brans, and was concerned about his safety. He hadn’t found Karen’s biological mother. Nor had he found Felicita, but with good reason: the woman listed on Karen’s birth certificate wasn’t real.
The Monahans had reached another crossroads, and another choice needed to be made quickly.
Would the right thing be to move on and “drop” the matter of Karen, as Hedberg insisted? Or should the Monahans continue building a relationship with a child they believed to be unwanted, unloved, and possibly soon to be uncared for?
The path they chose would determine the shape of Karen’s life in the weeks, years, and decades to come.
Without the involvement of a known birth parent, a “relinquishment”—the most popular way of adopting from Guatemala—was now impossible. The Monahans reached out to Guatemalan lawyer Susana Luarca Saracho, who was well known in American adoption circles. Luarca had a reputation for a deep knowledge of the intricacies of Guatemalan law, and the ability to guide complicated adoption processes for children in situations like Karen’s—those without relinquishing parents, or those whose parents appeared to be missing.
In 2008, Jennifer Monahan sent Luarca the detailed chronology, listing dates, phone numbers, summaries of events, names, and the addresses of everyone she believed was related to the child’s case, including notes from the private investigator. A confidential source later shared the chronology with me, and criminal prosecutors in Guatemala verified its authenticity.
In the document, Monahan outlined a conversation she’d had with Rodolfo “Rudy” Rivera, an American adoption lawyer, in early August 2008. Rivera allegedly told her that the US Embassy hadn’t received a copy of Karen’s negative DNA test. “Rudy…confirms that we can proceed in looking for the birth mother, and [that the] US Embassy will not stand in our way should the abandonment ever be complete,” Monahan wrote.
When I spoke to him in 2010, Rivera wouldn’t comment on the US Embassy, or its alleged willingness to bend rules. He admitted he was familiar with Marvin Bran and Sue Hedberg, saying Bran was “bad news.” He recalled, “His [Marvin’s] mother was what they call a jaladora, a finder, a foster care lady.”
He didn’t have any proof of malfeasance on their part, but he didn’t trust them, either. “My gut made me feel uncomfortable,” he told me. Rivera said he “helped” the Monahans with Karen’s case, declining to say how.
Rivera went on to claim that Hedberg often called him for advice. “A lot of her cases needed to be cleaned up in the end,” he said. “She worked adoptions for two simple reasons. It’s money, and number two, a lot of us feel you’re getting as many kids as possible out [of]…a rotten situation.”
In September 2008, Karen was delivered to Asociación Primavera, a private nursery owned by Susana Luarca.
Although the nursery was in Guatemala City, Luarca and her staff brought Karen to a court in the town of Escuintla, over an hour away, to begin abandonment proceedings.
Under Guatemalan law, a child without known parents or relatives had to go through a series of steps before being declared legally abandoned and thus available for adoption. The child would be brought before a judge, who would set a date for a hearing meant to uncover facts about the child’s situation. The hearings were advertised, with a photo of the child, in local newspapers. Any existing family was supposed to come forward at the hearing and declare their relationship to or interest in the child. If no one came forward, the child could be legally declared abandoned, and legal custody could be subsequently reassigned by the judge. Custody often went to whoever brought the child forward in the first place: often a nursery director, facilitator, or adoption lawyer.
Having a child declared legally abandoned generally took much longer than a relinquishment adoption, and would sometimes stretch to nine years.
But not for Luarca.
“That woman fought with every judge in Guatemala,” said Mario Fernando Peralta Castañeda, the Escuintla judge who maintained he heard at least forty of Luarca’s abandonment adoption cases. “The First Court, the Third Court, Chimaltenalgo, Zacapa…all of them. She was very arrogant, very abusive.”
But Peralta, too, had a reputation. Guatemalan prosecutors followed him for years, even giving him the nickname “Danny DeVito,” based on his resemblance to the American actor. They suspected him of taking bribes, of being yet another corrupt player within a larger system known for acquiescence to power and money.
“Look, if I was corrupt, I’d be well off…. I would have Versace suits, a Lamborghini.”
Judges routinely passed on taking Luarca’s cases, Peralta told me in his chambers. He claimed he’d ended up with dozens after she opened another childcare facility in Palin, a city within his jurisdiction. The abandonments seemed like an adoption workaround, he said, pure and simple.
Peralta said he’d never taken a bribe or money from Luarca. “She doesn’t use money for this. She uses the law, pressure. She makes people uncomfortable,” he said. “Look, if I was corrupt, I’d be well off…. I would have Versace suits, a Lamborghini.”
On Karen’s behalf, Peralta contacted the Guatemalan newspapers Siglo Veintiuno and Al Día, asking them to run an ad announcing the date of her upcoming hearing, scheduled for November 6th. Both of the ads solicited “Felicita” by name, asking her to come forward—even though she had already been exposed as a fraud.
Loyda Rodríguez and Dayner Hernández never saw the ad with the small, dark picture. No one came forward to announce an interest in Karen.
“In 2007, they presented the child to me, we now know, with false documents,” Peralta told me. “But I didn’t know that [at the time].” On December 5th, Peralta ruled that Karen was legally abandoned.
Luarca’s staff assumed custody and reignited adoption proceedings for Karen to become the Monahans’ daughter. It had been roughly a year since the Monahans had first seen the child’s picture on the Internet.
For most of the next year, Guatemalan investigators believe, Karen lived under the care of Luarca’s nursery. According to flight records obtained by criminal investigators, the American couple regularly flew to Guatemala to visit, sometimes as often as once a month.
Shortly after Karen was declared legally abandoned, Loyda Rodríguez’s search for Anyelí led her to the doors of Fundación Sobrevivientes (Survivor’s Foundation), a nonprofit focused on women’s rights in Guatemala.
“The authorities here weren’t doing anything to find her,” Rodríguez said. They kept asking her if she’d sold Anyelí. It had been a year and a half with no clues or leads.
At the time, Sobrevivientes was in the midst of an adoption-related campaign, “No Más Cunas Vacías” (No More Empty Cribs), to pressure the Guatemalan government to investigate kidnappings for adoption.
At Fundación Sobrevivientes, Rodríguez met Mildred Alvarado, whose two daughters had been missing for eighteen months in a dramatic parallel case detailed in my bookFinding Fernanda. At the time, no one knew that some of the same people—Sue Hedberg, Marvin Bran, Bran’s mother—had also been involved with the young Alvarado sisters.
Rodríguez attended the court hearing, bearing witness as a judge formally returned Alvarado’s daughters to her. She fought back tears, she remembered, wondering when the same thing might happen to her.
She learned that three of the various women working with Sobrevivientes had been able to successfully recover missing children. She asked the nonprofit to take her case and soon was being formally represented, pro-bono, by a Sobrevivientes lawyer.
In May 2008, Rodríguez participated in a hunger strike whose goal was to call attention to the women’s missing children and kidnappings for adoption. Camping out with a small group of searching mothers atop blankets in a public park near Guatemala’s National Palace, Rodríguez lasted eight full days.
Sympathetic coverage of the protest saturated the newspapers. Afterward, the Guatemalan government announced that the mothers, including Rodríguez, would be allowed to read and review various adoption files held in government offices.
With help from her husband and brother, Rodríguez reviewed thousands of files. In the three years since Anyelí had been kidnapped, American citizens had adopted around thirteen thousand Guatemalan children. By now, Anyelí was almost five years old. Rodríguez wondered how her daughter’s appearance had changed since she’d last seen her.
Some files were thick with documents; others lacked the requisite headshots of the children they involved. Some dockets for boys mistakenly contained photos of girls, and vice versa. After a few long days, Rodríguez identified three children resembling Anyelí. She submitted samples of her own DNA to be tested against each of the children’s, kept on file. None matched.
By March 23, 2009, the case had received so much attention that the Public Ministry announced a reward, posted publicly online, of 100,000 quetzales ($13,000 USD) for any person who came forward with information about Anyelí’s kidnapping or her whereabouts.
Three days later, during another review session, Rodríguez’s brother opened an adoption file for a child identified by the name Karen Abigail López García. “Look, this is her!” he exclaimed. When Rodríguez looked at the photographs stapled inside the file, she immediately recognized her daughter’s face.
Loyda Rodríguez’s DNA was compared to the DNA sample kept on file for Karen, drawn in July 2007. Two independent labs, one in Spain and one in the US, sent their findings back to Guatemala. Both agreed: Rodríguez and “Karen” tested 99.98% positive for a maternal match.
Claudia Palencias, then working as a lawyer with Sobrevivientes, began making frenzied phone calls to track down documents related to Karen’s adoption. The process had produced a convoluted paper trail through different government offices.
By the time a child’s origins had been ascertained, he or she could be a teenager, or even an adult, living in one of Guatemala’s few state-run orphanages or being cared for by a nonprofit.
“We asked for the file, and we found the negative DNA result,” Palencias recalled. It was a powerful lead, albeit a surprising one. Palencias didn’t understand how Karen’s adoption had continued moving forward without the consent of a relinquishing parent.
When an imposter birth mother was exposed via a negative DNA test, the adoption case was supposed to freeze, so that a criminal investigation could take place. But Guatemala’s Ministry of Justice lacked resources and was burdened by a heavy backlog of criminal cases. Investigations commonly took years, even decades, to complete. By the time a child’s origins had been ascertained, he or she could be a teenager, or even an adult, living in one of Guatemala’s few state-run orphanages or being cared for by a nonprofit.
