Adoptions from Guatemala were abruptly halted in May to give officials a chance to investigate the country's troubled $100 million adoption industry. Now, DNA tests have confirmed that at least one chid was stolen and eventually sold for adoption, a practice some have suggested is widespread.
The girl, reported stolen more than a year ago, was found by her birth mother recently while the little one was nearing the end of the process of being adopted by an American couple.
From MSNBC.com:
The baby's mother, Ana Escobar, said armed men
locked her in a storage closet at the family's shoe store north of
Guatemala City and took the 6-month-old.
"When I got out, my daughter was gone," she told the AP in an earlier interview about the case.
She spent months searching hospitals and orphanages, looking for the child.
One day the mother was sitting at the National Adoption Council's office hoping to review documents that might show her daughter in the system, when she saw a toddler that looked like her daughter being carried into an office.
Escobar convinced officials to take a new DNA test, even though the DNA in the girl's records did not match Escobar's. The results came in: a match. The girls has been returned to her birth mother and all doctors and judges and lawyers, as well as the adoption agency, are under investigation.
Guatemala was known for relatively quick and easy adoptions, one reason it was second only to China in the number of children adopted internationally before the May freeze. But many inside the country -- and some international agencies -- believe there is rampant abuse in the system. In May, a dozen adoptions in process were canceled. Reports of stolen children have also grown in that country over the years.
Photo: guatemalanadoptionsblog.com
