Warning...this is a long post. There's a lot to say about this, so I'm sorry in advance!
I've been dreading writing this post for over a month now. For those of you on facebook, you might remember I had asked for prayers awhile back, but was unable to explain what for at the time. I feel comfortable writing publicly about it now, and can finally let people know they were praying because we are no longer working with our adoption agency.
About 4 months ago, my good friend and coworker told me about a woman here in Iowa who is adopting three children from DRCongo. I found the woman on facebook, and sent her a friend request with a message explaining who I was. Shortly after Orphan Sunday (beginning of November), my good friend and coworker - same one, she's great! :) gave me a newspaper article about an Orphan Sunday event that had a guest speaker from the Congo. I read through the article about his experiences, and also read about a family who is going to bring their kids home soon from the Congo. I recognized the family name, and realized it was the same woman I had tried to contact two months earlier on facebook. This Orphan Sunday event was put on by Xio's Voice - a non-profit group who provides financial grants to adoptive families. I emailed about their grants a couple of weeks later to see if we would qualify for some assistance, and explained that we are adopting from the Congo. They emailed me back, and in the email stated they were going to pass my information on to one of their board members - who turned out to be yet again the same woman.
At this point, I'm thinking pretty clearly...3rd times a charm - I'm apparently
really supposed to meet this lady!
During our conversation on the phone, she asked which agency we are using. When I told her, she got pretty quiet, and asked if we'd researched our agency. I assured her I had, and we continued our conversation. That night I got several facebook messages from her explaining what others were saying about our agency on an adoption facebook page where families adopting from DRCongo can network together. It was pretty alarming, and we were grateful to know what others' experiences were so we could investigate.
Now, I realize I sound completely uneducated about the agency we already paid over $6,000 to, with a future total amount of over $30,000...but let me clarify. I researched adoption agencies for weeks at the beginning of this process. I got a list of references and contacted over 30 people who had completed adoptions through our agency. There were only a handful of families who had adopted from DRCongo, but we felt confident in the positive feedback we received. We did know about an incident earlier this year where they had to replace the director of the orphanage in DRC and some staff due to some issues they had, but we were assured by them that the problems were fixed and all is well.
Once we learned of these issues other families had with our agency, we began talking further with many families who used our agency. We also emailed back and forth with our agency about our concerns. They were very reassuring, and were able to answer all of our initial questions. We were approached by even more families who had negative experiences, and yet again questioned our agency. We wanted this to be a logical decision, and give our agency a chance to defend themselves. Everything we were hearing left us even more confused and concerned, mostly because we had no way to prove or disprove anybody's side. Without traveling to the Congo ourselves, we really couldn't decipher what was truth and what was someone's bad experience being blown out of proportion. We ourselves didn't have direct issues with any of these things, and we didn't have any way of confirming they are still problems or that our adoption wouldn't have been able to proceed without incident. However, even if there is a chance the problems still exist, we aren't interested in an unethical adoption.
All of these pieces of "evidence" we used to make a decision were told to us by other families, and have not been verified. I want to put that disclaimer in there, because it is possible there is another side to the story.
First of all, there was the incident I mentioned above back in June causing the previous orphanage director to be fired, along with her staff. Our agency does not own the orphanage there in the Congo. They privately pay for and entirely fund an orphanage there, so they do have control over what happens in the orphanage, and the orphanage is named after the agency, but it is not officially our agency's property. In June, the agency discovered that the former director was stealing money from the agency by 1) saying there were more kids living in the orphanage than there were, 2) coming up with fake expenses that required the agency to send more money over, and 3) stealing supplies from the orphanage. Consequently, the agency fired her and all of her staff.
Secondly, from what other families have told us, the director was also falsifying paperwork to make kids orphans who weren't truly orphans. In the Congo, if both birth parents are known and have a known address, that child is not eligible for international adoption. They can still receive orphanage care if their parents can't support them, but they will not be able to be adopted. They will instead be raised in an orphanage and return to their communities when they are old enough. So, knowing these kids would have better opportunities in America, there is some motivation to make kids appear to be orphans on paper so they can be adopted and come to America. While some argue that since these kids aren't truly orphans they shouldn't be adoptable, there is also the other argument that if the birth parents together cannot afford to feed them and they would otherwise live on the streets, they should too be able to be adopted. Either way, not the worst case scenario.
However, then we discovered there were also some families who's adopted children were not only not really orphans (they had two known and living birth parents), but their birth parents were of the economic ability to continue caring for them. In this type of situation, the director was falsifying paperwork in order to get kids to America even though they had parents who could raise them. While this could also be seen as good intentioned, you have to think about the emotional effects this would have on the children, and of the other children who truly are orphans, waiting for homes. There are already not enough families willing to adopt all the orphans in the world, let alone adding to this number unnecessarily. While kids are coming to America who already lived in families who could support them, other kids continue waiting who have experienced the death of their parents, or abandonment, are only being fed one meal every other day because there's not enough food for all the kids, and continue growing older without the hope of finding a forever family.