But Sobrevivientes claimed that Karen’s adoption file had no documentation suggesting that such a criminal investigation had begun. Instead, the child had simply been declared abandoned. Further, the abandonment proceedings seemed clearly flawed: not only had the Escuintla judge sought out the imaginary “Felicita,” the police had, too, in their requisite missing persons search.
Invigorated by the break in the case, prosecutors from the Ministry of Justice’s human-trafficking unit took up the investigation into Anyelí’s disappearance in earnest. Each document related to “Karen Abigail López García” was examined. Because manufactured birth certificates were common, agents trekked into the countryside to visit the town where the child was allegedly born to verify her data. There, they found the birth year on Karen’s certificate had been blacked out. They also found a second version of the certificate, with a different date written in by hand. The agents tracked down the midwife listed on the document, who allegedly attended Karen’s birth. The woman said she’d never met a child called Karen, nor did she know Felicita.
Inside Karen’s adoption file, an official government social report about the child, written in October 2007, plainly stated that the address for Felicita Antonia López had been manufactured. Staffers from the attorney general’s office tried to visit Felicita. They couldn’t find her, and instead spoke to the woman listed on paper as Felicita’s mother. That woman said she had no daughter named Felicita. The investigators went on to question people around the small village. “If…Felicita Antonia lived here, everyone would have known,” one neighbor said.
Investigators drew sketches showing the possible routes of the kidnappers, and photographers re-created crime scenes outside Loyda Rodríguez’s house.
Rodríguez, the Sobrevivientes lawyers, and the agents working on the case were caught up in an intense flurry of activity, driven by the possibility that Anyelí was still hidden somewhere in Guatemala. Preparations were underway to obtain permission to search inside Asociación Primavera and other Guatemalan nurseries commonly used in adoption.
But the momentum was short-lived. Two weeks after the human-trafficking unit presented a formal inquiry to determine whether or not Karen had left the country, they received an answer. They were four months too late. On December 9, 2008, the child had left Guatemala on a Continental Airlines flight, alongside the Monahans. And now, she had a new US visa, and a new name: Karen Abigail Monahan.
Guatemalan authorities began making arrests. Judge Peralta, who had declared the child legally abandoned, was charged with human trafficking, conspiracy, and failure to report a crime. An official from the office of the attorney general, César Augusto Galicia Prera, who failed to halt the adoption’s progression or notify Peralta of any missing child reports, was charged with dereliction of duty and human trafficking. Investigators raided the offices and home of attorney Susana Luarca, charging her, too, with human trafficking.
Investigators also discovered that a person named Felicita did in fact exist: she was a 30-year-old Nicaraguan baker who’d immigrated to Guatemala years before. Her identity had been stolen, then used by a stranger to create a fake mother in order to facilitate Karen’s adoption.
Marvin Bran turned himself in to the Public Ministry in May 2009, attempting to obtain immunity from the prosecution for trafficking. He provided a copy of a $7,000 check he’d deposited from CCI, explaining that he worked for them. In his deposition, Bran admitted to having paid 30,000 quetzales ($3,800) to two women, “Ligia and Sara,” for Karen. Initially, investigators said, he claimed the women were lesbians who’d snatched the child and escaped via motorcycle.
But the Public Ministry didn’t believe Bran. Chunks of his colorful story were hard to understand, and lacked evidence. Investigators said they didn’t trust Bran because he’d previously lied under oath. Bran’s former defense attorney, Fernando Linares, thought Bran “wasn’t a big enough fish” in the investigation to warrant protection, or an offer to become a protected witness of sorts. Linares speculated that the US government was culpable in the case, since they’d issued Karen’s orphan immigrant visa. “Perhaps they didn’t read what was in the computer,” he told me wryly, referring to the long-established and easily discoverable negative DNA result.
On her personal blog, Luarca published a long defense, clarifying her own role in Karen’s adoption and accusing Guatemalan authorities of planting evidence to frame her. She also accused them of general incompetence. Dated October 11, 2009, the account included a discussion of Karen’s “adoptive parents,” though Luarca never explicitly named the Monahans.
“Unfortunately, when her [Karen’s] parents were approached by the Guatemalan Consulate, they said that they would talk to their lawyer and stopped accepting calls,” Luarca wrote. “They hired a lawyer who does not want to collaborate, for reasons that I cannot understand, since it is in the best interest of the family who hired her, to clear things up, in order to be assured that nobody is going to show at their doorstep, demanding that the girl be returned to Guatemala.”
At the time, the idea of Guatemala demanding the girl’s return may have seemed far-fetched. No child had ever been in a situation like Karen’s before—or at least no situation like hers had ever been reported.
“All these problems could be solved,” Luarca continued. She suggested that the Monahans get a re-test of the child’s DNA to compare it Loyda Rodríguez’s. “If only the family of Karen would…. It is a pity that they are ill-advised and hurting so many people by refusing to do so. They have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Wouldn’t it be nice to be sure that your daughter is not involved in this?”
Meanwhile, Alexánder Colop, head of the human-trafficking unit at the Guatemala Ministry of Justice, tracked payments Sue Hedberg sent to her adoption facilitators in Guatemala. “The money came from the US. From there, they’d give it to a ‘cambista’ (changer) who would turn it into cash, and from there, the Brans would distribute it,” he alleged.
He didn’t know if Hedberg was under criminal investigation in the United States, and said he wondered if she was being investigated for violating US laws. She had been investigated, but was never indicted.
To Colop, in cross-border investigations like Karen’s trafficking case, the US Embassy could be helpful, but not always. “They are there [primarily] to protect US citizens,” he told me, “not help us investigate.”
His investigation was as dangerous as it was difficult, which is why Colop has bodyguards. “It’s a pretty delicate issue, to investigate lawyers who were involved in adoptions for years,” Colop said. “You could be going after a lawyer and not know who he might know. It’s an issue where each case has people behind it, friends.”
Guatemala’s prosecutors were helped by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known by the Spanish acronym CICIG, an investigative and prosecutorial authority set up by the United Nations. Some CICIG staff also have bodyguards, and the offices sit, bunker-like, behind tall fortified walls. Bomb-sniffing dogs and X-ray machines inspect each visitor, including members of the press.
Illegal adoptions have been a priority since CICIG opened in 2006. The Commission hopes to hold every actor involved in child trafficking accountable, from bribe-taking government officials, private attorneys, and adoption “facilitators” down to those directly involved in the dirty work, like kidnapping and purchasing children.
The case involving Karen was unique for CICIG, in part because of the existence of clear evidence implicating powerful people like Luarca, who had previously been considered more or less untouchable. Such a case had never been tried before. Karen had already been living a new life as an American citizen for more than a year.
Through 2010, CICIG and the Public Ministry built their prosecution. Through early 2011, the US government remained publicly silent about the case. The Monahans did, too, although they had known about the criminal investigation into Karen’s adoption since April 2009, when Guatemalan officials reached out to them through diplomatic channels. According to a faxed response, the Monahans told the officials to communicate with their lawyer.
Both countries were and remain parties to the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters. Via the MLAT treaty, Guatemala’s Public Ministry asked the US State Department for assistance in taking a new DNA swab from Karen, to verify whether she was the same Karen who had, in July 2007, positively matched as Loyda Rodríguez’s daughter.
But the US Justice Department told Guatemala it wouldn’t help. There wasn’t enough evidence tying adoptive parents to kidnapped children, it said, and because of that, it couldn’t undertake DNA testing. A heavily redacted document obtained by public records request shows at least two MLAT requests for assistance have been formally made from Guatemala, related to two other missing children believed to be living in the American Midwest.
The judge gave the Monahans an ultimatum: they had two months to return Karen to Guatemala.
Loyda Rodríguez and her husband persevered. After receiving anonymous death threats, they were forced to move to an undisclosed location hours away from their previous home. At times, Rodríguez said, it took a full day’s bus ride to get to meetings in the capital about the case. They continued to rely on pro-bono legal counsel from Sobrevivientes.
In the summer of 2011, the case was finally thrust into the international spotlight. A Guatemalan judge issued an unprecedented order in July, ruling for the cancellation of the Guatemalan passport and birth certificate issued to “Karen Abigail López García,” now Karen Abigail Monahan. The judge gave the Monahans an ultimatum: they had two months to return Karen to Guatemala. If they didn’t cooperate, she ruled, Interpol would be called upon to enforce the order.
A deluge of press attention followed. The Monahans hired a Washington PR firm, which released a statement saying, “The Monahan family will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child. They remain committed to protecting their daughter from additional trauma as they pursue the truth of her past through appropriate legal channels.”
They also retained Jared Genser, an aggressive former lobbyist and Washington lawyer specializing in international human rights.
In October 2011, the Monahans appeared on the CBS’s Early Show. Jennifer Monahan spoke softly and held her husband’s hand; she said the couple believed their adoption of Karen was legal. Footage taken in the Monahan’s handsome living room showed leather couches and a fully outfitted children’s playroom, complete with a brown-skinned Barbie.
The Monahans made it clear that they didn’t believe the results of the DNA test that showed a match between Karen and Loyda Rodríguez. They implied that the little girl in their home wasn’t the same child whose DNA had been tested in 2007. In Guatemala, Jennifer Monahan said, “DNA is sort of viewed as a title, and we strongly feel that Karen isn’t property.”
A shot of Genser was spliced in remotely. He declared that the Guatemalan court ruling had no jurisdiction in the US.
Yet the original issuance of Karen’s orphan immigrant visa, necessary to enter the US, and her American citizenship both depended on the authenticity of certain identifying documents—the same documents that had been voided by the Guatemalan judge. Essentially, US citizenship had been granted to a girl whose identity was in dispute.
