Cambodia's baby-stealing problem, can it be solved?

Denise Hruby | GlobalPost.com | Sep 19, 2012

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Before Cambodia banned foreign adoptions in 2009, it was relatively common for hustlers to succeed in snagging a Cambodian child, in exchange for a large fee from unwitting foreign parents.

They would tell a poor Cambodian family that their child would live at an orphanage until the family had the financial means to support them. But when the family contacted the orphanage, their baby would be gone. The child’s identity would be erased, and the birth parents would have no way to find them.

It is unknown how many of the thousands of foreign parents who adopted Cambodian children between 1998 and 2009, when foreign adoptions were allowed, adopted an actual orphan.

Cambodia’s 2009 ban was an effort by the government to take time to better regulate the adoption process. Now, three years later, the ban is set to be lifted.

Ministry To Seek Out Fraudulent Orphanages

A group of Cambodian orphans gather and play while an orphanage worker looks on (File photo, Photo: AP)

Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Thursday, 24 March 2011

“We have the best interests of the child in mind, and at the moment we believe that many of these orphanages do not have the best interests of the child at heart.”

Cambodian authorities say they will begin inspecting orphanages across the country, following concerns that many children living in the increasing number of facilities have parents.

Unicef said this week it remains concerned with the high number of reported Cambodian orphans, around 12,000, and the multiplying number of orphanages, which have more than doubled in the five years.

The UN agency said nearly three in four children at orphanages have at least one parent. The concern is whether children with parents are being used to draw funding to orphanages.

Of the estimated 269 orphanages in the country, only 21 are run by the government, according to the report.

Cambodia's orphanages target the wallets of well-meaning tourists

Research indicates most of the country's orphans have a living parent (Photo: Getty)

Friday, 25 March 2011
By Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh
The Independent

The Cambodian government has started inspecting more than 250 orphanages after it was revealed that most of the country's 12,000 orphans have at least one living parent. The government said that until the assessment is completed, it had no idea whether the children were being cared for properly.

Aid groups suspect that those running homes for children are enticing more parents to give up their children with promises of food, shelter and, crucially in Cambodia, education. In return, those running orphanages can expect larger donations from charities and Western tourists, who are encouraged to visit homes.

Richard Bridle, the country representative of the UN children's agency Unicef, said research had indicated 28 per cent of children in orphanages had lost both parents, raising the question about why thousands of others with at least one surviving parent were in institutional care. Unicef has also expressed concern at the near doubling of orphanage numbers from 153 to 269 in the last five years. Just 21 are state-run; the rest operate privately, and many of those are faith-based.

Out of Cambodia

Friday, January 9, 2009
By E.J. Graff
Washington Post (USA)

The orphan manufacturing chain is not limited to infants and toddlers. In 1999, Songkea was 9 or 10 years old. She lived with her brother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Her mother had recently died, but close relatives lived nearby. Songkea thrived in school and in her dance lessons and loved playing with her nephew and cousins.

One day, a man approached the girl. He was a child recruiter and later told ABC's "20/20," which investigated Songkea's case in 2005, that he had been paid $300 to recruit her for adoption.

"[A] man stopped me, and told me to go and ask my family if I could live in America. The man told me if they agreed, I should move to the orphanage for two weeks, and they would take me to Phnom Penh after that," Songkea wrote five years later in a victim-impact statement presented in a U.S. court. "Suddenly, they told me I would go to Phnom Penh that day and meet my new mother. I didn't say goodbye to my sister, or anyone else."

Meanwhile, Judith Mosley, who was living in Saipan with her husband and children and awaiting word about a pending adoption, got a call from Lynn Devin at Seattle International Adoptions, which Devin ran with her sister, Lauryn Galindo. Devin told Mosley to go to Phnom Penh to meet Galindo, the adoption facilitator. There, Mosley was told, she would receive her new daughter.

After meeting Songkea, Mosley -- despite Galindo's protests -- insisted on going with the girl to see the Siem Reap orphanage where she had lived. But once at the orphanage, the child gave the taxi driver directions to her family's house. There Mosley learned that Songkea had a family, although she believed that they had knowingly given her up for adoption.

Just before Mosley and Songkea, now to be named Camryn, boarded the plane back to Saipan, Galindo handed Mosley the adoption paperwork. It said that Songkea had been living in the orphanage for four years and had no known family -- which Mosley by then knew to be false. She continued to believe, however, that Camryn's family had chosen to give her and that Galindo had simply mishandled the documentation.

In December 2001, following investigations by a local human rights group and the Phnom Penh Post that exposed baby-buying and abduction through Galindo's adoption operations, as well as others, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service halted adoptions from Cambodia and began its own criminal investigation. The moratorium on adoptions continues today. In 2004, Galindo pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and launder money stemming from her role in arranging the adoption of Cambodian children such as Songkea. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison and also ordered to forfeit more than $1.4 million in property in Hawaii.

Devin, who prosecutors say did not know that babies were being bought, pleaded guilty to related charges after providing information to officials about her sister's activities and was sentenced to six months of house arrest. It is not known how many of the more than 700 children whom the operation matched with new families were actually orphans.

In 2004, Mosley took Camryn back to Cambodia to visit her biological family. By then a teenager, Camryn was no longer fluent in Khmer, but she says she was profoundly happy to see the family she loved. Today she is waiting for her college acceptance letters.

E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.