ADA News (English)

The change of authorities at the PGN, instead of being a breath of fresh air, is more of the same but worse. Displaying a total disregard for the welfare of the children, the birth mothers and the adoptive parents, the new Attorney General, Baudilio Portillo Merlos, has been doing his best to stop adoptions and to create uncertainty with his ill advised comments about the legality of theadoption processes at the PGN.

Portillo Merlos said that they will interview the birth mothers of the cases that were already approved by Barrios. This is beyond his legal power. The arguments to support that measure are: that some of the notarial acts in some sdoption processes lack the signature of the lawyer who represents the adoptive parents and that some of the photocopies are not clear. How is the interview to birth mothers going to fix that is not explained by Portillo Merlos.

Yesterday we learned that the birthmother interviews will be held in the presence of the psychologist of the PGN, the same who kept a young birth mother for two hours, to convince her to claim her baby back, despite the clear opposition of the parents of the girl and the will of the girl, who did not sign the affidavit prepared by the PGN, and it was until they kidnapped the baby and promised the mother that if she came to the PGN she would get the baby back, that she signed it. After she did, the PGN people took mother and daughter and sent them to the Casa Alianza hogar for teen mothers, where they have been until now, unable to communicate with their family.

The interviews will also be witnessed by the lawyers of the District Attorney’s office, some other from the Human Rights Office, the same who has been claiming all the time that all adoptions are illegal and who has filed amparos to try to stop adopted children from leaving the country. The press will also be present at this interview, that is looking more like the Inquisition, than that an effort to know if everything was all right with the adoption.

The birth interviews by the PGN are illegal as they have not legal grounds and constitute an abuse of power. This week an amparo will be filed to try to get a court order to stop the PGN form suspending the approval of cases and to release the already approved cases. We will do our best to make the court to see that the PGN is abusing their power, the illegality of their acts, the harm done to the people involved in an adoption process.

The diligent lawyers of the PGN have been warning the Social Workers of the family court not to release the files to the notaries because they will come to review them. They also have been at the Civil Registries telling them that the final deeds of adoptions should not be recorded. All this is also illegal, but the PGN has a power over the other bureaucrats that has no explanation, but it is very strong.

An order that is not based on law should not be obeyed, says the Guatemalan Constitution and since the order to present the birth mothers to the PGN is not based on law, should not be obeyed. Nobody should be tried for wanting to give to her child a better life, and much less by a made up court whose only purpose is to prove that the mothers are not smart enough and did not know what they were doing when they gave up their children. The CNA summoned a birth mother of two sisters because the girls were so cute, and did not let the woman go until she admitted to take the girls back. Instead of having a loving family with means to give the girls what hey need, they will go back to a mother who cannot support them, and who works in the oldest profession, and who would not give them a good life. But for the CNA director, it was a triumph, to have rescued two girls from adoption.

Two days ago, Enrique Urizar, the ADA president, Dina Castro, former president and Olga Ogaldez, current president of the Institute of Family Law met with the US ambassador and the consul, to discuss the problem of the suspension of the adoptions by the PGN. The diplomat expressed his concern but stated in very clear terms that they cannot interfere, because it is an internal matter and they are bound to respect that. The bag of tricks that they used last year to get the Adoptions Law passed is a distant memory for the US diplomats. They also said that it will be long time until the US will do adoptions with Guatemala, because they are new at being Hague and Guatemala does not have a system in place that would allow it.

The adoptive parents have rights. Even if the adoption is not finalized, the birth mothers have given their consent to the adoptions and their saliva to prove that they are the mothers of the children being adopted. The fact that some children have been abducted, does not have the power to halt the adoptions in process. The presumption of innocence also applies here, and until somebody proves that a child being adopted was not relinquished by the mother of the child, the adoption cannot be stopped. There are more than two thousand children waiting and three girls missing. We are sure that there should be a less harming way to find if any of those girls is among the girls and boys being adopted, if only the real purpose where that, but it is looking more and more as an orchestrated way to derail the system and stop the children from going home. We msut fifth that.

This is the moment to call your representatives in the US and demand that the US diplomats do everything in their power to see that the adoptions in process are finalized in a timely matter without further and illegal requirements.

ADA is poised to fight this illegality and to win, because regardless of what the new authorities of the PGN say and the US DOS wants, those children have families who are adopting them, who love them and they belong with them, not being held I in custody as evidence of a crime that never was committed.