When asked what they would do “if it is proven that Karen is Mrs. Rodríguez’s daughter,” Timothy Monahan answered, “It’s really very difficult to say.” He added that they’d been “trying to work with authorities all through this process.” But Guatemalan authorities said they’d never been contacted by the Monahans.
The same day the Monahans made their TV appearance, thousands of miles south, two women intimately involved in Karen’s adoption were sentenced in court for human trafficking, document fraud, and criminal enterprise related to the buying and selling of the child. Luarca’s nursery director and the lawyer who facilitated Karen’s adoption were both found guilty of all charges, and were sentenced, respectively, to sixteen and twenty-one years in prison.
Eight years have passed since the kidnapping of Anyelí Liseth Hernández Rodríguez. Karen has now lived in the United States since December 2008. It’s been three years since Guatemalan prosecutors concluded the child’s identity was manufactured. As the criminal proceedings move forward at a staggeringly slow pace, a host of difficult questions remain.
What are the best interests of the little girl at the heart of the case? How will the nullification of her Guatemalan birth certificate and passport affect her status as an American citizen? If Marvin Bran is guilty of human trafficking, will there be ramifications here for the Americans who worked with him?
As of yet, no one knows.
Since their TV appearance, the Monahans have remained publicly silent about the case.
Since the child wasn’t purchased for reasons of forced labor or sexual servitude, her sale doesn’t constitute trafficking under US law.
Their lawyer also refuses to speak on the record. Jared Genser sent letters and emails to journalists and editors reporting on the case, including to myself, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and others, threatening legal action. Little has been written in the American media about the case and ongoing criminal investigation.
Although under Guatemalan law Karen Abigail Monahan was trafficked, her sale doesn’t constitute trafficking under US law, since the child wasn’t purchased for reasons of forced labor or sexual servitude.
And since US adoption agencies are licensed by the states in which they operate, federal authorities have almost no power to monitor their activities, and even less ability to punish those involved in trafficking.
In Guatemala, the entire adoption industry has ground to a halt. Americans can no longer adopt Guatemalan children. Since 2009, Guatemala has been trying to update its laws and regulations, to prevent child-buying and to implement more safeguards, checks, and balances in the process. No one knows when the country might open again to hopeful foreign couples.
Since the decision, Rodríguez and her husband have considered filing suit in Missouri. They haven’t yet been able to retain the pro-bono counsel.
Of the twelve Guatemalans facing criminal charges in relation to the adoption, only two are behind bars today, Enriqueta Francisca Noriega Cano and Alma Beatriz Valle Flores de Mejía. (Others are in prison, but awaiting trial.) The accused include three former government officials from Guatemala’s Procuraduría General de la Nación: César Augusto Galicia Prera, Marco Tulio España Sánchez, and Mairena Trujillo Reyes.
Raúl Ticún Urias, the lawyer who served as Jennifer and Timothy Monahan’s power of attorney in Guatemala, awaits trial from prison. Others are in custody. Peralta’s arrest, along with that of Judge Rossana Maribel Mena Guzman for trafficking in persons related to adoption, made it into the US State Department’s 2012 Human Rights Report on Guatemala. Peralta is accused of participating in a reported twenty other adoption cases with irregularities.
Marvin Bran disappeared, and is now considered a fugitive of justice, though he maintains a Facebook presence. Susana Luarca is being held in a women’s prison in Antigua while her trial continues. She has appealed the charges, and the next hearing is scheduled for January 2015.
Sandra Noemí Maldonado Chajón de Velásquez, who posed as the Nicaraguan baker Felicita (a real woman, but not the birth mother), and two more lawyers, César Augusto Trujillo López and Saúl Vinicio García, are also waiting.
Almost all of those involved in the human trafficking network underpinning this adoption case have appealed their charges.
CICIG lawyer Flor de María Gálvez, a co-prosecutor on the case, said that the Commission has never been in contact with the Monahans. When asked if either the Monahans or Sue Hedberg would be charged or linked to the case, she said she couldn’t comment since it was “still under investigation.”
Gálvez said that the prosecution is still waiting for a response from the US government to Guatemala’s requests for help in the criminal investigation. “This case is important for Guatemala because it involves a criminal network,” she said. “A network made up of public officials, judges responsible for matters concerning children, attorneys, notary publics, and other individuals. It’s also important because of the damage caused to the girl, and to her biological family.”
A source inside the Ministerio Público said the criminal sentences are expected to happen in early 2015, after the hearings. “They [the adoption networks] have no political power now,” the source said. “They’ll probably be convicted.”
I asked Chris Bentley, an official from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, what could happen in a hypothetical kidnapping for adoption case, where a child’s identity was manufactured in order to obtain US citizenship.
“There’s no case precedent for situations like this that I’m aware of,” he told me. But
a process called denaturalization could occur. It’s rare, and depends on the individual situation.
“Willful misrepresentation is the threshold that would have to be met to begin a denaturalization process,” Bentley said. “[It] is when you are asking for something you don’t qualify for. You are willfully making up facts to try to convince the government that you are eligible for something when you know you’re not…to circumvent the system.”
When I spoke with Loyda Rodríguez in Guatemala City in 2009, she was buoyant. “I think that they are going to ultimately return her,” Rodríguez said of the Monahans.
Since then, her dreams have faded. Now, Rodríguez said, she wants just one thing: to be able to communicate with her daughter. She wants to explain to Anyelí that she was never given up, and that she was always loved.”
The Limits of Jurisdiction[Guernica 12/1/14 by Erin Siegel Mcintyre]
Update 5:“Adopting a child from Guatemala used to be really popular among Americans. In 2006 alone, more than 4,000 Guatemalan kids were adopted by families here in the US.
In each case, prospective parents paid tens of thousands of dollars in fees. All that money fuelled a lucrative adoption industry in Guatemala, and an underground trade in abducted children.
It got so bad that Guatemala halted all new international adoptions in 2007. The country’s been trying to reform its broken system ever since. But there are still a lot of questions about what went on in the past, and about one case in particular.
It involves a girl named Karen Abigail, who was adopted years ago from Guatemala by an American couple from Missouri.
“Karen’s case is actually a high-profile criminal investigation in Guatemala,” says investigative journalist Erin Siegal McIntyre. She’s spent several years looking into Karen’s adoption and Guatemala’s broken adoption system in general.
Her lengthy article detailing Karen’s case was published online by Guernica magazine.
“Nearly a dozen people, including government officials, have been charged with serious criminal offenses, including dereliction of duty, human trafficking and falsifying of documents,” says McIntyre. “Two women involved, a nursery director and also a lawyer, have already been found guilty and are serving jail time for their involvement with this child and this adoption.”
At the heart of the case is the claim that Karen is really Anyelí, a girl who was allegedly abducted in November 2006 from her family in Guatemala. A Guatemalan woman named Loyda Rodríguez claims to be the girl’s birth mother.
Rodríguez’s case has been bolstered by DNA evidence that appears to show that Karen is her daughter.
“Loyda Rodríguez’s DNA was compared to the DNA sample that had been kept on file for Karen, that was originally drawn in July 2007,” McIntyre says.
The samples were tested by two independent labs, one in Spain and one in the US. And McIntyre says the results showed a 99.98 percent match between Rodríguez and the child.
In 2011, a Guatemalan judge ruled that Karen should be returned to Guatemala.
Karen was originally presented for adoption in Guatemala by a woman who claimed to be her mother. But herDNA didn’t match Karen’s.
That would seem to support the abduction claim.
But the DNA comparison could also be interpreted to suggest that the woman who presented Karen was not a total stranger, but perhaps the girl’s aunt.
Jared Genser, the attorney who represents Karen’s adoptive parents, says McIntyre failed to present all the facts in the proper context in her article. In fact, he has prepared a lengthy response to that article, which can be read here.
McIntyre’s article also raises questions about whether Karen’s adoptive family, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan, knew at some point that something about the adoption process wasn’t right.
That’s something the family strongly denies.
Genser says the Monahans reached out proactively to the Guatemalan authorities and to the US government throughout the process to share information. And he says the family was assured throughout the 2-year-long adoption process that numerous vettings and investigations into Karen’s case had been completed by the Guatemalan authorities.
“At the time,” says Genser, “they had every reason to believe that everything had been done properly.”
As for the effort by Guatemalan authorities to return Karen to Guatemala, Genser says he’s confused by it.
He says the judge in Guatemala concluded, based on available DNA evidence, that this is the same child, yet authorities are also demanding that a new DNA test be conducted.
“My view is that the government of Guatemala shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. That’s not really very fair,” Genser says.
“At this point,” says Genser, “with all these considerations in mind, the Monahans believe that they’ve done the best that they can to investigate and come to the truth about their daughter’s adoption.”
The US government appears unlikely to help Guatemalan authorities with their request to conduct a new DNA test.
McIntyre says the US Justice Department responded negatively, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to take that step. But she says prosecutors in Guatemala continue to ask for American help in this case.”
One girl’s controversial adoption, and what it says about Guatemala’s broken international adoption system[PRI 1/8/15 by William Troop]
“For years Erin Siegal McIntyre has provided emotionally wrenching information
to readers of her blog on the alleged kidnapping of Anyelí Rodríguez and her purported
relation to the Monahans’ adopted daughter, Karen.
