Selling a child trap
In 2009, 20-year-old Shian Klopp and her boyfriend met her boyfriend and married a few weeks later, but within a few months, Klopp became pregnant. However, the joy of being a new mother soon ended when the husband went to jail. Forced by reality, she had to start seeking adoption for the baby in her belly. The first relevant link found by young couples on search engines was the "Adoption Network Legal Center" (ANLC).
The initial communication between Klopp and ANLC went smoothly: the adoption consultant was gentle and considerate, and the service was professional and thoughtful. The other party quickly sent them a series of documents, asking them to fill in a series of questions such as personal medical history, drug abuse and expenses during pregnancy.
The couple only asked the adopting family to provide the necessities of life such as gas, food, blankets, etc. They did not want this to become a transaction of buying and selling children. But ANLC's advisers said that the children's future adoptive parents are very wealthy and they can ask for more resources. So they added maternity clothes, a new set of tires, and books that can be brought to prison. In January 2010, Klopp signed the adoption document. According to the law, the decision can be revoked within a prescribed time limit. The specific time varies from state to state. Any promise or contract that may constitute the sale of children is illegal.
After the document was signed, Klopp still hesitated. When she called ANLC's counselor and asked if she could keep the child, the response from the other party made her think that the adoptive parents would recover all the money, which is not a small sum. Shocked, she hung up the phone in a hurry and never dared to mention it again. "My heart is broken." Klopp said, "Withdrawal means you have to spend another money to redeem your children." There was no other way, she had to choose to give up her son. No contact for 11 years.
Large market
Film and television works often tell the story of couples without children saving an abandoned baby from a crowded orphanage. But in reality, about 1 million American families want to adopt children, and most of them want newborns. This number greatly exceeds the actual number of adoptable babies in the United States, and some parents have even set their sights on international adoption. Due to the limited number of babies and the lengthy process of applying for adoption through official channels. In this case, private adoption is undoubtedly a good choice for parents with financial strength.
In 1996, Alan Kindy and Carol Kindy co-founded ANLC. The agency claims that since its establishment, they have accumulated more than 6,000 successful adoption cases and are currently the largest adoption legal firm in the United States. ANLC's official website is full of grateful recommendations from customers, but in the eyes of critics, this is just a beautiful cover to cover the essence of the organization as a money-making tool.
We have witnessed the dark side of private adoption: commissions, illegal sealing clauses, and racial discrimination against babies. According to statistics from the Donaldson Adoption Association in 2006 and the National Adoption Association in 2014, the number of babies adopted by non-relatives is between 13,000 and 18,000 each year, of which about 1,000 are adopted through public institutions. This undoubtedly shows that the vast majority of infant adoptions in the United States rely on private institutions to complete.
Former ANLC employee Spert said: "This kind of adoption will make the child a cash cow for the family."
"This is a typical supply and demand problem." California adoption lawyer Celestel Livsic said. He hopes to reform the existing adoption system. The scarcity of adoptable babies, the eager expectations of adoptive parents, and the emergence of the Internet have greatly promoted the pace of profit-making for middlemen, who can extract tens of thousands of dollars in commissions from each case.
According to a survey conducted by Time Magazine and Newsy Television Network, the ANLC agreement in 2021 stipulates that adoptive parents need to pay more than US$25,000. This does not include production costs, legal fees for final adoption documents, and other additional costs. With a complete set of procedures, costs may quadruple. "Money is the original sin." said Adam Portman, author of "Adopted Nation". "When humans are compared with the dollar, it means the beginning of a disaster."
Dirty tricks
Although the federal government to adopt a child for each family to provide financial subsidies, but the sector still lacks support for federal laws and regulations. A series of related laws, from the amount of financial compensation to how the biological parents agree to the adoption, are limited to the state level, and the specific legal content varies greatly from region to region. For example, Mississippi allows birth mothers to revoke an adoption decision within 6 months, while the time limit in Tennessee is only 3 days.
Livsic founded the non-profit organization "Adoption Matching", which aims to use Internet resources and mobile phone application platforms to provide biological parents with adoption agencies that meet industry standards and qualified adoptive parents. In her view, the legal loopholes caused by the differences in adoption regulations in various regions allow speculators to easily exploit the loopholes and make huge profits from them.
