The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption (43 page)

Other churches, like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate denomination that split from the Southern Baptist Convention in 1990 over the SBC’s increasing conservatism, began working with the Better Care Network, a coalition supported by UNICEF, USAID, and Save the Children that seeks to address orphaned and vulnerable children issues with local solutions. The Better Care Network’s faith-based arm seeks to match Western churches and volunteers with local leaders and churches already on the ground, operating from the principle that local leaders know best how to address their own orphan problems.

In late July 2011 Caleb and Becca David finally received word that their adoption from Ethiopia had been approved, and in August they were able to fly home to Oklahoma with their new son, Huxley. With their extended stay and multiple trips, the adoption cost the family a total of more than $42,000. That and the delays they had faced left them conscious of the need for a shift. “Adoption, as incredible as it is, we’d be naive to think that was the only answer. Especially now with it bottlenecking,” Caleb had told me while they were still waiting on approval. “As hard as it is for us to be here, we feel like our eyes are being opened about the importance of holistic orphan care. Because ultimately, it’s not about us having our child—though obviously that’s a huge part of it.”

The Davids’ observations of the Christian adoption movement in the United States had left Caleb determined that the entire movement had to be transformed from what he described as advocates’ eagerness to be recognized as heroes—doing work to gain notice or creating hundreds of
redundant orphan-care organizations rather than support the ones already there. “The fastest way for our organization to be shut down would be for me to say what I really think,” he told me, with a laugh, in 2012. “You have too many renegade do-gooders with the best intentions who, when push comes to shove, the temptation for glory is just way too much.” He eyed the growth of adoption movement conferences skeptically, saying that most of the attendees seemed to be from organizations that had booths set up in the exhibit hall. The trendy issues that were flogged from year to year, like child sex trafficking, didn’t seem to reflect sincere engagement so much as marketing. “Are we taking the time to really understand what trafficking is and how that ties into orphan care and adoption?” he asked.

Caleb’s hope for the cause is not in the large movement but rather the innovations of a few friends doing different sorts of work in Ethiopia. One organization, Embracing Hope Ethiopia, had begun a day care center for women who needed to work, so they wouldn’t have to choose between making an income and keeping their children. Another, Bring Love In, was creating local “families” out of orphanage wards and Ethiopian mothers who had lost their own children. Both of these groups seemed to approach child welfare in Ethiopia with the same sorts of programs that the United States and other developed nations benefit from and, thus, seemed to offer a rare level of respect for Ethiopian families: in need of support, but not the “rescue” of their children. “Those people don’t get nearly enough credit, but they are digging deep into the community, dealing with social issues,” Caleb said.

But to adoption reform advocate David Smolin, these efforts to shift the discourse remain private discussions that aren’t being adequately reflected in the public presentation of the cause, in which adoption leaders still frequently dismiss more holistic development goals as insufficient and in which a foundational problem in the movement’s mission continues to corrupt its charity.

Not only has the Christian adoption movement displayed willful ignorance of the long-standing problems in domestic and international adoption, Smolin said, but its ideology—fixated on the symbolism of adopting children into new families and how that mirrors the Christian conversion experience—explicitly exacerbates the problems. “It is not merely a matter of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but quite often that of doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason,” he wrote. Seeing adoption as a divine mission leads people to embrace an industry in which they routinely spend $20,000 to $40,000 to adopt a child without being willing to spend
several hundred dollars to preserve the original family. Taking children from the poor becomes normalized standard practice, justified by the sense that adopters are emulating God. A truly just orphan-care movement, he said, would be a poverty alleviation movement.

That’s not just a humane principle, Smolin said, but for Christians, a biblical one as well. The Bible’s James 1:27 call, Smolin repeats, urges Christians to help widows and orphans together, as a unit. But many people find it both more appealing and easier to assist children alone. Smolin calls that “the biggest mistake that runs through the whole movement: a discarding of the adults and a willingness to sever any connection the child has to adults other than to the adoptive parent.” For example, he told me, when one major Christian charity, World Vision, tried to shift its child sponsorship program to a family sponsorship model—largely a change in name alone, as funds for large aid groups’ child sponsorship programs routinely benefit the wider community—their donations dropped by half. The complexities of working with the adult poor—the real risks of perpetuating dependency and disempowering aid recipients that are recurrent issues in international development—aren’t there in the same way when groups work only with children. Whereas needy adults are often perceived negatively—at best as sacrificial victims, and at worst as welfare queens—orphans are blank slates, uncomplicated objects of charity.

Smolin’s initial 2012 law review article critiquing the Christian adoption movement became the focus of a dedicated issue from the
Journal of Christian Legal Thought
in spring 2012, in which Jedd Medefind and Dan Cruver were invited to write responses. Medefind, a thoughtful and diplomatic advocate who frequently invites outside criticism, responded that although Smolin’s critiques were valid, he missed the forest for the trees, focusing more on the incidence of individual scandals than the overwhelming problem of parentless children living in orphanages and what happens to children who don’t get adopted. “Any movement seeking to reflect God’s heart for justice and mercy is highly vulnerable to excess and error,” Medefind wrote. “This is as true of today’s Christian adoption and orphan care advocates as it was with those championing Abolition and Civil Rights.” It echoed what he had told me in the past: that “Christian groups don’t have the market cornered on poorly designed efforts to help the needy,” and people uncomfortable dealing with ethically complex issues shouldn’t try to tackle complicated global problems.