Recently, Guernica Magazine published the latest version of her reporting entitled
“The Limits of Jurisdiction,” which challenged readers to consider compelling moral
questions raised by her reporting. Essentially, the article asked if it was right, criminal,
or even moral for a privileged family from the United States to “have kept” Karen,
despite a Guatemalan judge’s order to restore a child to her loving mother. Ms. McIntyre
described the claim of Ms. Rodríguez’s husband that two strangers had abducted his
daughter and subsequently trafficked her for adoption. The article suggested that this
case was representative of the injustices perpetuated by the “limits of jurisdiction.” In
other words, the Guatemalan family had no meaningful way to seek the return of her
child.
As an activist/journalist, Ms. McIntyre is fully entitled both to her opinion and to
even advocate for it strenuously. However, as an investigative journalist, Ms. McIntyre
runs the risk of perpetrating injustice and exploitation herself if she fails to report the
facts accurately and place them in their proper context. This is especially critical when
reporting on victims of childhood trauma, even if investigations might lead a reporter to
have to reconsider their preconceptions. Sadly, Ms. McIntyre’s article in Guernica
Magazine fails to report critical facts accurately and includes numerous fabricated
quotations, false statements, material omissions, and a reckless lack of context.
As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted, “[s]unlight is among
the best of disinfectants.” This response to the Guernica Magazine article is designed to
enable readers to find the truth for themselves, using primary source materials and
numerous hyperlinks. Here are some examples of fabrications, false claims, and material
omissions from Ms. McIntyre’s story, which form the foundation of her self-proclaimed
expert opinion:1
1. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: A. The Monahans emphasized that they wanted
to work with an ethical facilitator, but they understood that perhaps ethics
might be outside people’s control in Guatemala. B. Their investigator told
them that if they proceeded with Karen’s adoption, “something illegal would
come out.” These are allegedly quotations from Mrs. Monahan’s 2007 timeline
but they were actually altered to the point of fabrication. Previously, Ms.
McIntyre contradicted herself by reporting in her own book Finding Fernanda
that the second quotation did not relate to Karen’s adoption at all. Why did she
alter both quotations and change their meaning in a way which cast doubt on the
Monahan’s integrity?
2. Ms. McIntyre omits material facts: Ms. Rodríguez’s daughter Anyelí was
presented to the U.S. Embassy for the adoption by an “imposter.” The only
clear conclusion from comparing the DNA at the Embassy was that Ms.
Rodríguez, the “imposter” birth mother, and the child that was brought to the
embassy were all closely biologically related. Ms. McIntyre completely omits this
material fact in her reporting for Guernica. DNA testing which was previously
posted on Ms. McIntyre’s website, demonstrated that there was an 18/20 allele
match between the woman and child at the Embassy, making the woman her likely
biological aunt.[So what? It still isn’t her mother?]
3. Ms. McIntyre falsely presents: There is only a single version of the alleged
abduction; no discrepancies are noted. CNN published a story raising serious
questions about the veracity of Ms. Rodríguez’s story, even putting in quotes the
word “stolen” to describe what had allegedly happened in the case. Specifically,
CNN reported what Ms. Rodríguez told their news organization and says “[b]ut
that account is not what she has told other news organizations in describing what
happened that day.” In fact, Ms. Rodríguez has reported a half-dozen different
versions of the abduction story, which do not match her husband’s, and Ms.
McIntyre, on her own blog, links to two different versions of the abduction story
than the version she describes in her article in Guernica Magazine.
4. Ms. McIntyre materially omits: After the DNA test failed, the Monahans did
more than just seek to find out what happened. On her blog, Ms. McIntyre
suggested that the Monahans did this merely to continue pushing a
fraudulent adoption through. In fact, as demonstrated in numerous emails
allegedly in Ms. McIntyre’s possession, the Monahans hired an investigator to
find the birth mother and gave him clear instructions: “we [the Monahans] under
no circumstances wish him to pressure her or offer her a financial bribe to give
up her baby . . . even if we can’t adopt her we want to make sure she’s safe – and
with her birthmother if there’s been any fraud.” None of this was reported by Ms.
McIntyre.
5. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: In April 2009, the Monahans were told about the
criminal investigation through diplomatic channels. In fact, they were sent a
deceptive letter directly and not through diplomatic channels, which didn’t tell
them about any investigation. As relevant information was made available to
them, the Monahans proactively provided material information to the Guatemalan
police, the Guatemalan Consulate in Chicago, U.S. Department of State, and U.S.
law enforcement personnel about Karen’s adoption.
6. Ms. McIntyre makes the following material omission: In May 2008, Ms.
Rodríguez participated in a hunger strike to draw attention to kidnapped
girls, including her own. Ms. McIntyre fails to report at the time that Ms.
Rodríguez was actually demonstrating on behalf of another little girl, a Dulce
Maria, who she thought was Anyelí. Her counsel had already filed an injunction
in Guatemalan court to stop Dulce Maria’s departure from the country. That
young girl, among several, remains listed as a possible daughter of Ms.
Rodríguez.
7. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: The Monahans said the U.S. Embassy was
willing to “bend the rules” to allow for their adoption of Karen. In 2008, on
the basis of Ms. Rodríguez and other mother’s claims, all adoptions from
Guatemala were suspended. Subsequently, birth mothers who claimed their
children were abducted were provided access to adoption files and physical
access to see children waiting to be adopted. The Monahans were informed of
numerous investigations by the Guatemalan and U.S. authorities into Karen’s
origins, and had every reason to have confidence in the legality of their adoption.
8. Ms. McIntyre falsely insinuates: The Monahans were obligated to comply with
a Guatemalan court ruling ordering her return to Guatemala. By not
specifying the parties or terms of the court order, Ms. McIntyre makes the
Monahans appear uncooperative and uncaring. Ms. McIntyre fails to report this
was an ex parte court order, that the Monahans were not a party to the lawsuit at
all, let alone given the opportunity to present evidence, and that the Monahans
themselves were not ordered to do anything by the court. She fails to report that
despite this, the Monahans still continued to pursue the truth of Karen’s past
through safe and legal channels.
9. Ms. McIntyre falsely implies: By their public silence the Monahans must have
also privately stonewalled Ms. Rodríguez’s efforts to recover her child. In
fact, the Monahans reached out nearly three years ago to Ms. Rodríguez through
a letter hand-delivered to her representative by the U.S. Embassy to open up a
private channel to discuss the sensitive issues relating to this adoption and never
received a reply.
Her representative had told the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala that Ms.
Rodríguez was not seeking the return of her daughter to Guatemala and had told
the Associated Press she had no need to communicate with the Monahans. Ms.
Rodríguez also waived her right to reverse the adoption in Missouri for fraud for
by not filing within one year after Karen’s adoption. None of this was reported by
Ms. McIntyre.
10. Ms. McIntyre falsely implies: She has had to fight hard to report this story
because she and the media have been bullied by the Monahans’ “aggressive”
lawyer, who threatened to sue them for libel and “refused to speak on-therecord.”
In fact, both Ms. McIntyre and Associated Press materially changed
their book/blog and story respectively under the advice of counsel after libelous
material was identified. The Monahan’s lawyer Jared Genser never threatened to
sue the New York Times. And Ms. McIntyre omits that she actually threatened
through counsel to sue the Monahans and Mr. Genser. Mr. Genser has provided
on-the-record comments to both Ms. McIntyre and Guernica Magazine, which
rather than printing his critical assessment of the article, instead pretended as if
he refused to comment.
In correspondence with Guernica Magazine, it claims to have “carefully factchecked”
and “vet” this article. Despite having been made aware of the substance of the
concerns documented in this response, it stood by Ms. McIntyre’s story after claiming to
have “availed itself of the opportunity to review its factchecking [sic].” It declined to
make any substantive edits and described these concerns as “inaccurate and indeed
fanciful assertions.” It also failed, as requested directly, to post a detailed letter
explaining our concerns alongside the article, thereby depriving their readers of the
ability to understand the other side of the story.
Quotations from Erin Siegal McIntyre’s Guernica Magazine article are in bold
1. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: A. The Monahans emphasized that they wanted to
work with an ethical facilitator, but they understood that perhaps ethics might be
outside people’s control in Guatemala. B. Their investigator told them that if they
proceeded with Karen’s adoption, “something illegal would come out.” These are
allegedly quotations from Mrs. Monahan’s 2007 timeline but they were actually
altered to the point of fabrication. Previously, Ms. McIntyre contradicted herself
by reporting in her own book Finding Fernanda that the second quotation did not
relate to Karen’s adoption at all. Why did she alter both quotations and change
their meaning in a way which cast doubt on the Monahan’s integrity?
“We want to work with an ethical facilitator, although we know in Guatemala there
are always things out of people’s control,” Monahan said, as recounted in an email
she later sent to Guatemalan adoption lawyer Susana Luarca.
Here is the actual quotation from Mrs. Monahan’s timeline:
We ask Katherine many questions about Marvin, and the birthmother’s
situation, explaining that we want to work with an ethical facilitator who
normally (although we know in Guatemala there are always things out of
people’s control) gets his work done within a reasonable time – particularly
since Karen is already 2.
Ms. McIntyre cut and changed the words to mean something else entirely, by
critically omitting two words, “who normally” and making the parenthetical appear to be
modifying the facilitator’s ability to control the ethical conduct of others.
As is abundantly clear, there are two independent issues being addressed by Mrs.
Monahan. First, the Monahans wanted to work with an ethical facilitator. And second,
the Monahans wanted to work with someone who reliably got their work done in a
reasonable time, accepting there would be things outside that person’s control, in terms of
timelines.
