How Could People Steal Children?

I read an article this morning that just broke my heart. Okay, it didn’t break my heart. It angered me beyond anger. It pissed me off. It made me want to…well, I don’t know.

I haven’t stayed abreast of all of the Haitian adoption/orphan stories because most of it, in my opinion, is rumor. However, this story seems to be true.

Ten members of an American Baptist Church are to appear in a Haitian court this morning after being accused of running an illegal adoption scheme.

The group from Idaho said that they were carrying out a rescue mission and had accompanied more than 30 children as part of a plan to take at least 100 orphans out of Port-au-Prince to an orphanage that they run in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

It was claimed last night that most of the children had living relatives and did not appear to know where they were going.

One of the very basic problems with this is that most of these children have families of their own and are not orphans. Heather Paul, the CEO of SOS Children’s Villages USA, told NBC’s “Today Show” that some of the parents are now claiming their children. The church group claims they were only trying to save the abandoned children and that they thought what they were doing was in good faith (although they knew what they were doing was wrong).

Forgive me for saying this bluntly but these aren’t their children to take or try to save. Personally, I don’t care if they think they are doing what is in good faith…they have absolutely no business being down in Haiti making a mess of a situation that is already chaotic.

These children, orphans or not, need to be with their own people right now. They need comfort from people who know them and people who can provide for them in a manner they are accustomed to. What they don’t need is to be chartered to a different country, spoken to in a different language, and given strange foods.

The Haitian children have suffered enough already and will most likely continue to be put through a version of hell we will probably never experience. But trafficking their children is not a way to solve the problem (and I say this sitting next to my two internationally adopted boys).

These children NEED to stay in their communities right now…until Haiti finds the relief and structure it so desperately needs.

Dr. Aronson, the founder of the Worldwide Orphans Foundation also cautions against getting involved in any Haitian adoption right now (except those already in process). Like most countries, the existing process there is slow and frustrating, and somehow opening the floodgates and allowing large numbers to leave for new homes in the United States is neither logistically possible nor actually desirable, Aronson says.

“Adoption is not the way to solve absolutely massive, tragic issues of vulnerable children,” she says. “An earthquake is a traumatizing event. The best thing for these children is to keep them in their communities, with neighbors and relatives, and with food and shelter and safety.”

She supports the decision of the United States State Department to expedite adoptions that were already in the works before the earthquake — cases in which children were already certified as having lost both parents, and in which adoptive families had already been screened and approved. “If the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed, then by all means speed that up and get those children out,” she says. But we should resist the well-intentioned urge to “get online and open the floodgates and scoop up orphans.”

“This is not a time for adopting orphan children in droves,” she says. Instead, the answer is “to care for the children where they are, and allow them to find their aunts, their uncles, their grandparents, their cousins.”

Sounds ideal, right? Sure, if the world were perfect.

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