Untangling the Adoption Industry

It is true that my book holds so much information that, even for me, at times I could not see the wood for the trees.

But with the help of others, the players' backgrounds become clearer now.

Here a quote from my book - 30 March 1999

• 
  'I spent three days searching the Internet about intercountry adoptions and found an incredible number of sites, mostly of US-based adoption foundations often with religious calling. Even at places as far away as Hawaii and Alaska.
  
  Children were offered on a silver plate: with pictures, with birth dates and short descriptions: healthy, cute, intelligent, slight handicap, ready to help in the household. The US agency United Families offered the most detailed price indication: between 20.000 and 40.000 dollars (‘Gypsy’ children were cheaper). Their Romanian partner: Copiii Fericiti. No wonder the European countries, who according to the Hague letter paid between 2.500 and 3.500 dollars, had no longer received children!
  
  And there was Adopt an Angel, a US Agency that worked with an American-Romanian adoption facilitator, David Livianu. Adopt an Angel was set up by a woman who adopted a child after her own child had died. Its website had an extraordinary statement:
  ‘Even though we do have children waiting for adoption we do specialize in providing a child search designed especially for your needs.’
  
  I also found the ‘US Embassy Guide to Adopting in Romania’ with a foreword of the US Ambassador, James Rosapepe. He wrote Romania had become one of the most popular places in the world for adoption by US citizens and other foreign families. In 1998 alone, American families had adopted 630 Romanian children. That figure was expected to climb significantly to as many as 900 or even 1,000 Romanian children this year. According to the US Ambassador the new adoption system had proved to be extremely successful. The US had not yet ratified the Hague Convention, and therefore had no Central Authority in place in the US. Therefore the US Embassy in Bucharest played a key coordination role between prospective US parents and Romania’s adoption authorities. The rest of the Adoption Guide was a warm invitation to adopt, explained all procedures and held a list of all US adoption agencies and their Romanian partner adoption NGOs.'

So it was United Families that caught my attention and made me clear there was big business going on!
United Families is owned by Lynn Wetterberg, who as I described on 19/2/2008 was at the basis of the US agency lobby to reopen Romanian adoptions. I wrote she was a member of the Board of the Joint Council of International Children Services. Thanks to Guidestar I know now she was in fact VICE-PRESIDENT of that lobby firm in 2005! And her colleague Deb Murphy-Scheumann was PRESIDENT. Not very transparent to hide as being SOS for the Children and to make Linda Robak present the 'drama' in their place at the European Parliament - which since then has turned in an international adoption lobby group themselves. First calling for the resolving of pipelinecases and now for a European adoption policy - just to re-open Romanian adoptions.
Read more on Deb Murphy-Sneuman's activities in the global curruption in the global (adoption) village in James Marsh' splendid Blog.
Stay tuned - more will follow.