ADA News (English)

Just when we thought that we had seen it all, the PGN/CNA amazes us with a new display of abuse of power of the worst kind. On Friday May 31st. was scheduled the interview of two unrelated children, a boy and a girl, who were separately ruled abandoned by a Judge of the Childhood and Adolescence, with the favorable opinion of the PGN, and are being adopted by the same couple. Trusting that the judicial abandonment sentence of the children would protect them from any dangers at the PGN, the director of the orphanage went to the interview with one of the caregivers of the hogar and the notary. As soon as she got to the PGN, a group of the people brought by Fundacion Sobrevivientes followed them from the entrance to the basement. They were made to wait, while the mob, formed by men and women stood near by. After an hour of waiting, the notary asked Estela Torres, the PGN employee who is in charge, to go ahead with the interview. They were moved to one of the tables were the interviews take place and one of the women of Sobrevivientes came along too. She said that she was positive that the girl is her daughter. The CNA people and the DA delegate told the director of the hogar that her services were no longer needed and that the girl was being transferred to another hogar. The director of the hogar pleaded with them to let the girl stay at the hogar, promising that she would take the girl to the DNA lab and would not object to give her to the woman who claims her if the DNA showed a match. They refused, telling her over and over that she had done right in taking care of the girl for over a year, but now they were taking over. While all this was being discussed, the notary asked the woman how she lost her daughter, and her answer was that she was walking at the Bolivar Avenue, when her daughter was snatched by an unknown person When the director of the hogar asked her a little later the same question, the woman said that she was fooled into giving her. When she was asked when did that happen, she said that she did not remember, but insisted that she was her daughter because she had a tiny mole in a hand, which she happened to mention only after she saw it. An employee of the hogar went to the PGN with a DNA kit to try to get swabs of the alleged birth mother and of the little girl, but the PGN people did not allow it. Even if it was just to find out the truth, they should have allowed it, or even better, they should have the lab people there, to do it right away, since they have been saying that the birthmothers interviews are being done because three girls were stolen. I am sure that those interested in finalizing the adoption would willingly pay for a DNA test rather than have their child taken away from the people who care for such child.

The little girl was taken away by the PGN social worker who refused to let the director talk to her, to calm her down, because the girl was crying and did not even let her take her doll with her. When the PGN social worker saw the tears of the caregiver and the director of the hogar, said that they were giving the girl away into adoption, so she did not believe that they cared for those children or that they feel any love for them. As soon as the alleged birth mother saw the press people, burst into tears, and so did her entourage, in a well coordinated display of emotion, totally oriented towards the lenses of the news people who took them several pictures and eagerly filmed the waterworks.

The case will be brought to a Judge of Childhood and Adolescence who will start another abandonment process to determine if the mother is the birth mother and if she is a suitable option for the girl. Meanwhile, the frightened little girl will be who knows where, waiting for those heartless people to decide her life. If it turns out that the woman is not her mother, what will erase the harm done to the girl and to her adoptive parents? And if it turns out to be the mother, why is that she did not come forward to the court when publications of the picture and court in charge were made in two newspapers? It is understandable that the illiteracy and the poverty may prevent them from buying the newspapers, but the Police and the DA could very well have a collection of all those ads, to show them to those who denounce that their child is missing, and the DNA should be done in the less disruptive way.

The interviews of the birth mothers by the PGN/CNA are ILLEGAL, even if they are smooth and without any problems. To take the children away is ILLEGAL, because the law says that the children can be taken against the will of their parents and caregivers, only with judicial order and the PGN is doing it backwards. They snatch the children, and then go to a judge to validate what they did. The suspension of the adoption process, for whatever reason, is ILLEGAL, because the law very clearly says that the PGN has to give an opinion within three days, and there is no legal provision to justify the extension of that period.

The US Consul (same who passed list at the voting of the Adoptions Law in Congress last year) and Joint Council representatives Tom DiFilipo and Bruce Mossburg, visited the PGN last Tuesday, and it is our understanding that they advocated that the birthmother interviews were done in a respectful way, which misses totally the point that the interviews are illegal and that they should not take place at all. Doing the interviews politely and respectfully does not make them right. The CNA has absolutely nothing to do with grandfathered adoptions after the registration deadline of February 12 and in the remote possibility that they would have shown some interest in the situation of the children who need adoptions, that period also expired on February 12. Right now what they must do is to see how to become Hague Compliant, to be able to give families to all the children who need them and to set up state orphanages to provide the care that the private hoarse have been giving thus far and that no longer will give, once the children who are in them go home sometime this year. We really hope that after closing down a successful system that gave work to many people, provided homes and families to many children and kept older children off the streets, the Guatemalan government steps to the plate and opens nice orphanages, like the private ones that are closing now, and gives the children the food, care, medical attention and families that the lawyers and private institutions will no longer provide.

