faulker087

A few stories in the media about corruption in Ethiopian adoption. How Ethiopia's Adoption Industry Dupes Families and Bullies Activists By Kathryn Joyce Stories of under-aging, lies to families, and other corruption. Inside Ethiopia's Adoption Boom Article showing some of the complexities of Ethiopian adoption including birthfamily not understanding adoption, poverty driven adoption vs. true lost of family, and use of middleman to harvest children.

In an attempt to allow contributors as much privacy as possible when submitting stories (a concern that was raised by some), comments by anonymous commenters will now be allowed on this blog. All comments are on moderation. If you comment anonymously vs via email to submit your story this will be noted when the story is published on the blog proper. All regular comments (i.e. not stories) must still has an ID with them to be published. So if you want to post negative comments about a story or situation, you'll have to do it with a google ID or your (hidden) email. I will NOT be publishing negative comments from "anonymous". Thank you.

Imagine a young girl, unwed, just giving birth. The father is ashamed of his daughter and worried about what other villagers think of his family. So ashamed and worried that he takes his daughter’s 2 month old baby girl one morning and returns home later in the day alone. He confesses to the young mother that he brought her innocent newborn to an orphanage to be adopted. That baby is my daughter. I am the one who adopted her. On referral, we were told that baby M’s parents (aged in the 30’s) had passed away from unknown illnesses. That she had been taken care of by her grandfather and he just couldn’t care for her anymore while taking care of 5 other children. Supposedly, these 5 other children were the baby’s older siblings. As sad as this story is, it was one we could understand. One that we could see happening in a third world country like Ethiopia. We didn’t question it. We moved on. We flew to Addis to pick up our new daughter. My husband and I visited and spoke with M’s gra...

Our child was listed, adopted and granted   a visa as an abandoned child. We were told by the adoption agency there was no way to find out anything about his history.     A couple of years after he was adopted, we tried searching.    Our searcher went to the large, Catholic orphanage in Addis from which our child was referred.    Within minutes he was given the address of the woman who brought the baby to the orphanage.    Soon after the searcher went to the address and talked to people, we had contact with our child’s Mother. She told us that she gave her baby to a friend, who, with a known baby broker who had spent time in prison, took the child to the orphanage to be adopted. We now have ongoing contact with the formerly non-existent Mother.

We researched for months before choosing a placement agency. I asked the "tough" questions. We decided to go with them based on others' reports that they were ethical. They provided Lifebooks for the children. They facilitated birth family meetings. They had all the right answers. We met with our social worker and decided "what we could handle." We convinced ourselves that we would only be suitable parents for a healthy infant.  Shortly after signing on with our placement agency, the wait time increased from 6-9 months to 12 months. Then months later it was extended to 12-18 months. Then, again to 18-24 months. Each time the estimated wait increased, my husband and I talked about whether or not we should stay with the agency or look elsewhere. Each time we convinced ourselves that it would be better to wait longer and be with a "good" agency. Why take chances switching to a smaller, faster (in our minds, therefore shadier) agency? We will have to answe...

My husband and I began our second Ethiopian Adoption back in 2008. We had brought home our beautiful son in 2006. We wanted children so badly and fell in love with the country, the people, and of course our son. We knew our daughter was also "waiting" for us there. Our story causes us heartbreak not only because of what happened to our child and her family, but how selfish and naive we were. In hindsight, we genuinely didn't know--we hadn't found the forums--we had heard the Guatemala stories, but that was there. Right? Sadly this reasoning was just not so as we had come to learn. We started with one of the bigger agencies in Ethiopia to wait for our little one. When they had increased the wait time from 6-9 months to 12-18 months our hearts broke. How could we possibly wait so “long”? A friend also starting her adoption at the same time told us about <agency> , how wonderful and personal the attention was. It was also run by an Ethiopian woman. What could be be...

I started looking at Ethiopian adoption in the fall of 2007.  I had recently completed an adoption from Guatemala and was watching that program close due to corruption involved in the process there.  It was important for me to find another program and one that I thought would be more ethical and transparent.  I also wanted to find one where the children were well cared for.  Ethiopia seemed perfect.  I researched agencies and finally chose one that had a small Ethiopian program that was geared towards older kids and with a good reputation as far as ethics go. As my process moved along, I accepted the referral of a little girl who was said to be 5 1/2.  I was reminded by my agency multiple times that she would probably be older but it was hard to know for sure.  Her paperwork said that she'd been relinquished by her grandfather because he was elderly and unable to care for her any longer.  It said that her father was unknown and her mother died whe...