Now, this by itself isn't the absolute worst case scenario. But it's a far stretch from ideal, and it isn't what we're trying to accomplish. We're wanting to give children who are starving, don't have parents who can care for them, in a country where 50% of all children die before their 5th birthday, a forever family.
At this point, we were faced with a lot of mixed feelings about the agency, and while we had our doubts, we were again reassured that the problems were fixed when the previous orphanage director was fired. But other families continued to point out - the problem before, and the reason things got as bad as what they got at the end when she was finally fired, is because the agency staff here in the US hadn't traveled to the Congo in over 2 years. At first, our agency social worker told us that the agency director visited the Congo in an effort to reassure me. However, when families questioned that, I inquired further and asked for specific dates she went. That's when she admitted it had been 2 years since she or anyone had been there. Trips had been planned, but there was always something that came up that prevented the staff from going. So, for this entire time, the problems went undetected. After the problems came to head, the staff here felt like they had made the necessary changes, but they still didn't send anyone to make sure the problem was in fact fixed and the orphanage was running smoothly again. Nobody has gone yet. There is another trip planned, but as other families have pointed out - there were trips planned several times in the last 2 years that never happened, so the track record shows the next trip may not happen either. The agency also continues to deny that there is even a possibility the problems could still exist. They rely on emails from the new orphanage director, their attorney (which is the same attorney that was used when the previous director was there), and don't do anything to double check or confirm what they're told.
I can say anything in an email...like that I have 17 children...or that I work for the CIA....or that I'm a man....
So, they didn't travel to DRC in the first place (even when other agencies have someone traveling to DRC at least 4 times a year), they continue to neglect the sense of urgency to send someone to double check things even when they've found themselves in the situation they were in, and they continue to use the same attorney they used before. The attorney signs off on all the paperwork that passes through, and I'm willing to bet he knew what was going on all along and was okay with it as well. We've heard that even the orphanage director's own daughter was put up for adoption and adopted out to the United States...which we were told by our agency was her choice if it did happen. However, there is a requirement of being destitute to put your child up for adoption. How can a woman who was taking hundreds of dollars each month from the orphanage be destitute in a 3rd world country? Again...it's possible there's another side to the story, but all these things added up make us very leary.
The first of the two final straws was when we found out about a family who had been matched with three siblings and had been paying orphan support for 10 months waiting to go get them. (Once you're matched with children, you need to pay each month for their care so the extra money the orphanage has can go to the kids who don't have families yet...) There were three big red flags (one of which was that the agency had no idea where this family's son was for months...he went missing from the orphanage, but the agency still didn't send someone to figure it out...when kids go missing, that's a big deal), and they decided they needed to just go to the DRC themselves and check things out. (How bad must the red flags be for you to spend $4,000 in plane tickets, and travel to a country you've never been to just to go find some things out for yourself?) When they arrived, they found out within two days that their children were not truly orphans, met with the birth family, the children were returned to the birth family, and they found out that "their" children were actually the nieces and nephew of the previous orphanage director. The adoptive parents were heartbroken, returned home to the United States, and flew from Chicago to Georgia where the agency headquarters are, and met with the director of the agency and the Congo social worker. They were told that the information they found out couldn't be trusted as the truth, and that there was nothing anybody could do about it. Let's think about this. You have been matched with 3 children for 10 months. You've created bedrooms for them, you've pictured them in your lives, you've sent care packages to them, you've prayed for them, your family has prayed for them and relished over their pictures, you've talked countless times about when you finally get to bring home these beautiful children, you've paid $600 each month to have their needs met until you can go get them (over $6,000)...and when you have some doubts about their orphan status and ask the agency to check it out three different times, the agency tells you everything is fine. The little boy you were matched with comes up missing for months and you again ask the agency to check it out. They tell you they will, and never get back to you about it...(I'm sorry...if you were in charge of a family's children and there was some concern that he is missing from the orphanage, wouldn't you do everything in your power to ease that family's minds about it?) and when you decide that's it, we're going to investigate ourselves and find our son, you find out that the children you've been dreaming about and praying for, and paying for over the last 10 months are not really yours and will not be coming home with you ever...how would that feel? And when you return to tell the agency about the issues you discovered when you were there, they tell you they can't trust what you're telling them and can't do anything about it...how would
that feel? They offered this family another referral...and when the family, knowing the problems were absolutely not fixed, decided to leave the agency, they lost over $30,000 right along with their children.