The press continues to malign the work of the adoption lawyers. Unsubstantiated accusations of coercing the mothers, of tricking them into giving away their children and of taking them by force are still published in one newspaper or another, depending on which was being paid by UNICEF to do their dirty job. A tool for that was the so called study done by an inexistent entity named ILPEC, that UNICEF presented at a big forum against adoptions in 2000, giving the credit for that so called study to such ghost entity as a way to distance UNICEF of what this entity very well knew that was a collection of lies, exaggerations and false accusations. The problem is even though everybody understands that the exception confirms the rule, when the subject is adoptions, it is the other way around. The exception makes the rule. A facilitator does something bad and instead of judging the facilitator, automatically adoptions are placed at the accused stool and people like Juan Carlos Llorca of Associated Press and many others, seize the opportunity to update one of their old articles full of venom about the corruption of adoptions in Guatemala.

What we have been seen and heard at the PGN this past weeks is very much what the media attributed to the lawyers: baby stealing, coercing of birth mothers, total disregard of the law and conning the mothers to make them change their minds, just to yank the children from their foster mothers and send them to the place of their choice, without a court order. It is a pity that neither the US consul nor the JCICS visitors used their influence to request to the PGN to put an end to those abuses that were limited just the day they were at the PGN, but continued as soon as they left. It was a very wasted opportunity to avoid the unnecessary anxiety and grief that this abuse of power is bringing to the waiting parents and to the interviewed mothers and as it was shown on Friday, to the directors of the hogars as well.

Because most Guatemalans would not adopt a child, much less an indigenous looking child, many find very difficult to understand why is that the Americans adopt them. A former PGN director, in her recommendation that the Hague Convention were ratified as soon as possible, wrote: The foreigners adopt children from Guatemala, not because they like them, but because it is easy to do it and we must prevent that. That summarizes the way the people in the government see the adoption of Guatemalan children by foreign citizens and since most of the Guatemalans do not set foot at the hotels where anyone could see that the children being adopted are treated with love by their visiting parents, we understand now that the harassment of the adoptive parents by the police was not only to obtain green papers with portraits of former American presidents, but as a successful way to keep the adoptive parents off the streets, and away from the public eye so they could not see that the children being adopted are loved beyond any physical feature by their adoptive parents.

UNICEF could not prevent the grandfather provision in the Adoptions Law of the in process cases, but it is doing its best to prevent those cases to be finalized. If anyone ever wonder who is paying for the salaries of the interviewers since neither the PGN nor the CNA are doing it, the answer is in the bottomless pockets of UNICEF. After giving to Oscar and Wendy Berger their farewell present for a job well done, regarding the passing of a draconian Adoptions Law, now they have to deal with the stubbornness of those who have been doing everything they can to finalize the adoptions that do not move forward, but seem to go backwards with the collaboration of different characters. Fundacion Sobrevivientes, whose sole purpose is to denounce the killing of women, suddenly turns against adoptions and gets three women who claim that their daughters were stolen and that they know that they are being adopted. Even though we feel sorry for anyone who suffers the loss of a child, to try to find the missing children of three women does not justify to steal as many children as possible every day, at the PGN. When the law does not mean anything to those who have the power and the employees of the PGN can take by force and with the help of the police, a child that is being legally adopted, for groundless reasons or clerical mistakes, the pain that the mothers who want their children to be adopted and the people who are adopting them is much more real than the pain of those women whose flimsy versions of the way they lost their children makes us seriously doubt of the authenticity of their pain and of their stories.

Last week, the reviewers of the PGN were pressured into taking back the already signed approvals by them and by Barrios, and review again the files, searching for anything that could be new previos. We were told that they refused to do so, but in view of the limited number of approved files being released, we are wondering if they caved in and did as they were told.

The order to bring the birthmothers, the children and the biological mothers (even in the case of abandoned children), to the PGN has no legal grounds. According to the Constitution, nobody has to obey an order that is not based on law. The risk of losing a child due to the dirty tricks of the interviewers is ever present. To bring a birthmother to the PGN and have a successful interview is not a guarantee of the file being released soon. The fact that only a few approved files were freed and that two of them belong to an agency that has been questioned and that is under investigation in the US, brings to mind the nagging suspicion that the adoption files have been kidnapped and that only those who pay the ransom are set free. In view of this hostage situation, a stronger plea for help must be filed by the affected US parents with their Congress and Senate members, to bring this matter to the attention of the Secretary of State, to use their almighty power to stop the delays and the trickery and let the adoptions be finalized according to the laws, not to the whims of each reviewer, interviewer or third level bureaucrat of the PGN.