Fraud jeopardizes foreign adoptions

GUATEMALA CITY -- Luciany Ball's adoption file says she was born 14 months ago by Caesarean section to a single mother who gave her up so she could be raised by a loving family in a six-bedroom Indiana farmhouse.

But now some of the documents appear to be fraudulent, part of a slew of irregularities at the agency handling Luciany's adoption. Dozens of babies are now in danger of being seized from their anguished American adoptive parents.

The probe also casts a cloud of uncertainty over some 2,900 pending U.S. adoptions.

Prosecutors describe their probe of Casa Quivira, considered Guatemala's best adoption agency, as their first serious attempt to investigate a $100 million industry that has made tiny Guatemala the largest source of American babies after China.

There are about 1,000 foreign adoptions each year in Illinois.

Guatemala in the past decade has supplied the U.S. more than 24,000 babies -- so many that one in every 100 Guatemalan babies born each year was growing up in an American home.

But after an investigation that began with the seizure of 46 babies from Casa Quivira in August, prosecutors say they found fraud cloaking the identities of at least nine children and half their birth mothers couldn't be found at all.

The fraud points to much deeper problems with the flawed adoption system Guatemala replaced in January, and casts a cloud of uncertainty over the backgrounds of thousands of children now growing up in America, The Associated Press has learned.

After intense lobbying by U.S. parents, most of the 2,900 pending U.S. adoptions will likely go forward, partly because Guatemala lacks the resources to fully investigate them. Parents of the Casa Quivira babies, however, are stuck in the nightmare they tried to avoid by spending at least $30,000 per child for hassle-free adoptions.

"I certainly wouldn't want to give Luciany back," said Mary Ball, the child's adoptive mother, her eyes welling up. "She's our family. She's our daughter."

Prosecutors say the problems at Casa Quivira include illegal payments to at least one birth mother, stolen identities -- including that of a child stillborn 22 years ago -- and a mentally ill birth mother who was incapable of giving consent.

A Guatemalan judge was to decide Monday whether to pursue a trial against Casa Quivira's attorney and notary. Prosecutors also want to press charges against the American owner, and they want fresh DNA tests for all the babies, even those whose paperwork is apparently in order.

"Their rights to an identity are violated because if their mothers have no identity, neither do they," prosecutor Jaime Tecu told the judge.

If fraud is proven, whatever the reason, Guatemala would invalidate the adoption and try to recover the child, even one already a U.S. citizen.

"We would have to do that, according to the law," Solicitor General Mario Gordillo told the AP.

Custody disputes with Guatemala for babies already in the U.S. would eventually land before a judge in the adoptive family's hometown, according to the U.S. Embassy. But if document fraud is discovered for babies still in Guatemala, their cases will have to start all over again. A false identity for whatever reason would be a "strong indicator" the child may not qualify for an immigrant visa, said U.S. Consul John Lowell.

Guatemala, for its part, says it will give priority to U.S. parents who have to restart their adoptions. But these cases will come under the country's new adoption law, which took effect Jan. 1, to comply with an international treaty to prevent human trafficking. The law puts adoptions before Guatemala's notoriously sluggish courts and a new National Adoptions Council, which still does not have an office, a budget or a staff.

The result: U.S. parents could face a very long wait before they know whether they will get their babies.

Mary Ball is ready to fight for Luciany, who has her own room in the family's home west of Indianapolis and a flood of toys from her two doting grandmothers.

"I couldn't give up without a fight because I love Luciany," she said. "I feel she's going to have a great life with us."