Chennai-based investigative reporter Scott Carney has written about the illegal trade of organs as well as bones (our coverage here). Now he has a long and immensely compelling piece in Mother Jones about how the wealth of Americans and others hoping to adopt children abroad fosters kidnapping rackets in countries such as India. Here he tracks the long, agonizing tale of one Tamilian couple whose son was kidnapped and sold by an orphanage to an unwitting couple in the American Midwest. From "Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption":
It was every parent's worst nightmare. Sivagama and her husband,
Nageshwar Rao, a construction painter, spent the next five years
scouring southern India for Subash. They employed friends and family as
private detectives and followed up on rumors and false reports from as
far north as Hyderabad, some 325 miles away. To finance the search,
Nageshwar Rao sold two small huts he'd inherited from his parents and
moved the family into a one-room concrete house with a thatched roof in
the shadow of a mosque. The couple also pulled their daughter out of
school to save money; the ordeal plunged the family from the cusp of
lower-middle-class mobility into solid poverty. And none of it brought
them any closer to Subash.
In 2005, though, there was a lucky break.
Scott tracked down court documents, connecting Subash's disappearance to an orphanage known as Malaysian Social Services:
From 1991 through 2003, note documents filed by Chennai police, MSS
arranged at least 165 international adoptions, mostly to the United
States, the Netherlands, and Australia, earning some $250,000 in "fees."
Assuming the Indian police have their facts straight, the boy they
seek has a new name and a new life. He has no memory of his Indian
mother or his native tongue. Most international adoptions are "closed,"
meaning the birth parents have no guaranteed right to contact their
child, and the confidentiality of the process makes it difficult to
track kids who may have been adopted under false pretenses.
The article is 4,083 words long, and highly illuminating in terms of revealing how the international adoption system works. But it's also gripping, including the scenes when Scott confronts the American family who has unknowingly adopted a kidnapped child.
The dog-eared beige folder on the passenger seat contains the
evidence—a packet of photos, police reports, hair samples, and legal
documents detailing a case that has languished in the Indian courts for
a decade. There's a good chance that nobody in this suburban household
has a clue. I wait until the boy ambles around to the back of the
house, then jog over and ring the bell.
An adolescent Indian girl with a curious smile answers the door. "Is
your mother home?" I stammer. Moments later, a blond woman comes to the
door in jeans and a sweatshirt. She eyes me suspiciously.
The article also teases out the moral dilemma of whether or not to name the American adoption agency, given that it knew it may have been involved with an Indian kidnapping racket:
The American family didn't go through MSS directly.
Like most, they used an agency. I visited that agency, and my editors
and I wrestled with the question of whether to name it here; there are
serious questions about the conduct of US adoption agencies in
child-stealing cases that should be addressed openly. Yet we decided to
withhold this and other details that could have identified the family,
because the child's privacy overrides the journalistic imperative to
provide all the facts.
Read the entire article here: the story is still unfolding, with Interpol having entered the picture. You can also listen to a Mother Jones interview with Scott on international adoption and its perils, or read more at his blog.
Recent Comments