The second final straw was when we talked to a woman on an unrelated adoption topic, and found out she herself had gone through our agency, and brought home her daughter last year. The little girl's birth mother brought her to the orphanage, and her birth father was listed as unknown. She found out after she brought her daughter home, that there was in fact two known birth parents, and her birth father actually visited the orphanage weekly. Sounds pretty similar to what I mentioned above, except for one thing. Because her daughter in fact does have two known birth parents, and her paperwork instead said that her father was unknown, her paperwork is fraudulent. In order to obtain a visa to come to the United States, the child must be deemed an orphan...which she in fact, wasn't. Since she really wasn't and the paperwork was falsified, technically her visa is not legal. Which technically means she is here illegally. Thankfully, there is no concern that they will send her daughter back to DRC since they had no knowledge of the paperwork being false (this is the agency's responsibility). However, she does have to watch her daughter struggle with the abandonment and transitions of having her father come visit the orphanage weekly, to now going to a new family, country, language, and culture. She is thankfully adjusted now, but the legal issues that could have ensued were absolutely nothing we wanted a part of in our own adoption.
There were other issues (now seemingly small, even though they are detrimental in their own ways), such as purposely under-aging children and telling the children to lie about their ages, harsh punishments of the children by some of the nannies, and nannies who were supposedly fired are showing up in pictures at the orphanage by families who traveled last month.
Because of these things, we have decided to leave our agency. This means leaving the kids we pictured adopting, the stability of an agency to help guide us through this adoption process, and the $6,000 we'd paid to the agency so far that is non-refundable. It was a big kick in the pants, to say the least...but in the scheme of the rest of our lives with our future children, and the confidence that they came to us ethically, it is necessary. I mourned the children we had imagined pursuing, and I was angry about the money we had paid that should be returned to us. It shattered every trust we had in this adoption so far, and made us question what we could trust. But this setback will not stop us from adopting from the Congo. We have found another route, and will be pushing forward. This probably will not be the last setback (hence the title of this post), as adoption is not for the faint-hearted. Satan relishes in evil things, including keeping kids away from families who want them. With God's help and guidance, we will persevere.
Now, I'd like to touch on one more thing. With all of these stories of unethical practices, it brings out a fear in people from pursuing adoption from a 3rd world country. But the problem is multi-faceted, and cannot be pointed towards the country and it's citizens. There are still kids there, who desperately need homes, families, food...like I already said, Satan tries to dissuade us from doing good in this world. Just because it isn't always easy doesn't mean it isn't worth it.
It's easy for someone to jump to the conclusion that what was described above is an African problem. People are corrupt, and they're at fault. While I agree there are some individuals who have personal responsibility, I also think an agency's negligence and being overly agreeable is an issue. There's a difference between physically beating a child, and not preventing them from walking in the middle of the street...but both are abuse. If you're going to have an international adoption program in
any country, you need to do your part to keep it running ethically, smoothly, and successfully. That includes regular trips to the country, and when problems are presented, doing everything you can to remedy those situations. Again though, there are always two sides to every story...Maybe this has taught our agency some things to do different, and they have now made some very positive changes. We just decided not to stick around long enough to find out.
Also, it is extremely easy to wrongfully judge the previous orphanage director and all she did wrong. Absolutely there were choices she made that caused a lot of problems for a lot of families and children. There were things she was neglecting, and things she was at fault for. But we all sin. We all make mistakes. Remember too that we are not destitute. We are not having to live in the conditions they are in. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don't know her circumstances, and I don't know her heart. Only God does. While we know there is a lot of corruption in African countries, there are absolutely ethical people as well. There are many God-fearing, Christian people helping with adoptions in Africa. Keep in mind, there are unethical people everywhere. How many unethical people do we encounter every day in America? Just because there are unethical people, we can't ignore the orphan crisis that exists. Even if there are some of those children who aren't truly orphans, there's still millions who are.
We also absolutely do not want to portray that Africa is bad..our children were born and raised there. This is their heritage, and they should
never feel like their homeland is inferior. It is a beautiful country, with a war-stricken past and present, and struggles nobody should have to endure. They are a strong people, and their strength is what I admire the most. They are faithful people, who rely on their faith because nothing else is reliable. I pray one day I too will have the faith and dependence on God that they have. And I can't wait to teach my children someday about their God who loves them so very much. And teach them about the beautiful country and birth parents He provided for them until we could one day bring them here to shower them with the love and grace He shows us.
If anyone has any further questions regarding anything posted here, please feel free to ask! We want to keep this blog honest on the ups and downs of adoption, but don't want to discourage anyone from considering adoption. We are not any less excited about our adoption or future children...which you will soon get to hear about! :)
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