Reyna [the Monahans’ investigator] also had a warning for the Monahans. If the
family continued trying to adopt Karen, “…the odds are high [that] somewhere on
the way something illegal would come out.”
Here is the actual quotation Mrs. Monahan’s timeline:
“As now established, the fraudulent bio mother is the sister of the real bio
mother, but the main point is that this was premeditated and nobody from
the Bran’s got caught here by surprise . . . and even if they’d offer your agency a
follow up referral for you, well, the odds are high somewhere on the way
something illegal would come out again.”
As it turns out, this was not a quote from the investigator, but rather a lawyer
reporting on what the investigator had told him. And the lawyer quoted was not talking
about continuing Karen’s adoption. He was referring to what would hypothetically
happen if the Monahans wanted to drop Karen’s adoption and accept a “follow-up
referral” of another child from the Brans. In other words, the lawyer was commenting on
the modus operandi of the Bran operation, based on their investigator, Mr. Reyna’s,
work.
Ms. McIntyre changed the meaning entirely by beginning her sentence falsely
saying Reyna “had a warning for the Monahans” about proceeding with Karen’s
adoption. She also removed the word “again,” and misled readers to a false conclusion –
that the Monahans knew illegality would likely result from continuing to try and adopt
Karen. Such a claim is false and defamatory.
Amazingly, Ms. McIntyre’s own earlier reporting proves the Monahans’ claim of
fabrication is accurate. In her self-published book, she confirms that the lawyer quoted
(not Mr. Reyna) was not talking about Karen’s adoption at all.
He [Wilbert Reyna] . . . advised the Monahans that even if they tried to
adopt a new child with CCI [Celebrate Children International] and the
Galindo Brans that ‘the odds are high that something illegal would come
out again.’2
It is inexplicable why Ms. McIntyre would alter the quotation in a way that sowed
suspicion onto the Monahans. And, as is also clear, even in her own book she also
altered the quotation from its original without demarking she had done so.
2. Ms. McIntyre omits material facts: Ms. Rodríguez’s daughter Anyelí was
presented to the U.S. Embassy for the adoption by an “imposter.” The only clear
conclusion from comparing the DNA at the Embassy was that Ms. Rodríguez, the
“imposter” birth mother, and the child that was brought to the embassy were all
closely biologically related. Ms. McIntyre completely omits this material fact in
her reporting for Guernica. DNA testing which was previously posted on Ms.
McIntyre’s website, demonstrated that there was an 18/20 allele match between
the woman and child at the Embassy, making the woman her likely biological
aunt.
On August 1, 2007 the Monahans learned that the DNA test failed to establish a
maternal match. Felicita Antonia López was an imposter.
While there was no maternal match between the child originally presented at the
U.S. Embassy, the DNA conclusively demonstrated a close biological relationship
between then child, Mrs. Rodriguez, and the “imposter.”
At the time, the Monahans were told that a negative DNA test did not necessarily
mean a kidnapping, but might be reflective of many different cultural scenarios. One
could have been a situation where a birth mother had previously abandoned her child or
died. A relative with no understanding of DNA took the child in, thought of themselves
as a temporary “mother” at great sacrifice, and then been unable to continue caring for
the child. In this situation, among many others, the child would be effectively abandoned
and eligible for adoption after proper abandonment proceedings were complete, which
the Monahans were assured they were. In any event relinquishment adoption had to be
terminated, which it was. The Monahans also terminated their status as clients of
Celebrate Children International.
Ms. McIntyre appears to have failed to compare the DNA tests of the three
subjects, of which she has copies, between the child, the “imposter” who presented the
child at the Embassy, and Ms. Rodríguez. According to a DNA expert who compared the
three test results, the woman presenting the child at the Embassy was a “close familial
relation” with the child and “most likely her aunt.” Ms. Rodríguez was “most likely her
sister.”
Even without training in evaluating DNA comparisons, it should have struck Ms.
McIntyre as rather surprising that in the publicly-available DNA test comparison between
the child and “imposter” at the U.S. Embassy 18 of 20 alleles actually matched between
this child and the “imposter” who abducted her. This is especially relevant because Ms.
Rodríguez used the very same DNA test to confirm the child presented at the Embassy
was her daughter. It is scientifically impossible for the child at the U.S. Embassy to be
her daughter and for her to have had no biological relationship with the woman who was
most likely the child’s biological aunt. Ms. Rodríguez has publicly cast doubt on
suspicion of her sister, with whom she lived. Fundación Sobrevivientes (“Survivors
Foundation”), Ms. Rodríguez’s counsel, has previously investigated and publicized
wrongdoing within family relationships. If the aunt did abduct the child, that is very
relevant for Anyelí’s safety and determining what happened.
This also means the claim in Ms. McIntyre’s story that Ms. Rodríguez’s daughter
was abducted by a stranger is not reliable without a much deeper examination of what
happened. In a CNN story entitled “Guatemalan mother seeks ‘stolen’ daughter’s return
from U.S.,” from May 21, 2012, CNN also quotes a “source with knowledge of the case”
as raising “questions” about whether the person “presenting the child at the embassy was,
in fact, Rodríguez’s sister.”
3
Given her prodigious claims of expertise and lengthy
investigation of this case, it is curious that Ms. McIntyre does not raise or delve into any
of these facts at all.
3. Ms. McIntyre falsely presents: There is only a single version of the alleged
abduction; no discrepancies are noted. CNN published a story raising serious
questions about the veracity of Ms. Rodríguez’s story, even putting in quotes the
word “stolen” to describe what had allegedly happened in the case. Specifically,
CNN reported what Ms. Rodríguez told their news organization and says “[b]ut
that account is not what she has told other news organizations in describing what
happened that day.” In fact, Ms. Rodríguez has reported a half-dozen different
versions of the abduction story, which do not match her husband’s, and Ms.
McIntyre, on her own blog, links to two different versions of the abduction story
than the version she describes in her article in Guernica Magazine.
But on November 3, 2006, their [Rodríguez and Hernández’s] daughter, two-yearold
Anyelí Lisseth was abducted . . . In the [police] report [filed “[t]he next
morning,] he [Hernández] stated that two unknown women seized Anyelí, fleeing in
a white taxi . . .
As noted before, CNN published an article raising serious questions about the
veracity of Ms. Rodríguez’s story. The article then goes on to describe the different
accounts. Amazingly, Ms. McIntyre even reports two different versions of the events on
her own website that are not what she included in the Guernica article.4
Given this
information, it is reasonable to conclude Ms. McIntyre chose to omit numerous and
conflicting stories put forward by Ms. Rodríguez and her husband. Why?
According to the International Commission on Impunity in Guatemala (“CICIG”),
on November 3, 2006, a girl known as Anyelí Lisbeth Hernández Rodríguez was stolen.
5
Two different news outlets, ABC News, which interviewed Ms. Rodríguez, and Prensa
Libre, which broke news of Anyelí’s kidnapping, stated she was kidnapped in 2007.
Fundación Sobrevivientes (“Survivors Foundation”), which is Ms. Rodríguez’s
counsel, and the Guatemalan court system both indicated she was 25-months-old when
abducted. But CICIG, which is a partnership between the Government of Guatemala and
United Nations, contradicted these claims by reporting that Anyelí was kidnapped when
she was 13-months old.
CICIG reported that the birth father Dayner Orlando Hernández “initially filed a
complaint with the Citizens Service Bureau of the Criminal Investigation Division
(DINC) on 4 November 2006.”6
According to Ms. McIntyre in her Guernica Magazine
article, that report stated “that two unknown women seized Anyelí, fleeing in a white
taxi” (emphasis added). But on her website, in a previewed excerpt of her book Finding
Fernanda, she said “[t]hey [Ms. Rodríguez and Mr. Hernández] reported
Anyelí’s kidnapping the same day.”7
In a Survivors Foundation petition to the Minor and Family Commission of the
Congress of the Republic of Guatemala, Ms. Rodríguez reported that the girl disappeared
at 6:00 pm when she had been playing in the backyard of her home. She claimed that she
received several phone calls stating her daughter was in a house located in Villa Canales,
but she was never found there.8
Ms. Rodríguez presented a different story in a letter to President Alvaro Colom on
May 5, 2008. In that version, neighbors reported to Ms. Rodríguez that the child was
taken by a woman to get into a taxi, and Anyelí was said to have been abducted from her
home at 4:00 pm in the yard of her residence. At 6:00 pm, Ms. Rodríguez received a call
from an unknown woman informing her that her daughter could be found on the main
boulevard in Villa Canales.
A Survivors Foundation report on human trafficking stated that as Ms. Rodríguez
entered her home, a woman took her daughter by the hand and led her away. Ms.
Rodríguez reportedly “ran desperately after the woman but she immediately took a taxi
that was waiting for her at the street.”9
In an interview with ABC News, Ms. Rodríguez stated “My daughter . . . was
kidnapped as I was entering my home . . . [a] woman appeared in my backyard and
grabbed her out of my arms. There was nothing I could do” (emphasis added).10
When speaking with Associated Press, Ms. Rodríguez reported that her daughter
had been right behind her just outside her home when she was grabbed by a woman who
sped off in a waiting taxi.11
In a version reported in Prensa Libre, Ms. Rodríguez reported her child had been
playing in a courtyard and a woman came in, took her daughter, and got into a white
taxi.12
And in a more recent interview with New American Media, Ms. Rodríguez
“recalls carrying her groceries into her Guatemala City apartment before turning around
to find her two-year-old daughter Anyelí gone from the patio . . . ‘I said, Where is she? I
was very confused – why did they take my nena?’” she reported.13 In this version, Ms.
