Concerned about corruption (2)

I heard back from the Christian World Adoption (CWA) director, Mr. Bob Harding; we spoke by phone.  He has many explanations about how the Australian-made documentary put his agency in an unfair light and I could understand how that might happen. Some of the footage was several years old and taken out of context, Mr. Harding explained.  The inflamatory word,  "harvesting," was the invention of the reporter; no sane conversation can be held when viewers are being deliberately enflamed.

Do I believe that "Fly Away Children" is a work of top-drawer trustworthy journalism?
No, not really.  Powerful, definitely. But would I make important life decisions based on its revelations?  No.  I'd need better proof than spliced-together footage and tearful interviews.

Would I thus recommend that prospective parents use Christian World Adoption?
No, I would not.  
Until the video's charges are countered in an open forum and proven false, until the scores of unhappy and bitter past-CWA parents see their situations corrected or remedied, there are clouds over this agency that should scare away any thinking person.

Do I think all Ethiopian adoptions are tarnished by corruption?
No, I do not.
Millions of children remain in dire need of help.
A large percentage can be helped by our charitable gifts to organizations on the front-lines, working with families and with orphans impacted by hunger, violence, and disease.
A tiny percentage can be helped by the match-making miracle of intercountry adoption.

How can a person try to pursue an ethical adoption, steering clear of the crooks and the profit-making middlemen?

I have a few suggestions:

1. Be open to the "waiting children," the ones languishing in orphanages, including older children and children with some degree of special need. Try not to turn in a "wish list" to your agency.  If most adopting parents continue to ask for healthy baby girls, then a black market will form for healthy baby girls, as prices for them rise and destitute people try to supply the foreign demand. Recall that adoption is supposed to be about finding families for children, not vice-versa. 

2. Check out the agency you're considering with the big online groups of adoptive parents.  No agency will be 100 percent complaint-free;  adoption is fraught with tension and fears and disappointments, some of which will be the fault of an agency and some of which will be blamed on an agency. But, beyond a few complaints, agencies should get generally positive reviews.  If there's an undertow of unhappiness at the sound of an agency's name; if adoptive parents--current or past clients of an agency--have been barred from the agency's online group; if secret online groups have sprung up to discuss confidentially the crimes and mis-haps happening with that agency's adoptions; if an agency is threatening to sue its past clients for libel, then run in the other direction as fast as you can.

3.  A good general rule of thumb:  there should be no contact between an American adoption agency and a birth-mother or other birth relatives.  It may still be legal but it's not appropriate and the best agencies aren't doing it.  Contact with a frightened or desperate birth-mother may pressure her to relinquish her child.  There should be NO CONTACT.
The Australian video about CWA showed vividly what inappropriate contact looks like.  CWA has not been alone in "beating the bushes," telling poor families--even intact families--about the wonders of America and about the great educations their children will get.  Agencies should NOT be getting their children directly from families. The imbalance of power is too great;  the chance for misunderstanding (like the belief that the child, educated in America, will then return to support her family) is huge. There are appropriate, legal, government channels for orphaned, relinquished, or abandoned children; the Government of Ethiopia must handle the placement of children for overseas adoption.  Let the agencies tend to the children within their gates; let them NOT comb the countryside to take in more. Sometimes, to my mind, the founding of a rural children's hospital or care center (see, for example, CWA's plans) is a thinly-disguised recruiting center.  ASK your agency where its children come from, and confirm that answer to the best of your ability. 

Do continue along this journey!  

Our family has been enriched beyond measure by the arrivals of Helen in 2002, Fisseha in 2004, and Yosef & Daniel in 2007.  The children were ages 5, 10, and 10 & 13 at the time of adoption. There's just no black market, as far as I'm aware, in middle-school-age African brothers; in any case, the boys remember vividly the deaths of their parents, their impoverishment, and their years in an orphanage.  They are all marvelous happy healthy and sometimes goofy children now.