The Jindys’ adoption career is often questioned. In 2006, the Orange County District Attorney prosecuted the two, claiming that they had 11 illegal activities in the operation of ANLC, including fabricating the business qualifications of the law firm, fabricating the Carroll nursing degree for false publicity, etc. The Jindi couple denied wrongdoing, but agreed to pay a fine of $100,000.
Karrie Sweet worked at ANLC from 2008 to 2011. She remembers that a staff member once threatened a mother that if she was unwilling to send her child for adoption, she would call the child protection service organization and ask them to take the child away. Klopp is not the only mother to be pressured by ANLC. Grace Haras adopted two children through ANLC in 2017 and 2018. Although the agency arranged accommodation during her pregnancy, an ANLC representative told her that if she gave up her adoption, she would have to repay the cost.
The experience of these mothers corresponds to an operating model of ANLC. They put pressure on employees and urged them to win over customers. After employees reach certain goals, they can earn additional income by signing more adoptive parents or completing more cases. A former employee said that the birth mother who had been sent for adoption many times was sometimes called a "frequent customer", "all out of interest rather than love, ANLC will always give priority to the next business."
Former employees said that they sometimes provide adoptive parents with inflated data to prove the strength of the organization. "In their description, the biological mother is almost waiting in line to send the child. This is simply fake." The customer pays the service fee in two installments, pays the deposit before the start of the project, and pays the balance after the match with the biological mother. Therefore, once the adoption plan is aborted, ANLC, which has already received the money, does not have to rush to re-match the adoptive parents. The superior forces the consultant to ignore these unmatched cases and issue instructions to "not match customers who have no money in the short term." In addition, some adoptive parents (such as overweight and obese) who are considered by the company to be difficult to match, they sign a time-limited agreement instead of a standard indefinite contract. For adoptive parents who are willing to adopt black or mixed-race babies, the agency will also provide them with new contracts with special discounts. Former employees also revealed that the agency would encourage pregnant women to move to a state with relatively loose and friendly adoption policies. They called this a "site search."
Jessalin Spect worked at ANLC in 2015. She said that the problems of private adoption are more serious than we thought. She worries that this kind of adoption will make the child a cash cow for the family. Anne Moody, author of "Children That Money Can Buy," believes that such an adoption system can basically be equivalent to selling children to make money.
Claudia Crigan Darcy has published a large number of articles on adoption on her blog, firmly supporting her biological parents to defend their rights. She learned that many biological parents are under pressure to repay adoption fees, and many states have no express regulations on this. "Isn't this blackmail?" Darcy asked. According to Debra Guston, director of the Adoption Department of the Adoption and Assisted Childbirth Lawyers College, it is anti-moral to require the return of the financial compensation previously given to the biological parents if the adoption is not established.
Weak supervision
The state's control of private adoption agencies is superficial. Adoption agencies generally only need to obtain business licenses from the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Children and Family, and lawyers only need to be licensed to work under the management of the State Bar Association. Even if problems are found in these adoption agencies, the government's response is lackluster, and the punishment is not painful. In 2018, the Utah Department of Human Services (DHS) revoked the business license of an adoption agency called "Heart and Spirit" because the agency failed to responsibly find adoptive families for infants to be adopted, and supervise the expenses of biological mothers It's not in place either. According to the law, a legal person whose license has been revoked cannot be associated with another entity with a business license within five years. But a year later, the owner of "Heart and Spirit" was found cooperating with another adoption agency. DHS issued a temporary license for the cooperation between the two companies, and soon lifted the sanctions on the "Heart and Spirit" agency. When these adoption brokers operate agencies as consultants, charity advocates, advertisers, and other identities, law enforcement becomes more difficult. At present, which department supervises these private organizations is even more confused by the government.
Klopp's Facebook page still has posts she made when she adopted ANLC to adopt her son. At that time, in her eyes, the decision to send for adoption was painful but correct: her son would live in a loving family. "I thought everything was fine." Klopp recalled. Since then, she began to pay attention to the information of the online adoption community, slowly tearing apart the glamorous appearances in the adoption process, and discovering the sordidness behind it.
"They use those poor and terrified poor people, and use fear to force people to accept a trap that has no way out." Klopp said of the adoption industry. "I'm sure that even the parents who adopted my son will not Know what happened behind them. They just entrusted the money to the agency to help them find a child. However, the money did not eventually fall into the hands of the biological parents, but into the pockets of the middleman."