Rodríguez did not see who took her daughter at all.
4. Ms. McIntyre materially omits: After the DNA test failed, the Monahans did
more than just seek to find out what happened. On her blog, Ms. McIntyre
suggested that the Monahans did this merely to continue pushing a fraudulent
adoption through. In fact, as demonstrated in numerous emails allegedly in Ms.
McIntyre’s possession, the Monahans hired an investigator to find the birth
mother and gave him clear instructions: “we [the Monahans] under no
circumstances wish him to pressure her or offer her a financial bribe to give up
her baby . . . even if we can’t adopt her we want to make sure she’s safe – and
with her birthmother if there’s been any fraud.” None of this was reported by Ms.
McIntyre.
According to the Monahan chronology, Hedberg said she’d ask LabCorp “… to
bury this [DNA] result, like they used to do for her, but LabCorp said . . . they
couldn’t do that any more.” . . . Monahan reported begging Hedberg for help; she
wanted to find Karen’s real birth mother in order to figure out what had happened.
The implication of Ms. McIntyre’s work is that the Monahans were desperate to
complete the adoption at all costs. Not only is that false, Ms. McIntyre has again
selectively quoted from the following section of Mrs. Monahan’s chronology to remove
the very next sentence which provides unmistakable information that clearly describes
her exact intention:
She [Ms. Hedberg] then began to say something like “IF, and I mean, IF, Marvin
does the right thing – IF he does – than what he would do is take her to a judge
and have her sent to an orphanage” . . . I did ask what she meant by “IF” Marvin
did the right thing, and asked what the alternatives were, and she said Marvin
might just dump her somewhere where nobody could find her. Of course, this
was terrifying . . . I ask for a short period of time to find the birthmother, and
asked for her help so that Karen won’t be dumped immediately in an orphanage or
on the street or somewhere where people would be unaccountable for her
treatment – and tell her that even if we can’t adopt her we want to make sure she’s
safe – and with her birthmother if there’s been any fraud.14
In a conversation captured in the same notes, Mrs. Monahan recalled “I pleaded
with her [Ms. Hedberg] that finding the birthmother would be the best thing for the
child.”15
Mrs. Monahan said much more than that she wanted to find Karen’s real birth
mother to find out what happened. On the contrary, Mrs. Monahan made very clear that
she wanted to make sure Karen did not get abandoned and was somewhere safe, and that
her goal was to reunite the child with her birthmother if there had been “any fraud.”
Similarly, Ms. McIntyre speaks extensively about the relationship between the Monahans
and Wilbert Reyna, the investigator they hired through Adoption Services to try and find
Karen’s birth mother. Consider this email exchange, which did not make it into Ms.
McIntyre’s story:
Thank you for your update. I do understand that we need to wait to hear from
Wilbert about finding the birthmother. And I am thankful that we may be able to
do this . . . Please, convey to Wilbert that we under no circumstances wish him to
pressure her or offer her a financial bribe to give up her baby. I would very much
like to understand what happened here so that we can ensure Karen was not stolen
against her mother’s wishes and make sure Karen remains in a safe loving
environment. I am sure you understand and I thank you for having a reputation
for honesty.16
Ms. McIntyre’s repeated selective quotations makes it appear like the Monahans
were engaged in illegal, unethical, or questionable conduct – and yet the very places from
which she quotes contained information that would have made clear for readers their
exact intention.
Additionally, Ms. McIntyre reports that Ms. Hedberg said “she’d ask” LabCorp to
bury the DNA – when Ms. Hedberg said she had already asked LabCorp to do so, without
the Monahans’ knowledge or consent, and that they said they could not do that.
The Monahans pleaded with Ms. Hedberg to report the negative DNA directly to
Guatemalan authorities. When she refused, the Monahans paid for an official translation
of the negative DNA test and sent it directly to Guatemalan police. Additionally, they
wrote to the U.S. Embassy and reported the negative DNA test, after their communication
with Sue Hedberg broke down irreparably, to make sure it was part of the file and their
original attempt to adopt Karen was indeed terminated. They were assured that any new
proceeding would be in light of the negative DNA test, pending multiple searches for
Karen’s birth family, and any reports by a searching birth family of prior kidnappings to
authorities.
5. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: In April 2009, the Monahans were told about the
criminal investigation through diplomatic channels. In fact, they were sent a
deceptive letter directly and not through diplomatic channels, which didn’t tell
them about any investigation. As relevant information was made available to
them, the Monahans proactively provided material information to the Guatemalan
police, the Guatemalan Consulate in Chicago, U.S. Department of State, and U.S.
law enforcement personnel about Karen’s adoption.
[T]hey [the Monahans] had known about the criminal investigation into Karen’s
adoption since April 2009, when Guatemalan officials reached out to them through
diplomatic channels. According to a faxed response, the Monahans told the officials
to communicate with their lawyer.
This statement is false. A diplomatic channel is a government-to-government
communication. Contrary to Ms. McIntyre’s false claim, on May 8, 2009, the Monahans
received a disturbing and deceptive letter directly from Gustavo Lopez, Consul General
of Guatemala in Chicago requesting an in-person health and welfare verification for
Karen Abigail. This letter purported to be part of “follow-up on every adopted child from
Guatemala in our jurisdiction of Midwestern United States.” It asked for the Monahans’
“kind cooperation to conduct an evaluation on [their] adoption of the Guatemalan minor
Karen Abigail Lopez Garcia/Karen Abigail Monahan. The evaluation consists of
verifying health status of the child as well as their living conditions.”
17 There was no
mention of a criminal investigation. The Consulate asked the Monahans to come to
Chicago or allow the Guatemalan government to visit them at their home.
Rather than simply refer the Consul to their lawyer, Ms. McIntyre omits that the
Monahans voluntarily, and without any legal duty to do so, requested that their attorney
provide the Consulate with a summary of a post-adoption home study report regarding
the health and welfare of their adopted daughter. The Guatemalan Consulate’s flagrant
breach of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and diplomatic protocol was
especially egregious in light of the deceptive letter. A formal protest (demarche) was
lodged by the U.S. Department of State against the Government of Guatemala, with the
United States insisting that all communications with its nationals in the United States be
through the State Department, as is standard protocol for all foreign governments and
what is equally demanded in Guatemala by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs if the U.S.
Embassy wishes to correspond with a Guatemalan citizen.
6. Ms. McIntyre makes the following material omission: In May 2008, Ms.
Rodríguez participated in a hunger strike to draw attention to kidnapped girls,
including her own. Ms. McIntyre fails to report at the time that Ms. Rodríguez
was actually demonstrating on behalf of another little girl, a Dulce Maria, who
she thought was Anyelí. Her counsel had already filed an injunction in
Guatemalan court to stop Dulce Maria’s departure from the country. That young
girl, among several, remains listed as a possible daughter of Ms. Rodríguez.
In May 2008, Rodríguez participated in a hunger strike whose goal was to call
attention to the women’s missing children and kidnappings for adoption. Camping
out with a small group of searching mothers atop blankets in a public park near
Guatemala’s National Palace, Rodríguez lasted eight full days . . . .
With help from her husband and brother, Rodríguez reviewed thousands of files. In
the three years since Anyelí had been kidnapped, American citizens had adopted
around thirteen thousand Guatemalan children. By now, Anyelí was almost five
years old. Rodríguez wondered how her daughter’s appearance had changed since
she’d last seen her.
First, Ms. McIntyre omits the material fact that before the hunger strike, the
Survivors Foundation, which represented Ms. Rodríguez, filed a court motion claiming
that another older and previously adopted girl, Dulce Maria Ortiz Garcia, was Ms.
Rodríguez daughter. Ms. Rodríguez actually publicly claimed, during the hunger strike
that Ms. McIntyre refers to, that Dulce Maria was her daughter. Dulce Maria was
reportedly at least a year older than Anyelí. According to the 2008 court complaint, Ms.
Rodríguez identified Dulce from a picture file number 2222-2008-CAN as her daughter,
so perhaps there had been some review of cases prior to May 2008 not reported by Ms.
McIntyre. The Survivors Foundation demanded the Peace Crime and Faults Duty Court
of Guatemala issue an injunction to prevent Dulce Maria’s departure from the country.18
Despite being a different age from Karen, and despite the three negative DNA
tests Ms. McIntyre refers to, Dulce is still claimed on the initial Internet website with a
reward as a possible daughter for Loyda Rodríguez.
Second, Ms. McIntyre, but not all sources, reports in her story that Anyelí’s
alleged kidnapping happened in November 2006. Thus, by Ms. McIntyre’s account, it
had not been three years since Anyelí was kidnapped, but eighteen months. Therefore,
the number of cases Ms. McIntyre cites as needing to be reviewed was actually wrong.
7. Ms. McIntyre falsely claims: The Monahans said the U.S. Embassy was willing
to “bend the rules” to allow for their adoption of Karen. In 2008, on the basis of
Ms. Rodríguez and other mother’s claims, all adoptions from Guatemala were
suspended. Subsequently, birth mothers who claimed their children were
abducted were provided access to adoption files and physical access to see
children waiting to be adopted. The Monahans were informed of numerous
investigations by the Guatemalan and U.S. authorities into Karen’s origins, and
had every reason to have confidence in the legality of their adoption.
“Rudy . . . confirms that we can proceed in looking for the birth mother, and that
the U.S. Embassy will not stand in our way should the abandonment ever be
complete [finished],” Monahan wrote. When I spoke to him in 2010, Rivera
wouldn’t comment on the U.S. Embassy, or its alleged willingness to bend rules.