But Smolin said that even as many adoptive parents in the larger adoption community are becoming attuned to the issues of corruption that his
family encountered, the root problem remains the same: the unwillingness to recognize that the need is less children requiring adoption than poor families desperate for support. Although movement leaders may acknowledge that reality among themselves, as of late 2012 they’ve done an inadequate job in getting the message out. “I think behind the scenes these people understand that most orphans aren’t adoptable and aren’t going to be adopted, but that’s not what the majority voice of the movement is saying,” Smolin told me. “They’re responsible for what people are hearing, and the majority message is really still focused on the theology of adoption, which makes people feel that adoption is at the center.”

“It took a long time for adoption to become as prominent as it is now,” agrees Caleb David, “and now we’re going to have to undo some things.”

ON THE LAST DAY
of the 2012 Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit at Saddleback Church, Rick Warren came on the stage with a panel of government experts: Minister Inyumba Aloisea, head of Rwanda’s Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, the entity that oversees all adoptions from that country; Dr. Sharen Ford, manager of Permanency Services in the Children’s Services Division at the Colorado Department of Human Services, one of the two US accrediting bodies for the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and a foster care system that had worked closely with local churches; and the State Department’s Ambassador Susan Jacobs.

Ambassador Jacobs, a diplomat praised by some child welfare organizations for acting almost as a mediator between the different factions of the adoption debates, seemed wary of the fact that many in Saddleback’s audience see the State Department as “anti-adoption” for its unique gatekeeping role. She offered the crowd a promise: “The State Department completely supports international adoption, full stop.” She followed up with a testimony. “Adoption is as old as time itself,” she said. “There are many stories in the Bible about adoption. Moses, of course, is the most famous adoptee, though it might not have worked out as well for his adoptive parents. We might consider that perhaps an abandonment.” The crowd rewarded her with a hearty laugh, and so she continued, discussing the “adoption” stories of Esther and Samuel.

Jacobs went on to claim that the United States has never had a problem with fraud or misrepresentation in adoptions from a Hague country, something that advocates like David and Desiree Smolin say is demonstrably untrue, considering the scandals from Hague-compliant countries
like India and China. This claim also neglects the reality that most US adoptions come from countries that are not Hague-compliant, such as Ethiopia. But Jacobs’s assertion was nonetheless greeted with applause.

Dr. Ford, who is also a board member for the Alliance, amplified the spirit of Jacobs’s scripture citing. “I’m trusting there are a lot of people here with hearts of mercy who want to collaborate with the government,” she said, continuing in a light-touch evangelicalese, alluding to biblical stories popular among evangelicals, such as the parables of the mustard seed or the sower. “In the long run we know that you are planting seeds that will be harvested, maybe not in front of your eyes, but in the days to come they will be harvested and we will see tulips and daisies and roses, yellow, red, orange, tie-dyed roses. We will see them, shorthaired and longhaired and no-hair, we will see them because you planted seeds and they eventually were harvested. And we love these seeds.”

With a belly laugh, Warren whooped at Ford’s near-sermon, riffing to wild applause and laughter, “Before Pastor Ford here gives the altar call . . . ” And Ford delivered, preaching what indeed amounted to an altar call for Christians to push the government on adoption. “All across this nation our kids want to be connected, and government wants to be connected to you,” she called. “All across this nation, we want to be connected through collaboration. We can’t do it alone. Will you come and walk alongside?”

The audience swooned and rose for a standing ovation. Standing next to Ford, Jacobs beamed. Warren called on the crowd and those watching online to pray for all three leaders for the next seven days. Nearly all the advocates in Saddleback’s worship hall, still on their feet, raised their hands and closed their eyes while Pastor Rick prayed a blessing and the government officials bowed their heads.

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As the pool of international children available for adoption has diminished, hopeful adoptive parents in the United States are increasingly adopting a category of children who have fewer restrictions when it comes to international adoption: children with special needs. By 2012 the percentage of special needs adoptions—an overly broad category that includes children with extreme medical needs that can’t be met in their own countries as well as children who are simply older or who come with siblings—has risen notably. A 2009 survey by the Joint Council on International Children’s Services found that 27 percent of all adoptions by its member adoption agencies were for special-needs cases.

However the term is defined, Christian adoption advocates have rightfully pointed to this shift as proof that evangelicals aren’t just adopting healthy infants. Indeed, within the Christian adoption movement adoption of children with high medical needs has become a distinguished category of its own. As Rachael Stryker, author of the attachment therapy study
The Road to Evergreen
, observed in her interviews, “People who adopt special needs children, particularly in the evangelical community, are almost given a higher place in the moral order . . . the harder the adoption is, the more they’re proving their love for God.”

Many prominent families in the adoption movement have adopted multiple special-needs children, including Patty Anglin from Acres of Hope, whose family of eighteen children includes eleven adoptees with special needs, ranging from fetal drug addictions to quad-amputees; and Kiel and Carolyn Twietmeyer, homeschooling Illinois parents to fourteen, who were profiled in
People
magazine for their six adoptees, including two who are HIV-positive and one with Down’s syndrome. When their state cut them off as they attempted to adopt a fifteenth child, a Ugandan boy with Down’s syndrome, the Twietmeyers claimed religious discrimination. Examples like these led Russell Moore to proclaim that one day only Christians would parent children with Down’s syndrome or other special needs.

But even in these adoptions—of children with needs or disabilities that make them largely unadoptable in their home countries, to families eager to provide care the children won’t receive in institutions—there are signs that special-needs adoptions may constitute the next wave of adoption corruption. In interviews with a number of families who adopted special-needs children from Eastern Europe, I heard multiple testimonials from parents about being shaken down for thousands of dollars by unscrupulous adoption facilitators brokering special-needs adoptions in Ukraine, parents or rival adoption facilitators facing intimidation and threats of violence from brokers who had become territorial over “their” stable of special-needs children, and families who had been openly told they needed to pay thousands of dollars in bribes. The growing number of these stories makes it clear that no category of adoptions, even the most seemingly heroic, is exempt from commercialization.