Again, Ms. McIntyre fails to report on the context of the search for the birth
mother, to return her child to her if there had been any fraud. Additionally, there would
be no bending of the rules should Guatemalan law be followed correctly through a
properly conducted abandonment proceeding designed to flag fraud and identify any
kidnapped child, as the Monahans were assured it was. Ms. McIntyre also fails to note
that the picture presented four times total in two national daily newspapers was
reportedly the same picture the Rodríguez family eventually used to identify the child.
These pictures were commonly known to be published on behalf of searching mothers.
Additionally, it is not clear what name the child should have been advertised under – due
to fact the “imposter” obviously had not presented real information to the U.S. Embassy
about the name of the child.
Karen’s new adoption process began on December 7, 2007. One of the most
compelling features of a new reformed adoption system at the time was the requirement
that all children being considered for adoption be publicly presented so that people who
claimed their children had been wrongly taken could have the opportunity to identify
their children should they see them. When a person claimed a child was theirs, DNA
tests were administered and the adoption was suspended until the results were received.
The Government proclaimed that this new process would be public, transparent,
without cost to potential birth families, and assisted by observers from the Office of
Human Rights and Public Prosecutor’s Office. In a statement, the Government later said
“adoptive families and the general public can have confidence in the verification process
that is taking place.”19 As the Monahans were told at the time and CICIG later
confirmed, Karen had been presented publicly to a room full of families looking for lost
or abducted children and was not claimed. Ms. Rodríguez was there that day. At the
time, this physical presentation to birth families was reaffirming to the Monahans that
Karen had not been abducted. Not only hadn’t she been identified as a possible missing
child, but she also spent more than two years in foster care or orphanages prior to the
completion of the adoption without anyone stepping forward to claim her.
20
8. Ms. McIntyre falsely insinuates: The Monahans were obligated to comply with a
Guatemalan court ruling ordering her return to Guatemala. By not specifying the
parties or terms of the court order, Ms. McIntyre makes the Monahans appear
uncooperative and uncaring. Ms. McIntyre fails to report this was an ex parte
court order, that the Monahans were not a party to the lawsuit at all, let alone
given the opportunity to present evidence, and that the Monahans themselves
were not ordered to do anything by the court. She fails to report that despite this,
the Monahans still continued to pursue the truth of Karen’s past through safe and
legal channels.
Although a Guatemalan judge ruled that Karen should be returned to Guatemala in
2011, the Monahans have kept her.
This claim is an extension of the false narrative that Ms. McIntyre launched
immediately after the original court order was issued. Specifically, she still claims on her
blog in an inaccurate summary translation “[b]asically, she’s given the Monahans a
deadline of two months to respond, counting down from the date of the ruling . . . If they
don’t cooperate, a fine of 3,000 Quetzales (about $389) will be imposed, and the
Guatemalan authorities will ‘order the location of the girl through the International
Police, INTERPOL.” In fact, the Monahans were not even a party to the lawsuit and the
original Spanish actually only orders the Attorney General’s Office and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to cooperate with the United States in seeking the return of the child.
The fine is actually directed against Guatemalan government authorities should it fail to
comply within two months.
This statement leads readers to conclude that somehow the Monahans have a still
unfulfilled legal obligation to return their daughter to Guatemala since 2011 or that not
doing so was inappropriate or even illegal through the use of the word “although” to
begin the sentence. Ms. McIntyre also failed to explain the meaning of this order or to
provide appropriate context: Consider what she failed to report:
• The Monahans were not ordered to return the child to Guatemala, nor were they a
party to the lawsuit. In fact, the Government of Guatemala was ordered to secure the
return of the child in cooperation with the Government of the United States or face a
fine for failing to do so. In response to its request, the Government of Guatemala was
told the appropriate venue to dispute the adoption was in a Missouri court.
• This was a case filed under seal, ex parte. The Monahans were completely unaware
of this suit. They had heard frightening rumors on the Internet that efforts would be
made to annul their adoption and return Karen to a Guatemalan orphanage, likely for
life, even if this was yet another case of tragically mistaken identity. Due to this
announcement by Ms. Rodríguez’s team, they feared an annulment without proper
due process or all the facts, and a heartbreaking outcome for Karen. They proactively
approached U.S. law enforcement to suggest a possible investigation.
• The U.S. Department of State informed the Monahans and the Guatemala
Government that the civil court order had no force of law in the United States. This
fact was later reported publicly by the Associated Press and a link to that story is on
Ms. McIntyre’s own web site.21
• The Monahans sought urgently to obtain the court order and were told by a lawyer
seeking a public copy from the Guatemalan court that the verdict itself had been
“kidnapped.” This was followed by a clarification that the court order had been
“sequestered” by the judge away from all public view, including the government of
the United States. The U.S. Department of State told the Monahans that urgent
diplomatic requests for a public copy of the ruling had been unsuccessful. They were
unable to obtain the official court order for weeks. However, Ms. McIntyre had
access to it before the Monahans and the U.S. Government. Her inaccurate reporting
about the Monahans being ordered to comply with a foreign order they could not even
get an official copy of for weeks terrified and confused the Monahans.
• Norma Cruz, representing Ms. Rodríguez, told the Associated Press there was no
necessity of even contacting the Monahan family regarding this potentially lifealtering
verdict: “We don’t have to contact the [adoption] family. The judge’s order
says [Guatemalan] authorities have to find the child wherever she is.”
22 This
reaffirms that the duty was exclusively on the Guatemala Government and not on the
Monahans.
• There had also been no guarantee that there had not been child switching at the U.S.
Embassy by the Bran organization, something that Ms. McIntyre has investigated in
the past.
Ms. McIntyre compounded her inaccurate reporting by publishing this threatening
and accusing insinuation on her blog, which was also seriously misleading and lacking in
context:
I haven’t heard back from Monahan, nor do I expect to. With this latest
court development, I can’t offer her any kind of anonymity- the Monahans are
named publicly in the ruling. If they don’t cooperate, Guatemalan authorities
are threatening to get INTERPOL involved.
Literally, the only way the Monahans were named in the ruling was as being the
people who adopted Karen, listing their home address as the location where the child
lived. There was not even a request, let alone an order, that the Monahans cooperate –
the duty was exclusively on the Government of Guatemala to reach out to the U.S.
government through diplomatic channels to secure government-to-government
cooperation. Furthermore, as INTERPOL is an international criminal law enforcement
organization, the mere mention of the agency suggested that a failure to cooperate could
be criminal, even though the actual mention of the agency was focused on locating the
child, whose home address was already listed in the court order.
9. Ms. McIntyre falsely implies: By their public silence the Monahans must have
also privately stonewalled Ms. Rodríguez’s efforts to recover her child. In fact,
the Monahans reached out nearly three years ago to Ms. Rodríguez through a
letter hand-delivered to her representative by the U.S. Embassy to open up a
private channel to discuss the sensitive issues relating to this adoption and never
received a reply.
Her representative had told the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala that Ms.
Rodríguez was not seeking the return of her daughter to Guatemala and had told
the Associated Press she had no need to communicate with the Monahans. Ms.
Rodríguez also waived her right to reverse the adoption in Missouri for fraud for
by not filing within one year after Karen’s adoption. None of this was reported by
Ms. McIntyre.
According to a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks, on October 1, 2009, Ms.
Cruz met with U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, Stephen McFarland. She urged the U.S.
government to cooperate with her in securing DNA tests of the children. Nevertheless,
the cable goes on to state “[t]wice in the conversation Cruz noted, without any
questioning on our [U.S. government’s] part, that the birthmothers understood that their
children would not leave their adoptive families; what the birthmothers seek is that their
daughters know that they were not abandoned by their birthmothers. The Ambassador
took note of these statements but did not explore further.”23
Yet literally the very next day, October 2, the Survivors Foundation filed its
petition under seal to annul Karen’s adoption and seek her return to Guatemala, without
proof of identity.24 Thus, it is reasonable to question whether Ms. Cruz intentionally
misled Ambassador McFarland into believing she merely sought to provide some comfort
to the birthmothers. Ironically, Ms. Cruz’s claim to the State Department in 2009 closely
mirrors what Ms. McIntyre states as Ms. Rodríguez present goal.
Ms. McIntyre had both the court order showing when it was filed as well as this
specific diplomatic cable. Her expertise in researching diplomatic cables is documented
on her own biographical page, “[h]er second book, ‘U.S. Cables: International Adoption
in Guatemala, 1987-2010,’ (Cathexis Press, February 1, 2012) is a compilation of
diplomatic cables between the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in
Guatemala.”25
It is not merely about these misrepresentations, however; it is also about
unwillingness on the part of Ms. Cruz to communicate or share information with the
Monahans on behalf of her client at all. From the moment that the Monahans adopted
Karen in December 2008 through today, more than six years later, they have never
received any written correspondence from Ms. Rodríguez or Ms. Cruz. Indeed, Ms. Cruz
publicly said, right after the civil court order was made public to the Associated Press,
that she had no interest in communicating with the Monahans: “We don’t have to contact
the [adoption] family. The judge’s order says [Guatemalan] authorities have to find the
child wherever she is.”
26
For the first time, in March 2012, the Monahans received a message from Ms.
Cruz through Ambassador Susan Jacobs, Special Advisor for Children’s Issues at the
U.S. Department of State, indicating that she would like to talk. The Monahans promptly
responded through Mr. Genser in a letter dated March 30, 2012. The letter stated “it is
my [Mr. Genser’s] hope that we can engage in productive communication.” He went on
to ask seven questions about the case, stating that “[y]our clear and reliable explanations
to the following questions could go a long way toward building trust and are a condition
of our willingness to engage in further communication.” These were not complex
questions. As an illustration, he asked about an issue discussed above, saying “[c]an you
explain why you personally told Ambassador Susan Jacobs [this was after the meeting
with Ambassador McFarland] that you would not seek Karen’s return to Guatemala
because you did not think it would be in her best interest? This reported contradiction,
among others, is a big stumbling block for me as I contemplate whether I can safely
correspond with you.” Mr. Genser concluded the letter by saying “I eagerly await your
reply.”
This letter was hand-delivered by U.S. Embassy officials to Ms. Cruz in
Guatemala a few weeks later.27 Nearly three years after Ms. Cruz received Mr. Genser’s
letter, he has yet to receive a reply. This is highly relevant information that undermines
Ms. McIntyre’s implication that the Monahans have hidden behind an aggressive lawyer,
and the safety provided by living in the United States. Due to Ms. McIntyre’s extensive
use of Ms. Cruz as a source, she should have had this information; indeed, in other online
posts she talks about how she has gotten “exclusive” information from Ms. Cruz,
including the original court order weeks before the Monahans received a copy.
There is also no mention that had Ms. Rodríguez and her counsel had filed a claim
in Missouri when she learned of Karen’s location and proved both DNA evidence and the
merits of her case that her child would have been returned to her. Instead, she later filed
the ex parte court claim in Guatemala. Ms. Rodríguez knew of Karen’s whereabouts
since at least March 2009 when it was posted on the Internet. Inexplicably, particularly
since she was represented by highly competent counsel, she failed to file a claim in
Missouri state court to cancel the adoption.
Missouri law contemplates the prospect of fraud or duress with regards to consent
in any adoption process, foreign or domestic. Missouri law is unequivocal on this point –
such consent required for an adoption “may only be revoked within one year . . . for fraud
or duress.”
28
They instead decided to file a suit in Guatemala that they should have known
would have no force of law to return the child. Yet, Ms. McIntyre’s story ends by saying
that Ms. Rodríguez is seeking pro bono counsel in Missouri and fails to note that she now
has no basis for a legal claim in Missouri, since she waived that right by failing to file
within the one-year timeframe.
10. Ms. McIntyre falsely implies: She has had to fight hard to report this story
because she and the media have been bullied by the Monahans’ “aggressive”
lawyer, who threatened to sue them for libel and “refused to speak on-the-record.”
In fact, both Ms. McIntyre and Associated Press materially changed their
book/blog and story respectively under the advice of counsel after libelous
material was identified. The Monahan’s lawyer Jared Genser never threatened to
sue the New York Times. And Ms. McIntyre omits that she actually threatened
through counsel to sue the Monahans and Mr. Genser. Mr. Genser has provided
on-the-record comments to both Ms. McIntyre and Guernica Magazine, which
rather than printing his critical assessment of the article, instead pretended as if
he refused to comment.
Jared Genser sent letters and emails to journalists and editors reporting on the case,
including myself, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and others, threatening
legal action.
This statement is false, incomplete, and highly misleading. In all three of the
specific cases mentioned by Ms. McIntyre, specific corrections were taken after Mr.
Genser lodged his complaints, demonstrating their validity. Contrary to the implication
that somehow these were strong-arm tactics – elsewhere she described Mr. Genser as
“aggressive” – here is what Ms. McIntyre omits:
First, Ms. McIntyre originally claimed on her website that “the Monahans knew
that the adoption was in fact fraudulent.” She also included defamatory statements in a
published excerpt from a chapter of her book about the case, without ever even speaking
to the Monahans about them at all. Based on Mr. Genser’s warning of a libel action and
under advice of her lawyer, she withdrew her claim and changed numerous parts of her
draft book chapter.
Second, with regards to the New York Times, her claim is just false. Mr. Genser
never threatened any kind of legal action at all in his letter of August 26, 2011. Here is
what happened: On July 17, 2011, Ms. McIntyre said the following on her own website:
“Right now I’m working with the New York Times on an adoption-related investigation
story. It’s a co-bylined feature with Ginger Thompson.” On July 20, 2011, Ms.
McIntyre attempted to contact the Monahans via phone and email. She stated the
following in an email:
I’d like to talk to you off the record about your experience with Celebrate
Children International . . . The case I’m writing about is that of the Emanuel
family of Gallatin, Tennessee, who lost two referrals before successfully
adopting a baby with CCI. My book traces their experience, along with what was
happening on the ground in Guatemala with the birth mother, Mildred Alvarado
. . . From the emails I’ve read . . . it sounds like you and your husband were in an
extremely difficult position, trying to do your best to help Karen.
Ms. McIntyre failed to disclose she was working on a story for the New York
Times. The New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in Journalism stated at the time:
“others on assignment for us should disclose their identity to the people they cover” and
“it is essential we preserve professional detachment, free of any hint of bias.” In addition
to failing to disclose she was working for the paper, she also, it appeared to the
Monahans, intentionally mislead them to believe she wanted to speak off the record, that
she wanted to interview them about another story, and that she was sympathetic to their
challenges in their own adoption. But a few weeks later, Mr. Genser heard from Ginger
Thompson herself asking to interview the Monahans and him on-the-record because she
was working on a feature story, about the Monahans’ case. If it had not been for Ms.
McIntyre’s own self-promoting post, the Monahans would have had no idea that Ms.
Thompson was actually working with Ms. McIntyre on a story about the Monahan case.
On August 26, 2011, Mr. Genser wrote to Ms. Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of
the New York Times, not to threaten any legal action but rather to complain about what he
characterized about the breach of the New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in
Journalism. He was later informed that no story would be published by Ms. McIntyre in
the New York Times. All Mr. Genser had to do was to explain the above chronology of
events and provide this documentary evidence. No threats of legal action were necessary
or delivered.
Finally, with respect to the Associated Press, Mr. Genser did indeed threaten a
libel action against them for several different false and defamatory statements in one of
their stories. When Mr. Genser provided them with the information to correct these
statements based on publicly available information, the Associated Press, to its credit,
rapidly corrected the story. It is also worth noting that Ms. McIntyre omits from this
narrative that the story in question was actually generated under the leadership of her
longtime personal friend and collaborator Juan Carlos Llorca, then the AP Bureau Chief
in Guatemala City. Mr. Llorca, who is tragically now deceased, actually worked with her
on this Guernica Magazine article as noted in the byline, and was a financial supporter of
her first book.
In short, this simple unpacking of Ms. McIntyre’s statement demonstrates that Mr.
Genser was justified lodging these various complaints on his clients’ behalf. Given the
extraordinary legal resources available to the New York Times and the Associated Press,
especially compared to Mr. Genser being a solo practitioner at the time, the only reason
the companies would take action in response to such complaints is because they decided
there was merit to his claims.
Ms. McIntyre, also fails to note that she threatened to sue the Monahans and Mr.
Genser via counsel, in the process making outrageous and false claims about the
Monahans and their response to events surrounding their adoption. It is not fair or
professional to violate journalistic standards of ethics, and then blame the subjects of
your reporting for wanting to kill a story instead of disclosing that they do not trust you
because of your deception, violation of ethics, libel, and repeated poor reporting.
Their lawyer [Jared Genser] also refuses to speak on-the-record.
This is false.
In an email provided to Guernica Magazine on November 21, 2014, after
reviewing a pre-publication version of “The Limits of Jurisdiction,” Mr. Genser
responded to the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Michael Archer as follows:
“On-the-record
After claiming to work for five years to publish this ‘carefully fact-checked’
account, Ms. McIntyre has once again presented numerous fictions as facts. In
light of this and her earlier false and defamatory statements, my clients cannot
trust Ms. Siegal-McIntyre with the deeply personal details of their daughter’s
story.”
Guernica Magazine did not include this quotation in its article and published its
article willfully ignoring an on-the-record comment marked clearly for that purpose. It is
neither fair nor appropriate to refuse to allow the subject of a purported news story to
respond, let alone to then claim they refused comment.
Previously, on August 29, 2011, Mr. Genser sent her another letter, also on-therecord,
threatening her with a libel action speaking in some detail about the case. He also
described what he believed were false and defamatory claims. This was not the only onthe-record
letter sent to Ms. McIntyre.
If Ms. McIntyre’s version of events is to be believed, Mr. Genser is an
“aggressive” lawyer who stonewalled her investigation, refused to speak on-the-record,
and tried to intimidate her by threatening her and other publications with libel actions.
The truth, quite simply, is that he has vigorously defended his clients from her shoddy
and false reporting.
Conclusion
Over the last six years the Monahans have devoted themselves to their adopted
daughter’s security and well-being. They continue to investigate the truth of their
daughter’s origins, but their efforts have been hampered by a tangled web of deception
and misinformation. They have endured threats and vitriol generated by Ms. McIntyre’s
libel, and they have sought police protection from threats to their daughter’s safety. They
have not waged a public relations campaign to honor Karen’s past and her birth family,
whoever they may be, by working through these issues with appropriate discretion and
attention to Karen’s right and need for privacy.”
http://perseus-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Fabrications-False-Claims-and-Material-Omissions-A-Response-to-Guernica-Magazine%E2%80%99s-Article-by-Erin-Siegal-McIntyre.pdf[Jared Genser response to Erin Siegel Mcintyre’s article]
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