Baby Selling Online

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A California couple claims twin girls they adopted through the Internet were taken from them and sold to a British couple who whisked the children to England.

Richard and Vickie Allen say they adopted the 6-month-old girls in October through Tina Johnson, an Internet adoption broker.

Two months later, the children were taken back and given to a British couple who paid about $12,000 in adoption fees, double the sum paid by the American couple, according to The Sun, a British tabloid.

The FBI has launched a preliminary investigation of the case, according to Matthew McLaughlin, a bureau spokesman in Los Angeles.

Johnson could not be located for comment and her Web site appeared to have been taken offline.

``We haven't done anything either immoral or unethical,'' Alan Kilshaw, 45, said Tuesday in northern Wales. ``We have given two children, who would not have a home, a good home. There's a lot we can offer them. They are much better off with us than in America.''

The Kilshaws denied paying for the babies, originally named Kiara and Keyara but renamed Belinda and Kimberley by the couple. Rather, they said the money they handed over was a fee for the broker, who runs an online business called Caring Heart Adoption from her home in San Diego.

The Sun reported that the Allens gave the twins to their birth mother - a St. Louis woman in her 20s - after she requested a final visit with them in California in December.

Instead, she and the Kilshaws took the infants to Arkansas, where the adoption was arranged, the newspaper said.

The Kilshaws said they did not know the twins had been promised to the Allens until they arrived in California and after they had paid the $12,000.

According to the Sun, Alan Kilshaw said on a British TV show that the mother ``was adamant we were her first choice. She wanted the children to come with us to Britain."

The Allens, who also have a 2-year-old adopted son, maintain the Arkansas adoption was illegal because the birth mother had not been a resident of the state for 30 days, as is required.

``This case demonstrates why private adoption is illegal in Britain,'' said Felicity Collier, chief executive of British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. ``We often hear criticisms by prospective adopters about the checks which are carried out before adoptive parents are considered suitable and comparisons are made far too often with the ease with which people can adopt in the U.S.

'' The Allens, who took the twins into their San Bernardino home as the adoption was being finalized, say they are heartbroken.

``I feel like I've failed my wife and my family,'' Richard Allen told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles on Tuesday. ``It's been like a death. But the last 24 hours have given us some hope about reuniting our family.

'' Kilshaw said he and his wife turned to America for adoption as a last resort after trying fertilization treatments and looking to other countries.

He said they did not try to adopt in Britain because they felt they would be turned down despite recent efforts to make the process easier in their native country.

The Kilshaws already have two boys of their own, ages 4 and 7, and an 18-year-old daughter from a previous relationship of Mrs. Kilshaw's. They are applying for British citizenship for the girls, who have six-month tourist visas.

Home Secretary Jack Straw, Britain's top law-enforcement official, said he was concerned about the circumstances that led to the girls entering Britain.

``It is illegal, completely illegal, in this country for people to buy and sell babies or children, and that is entirely as it should be, because it is frankly a revolting idea,'' Straw told Britain's Channel 4 News.

David H. Baum, president of the Academy of California Adoption Lawyers, noted that adoption facilitators, unlike adoption agencies, are not licensed by the state.

``What (facilitators) are offering to adoptive couples causes them to leave their good judgment at the door,'' Baum said. ``When you've been through years of infertility treatments and an unlicensed person comes up and says they can get you a baby in 30 days, it's very hard to turn down that pitch.''

I have never been so outraged and horrified about an adoption-related matter as I am with the Kilshaw/Wecker Internet adoption fiasco now before the world media.

That this sort of Internet adoption may actually be legal in the US is unacceptable. That this could happen through efforts of conspirators from my home-town, San Diego is, for me, simply unbearable.

The matter is front page news on this side of the pond, and the Kilshaws are not being treated gently by the print and TV media. UK Home Secretary Jack Straw just announced that he will, as a matter of urgency, initiate a comprehensive policy review of adoptions from the US. He was just quoted on BBC saying, "I find the idea of children being bought and sold through adoption quite revolting. It's illegal in this country."

Politicians, officials and national NGOs are publicly calling for the UK to review, suspend or even tear up the adoption compact with the US.

As described in the media, the compact currently allows adoptions by British citizens in the US to have the force of law here, when those adoptions are deemed legal under US law. Thus, if the Kilshaw adoption is found to be legal in the US, there may be little the British authorities can do to stop them from becoming parents.

Revealingly, Eugene Kelley, the Arkansas adoption attorney, who was just in US national press last week denouncing open records and extolling the desire of birthmothers for anonymity, was interviewed by on the BBC today, arguing for Arkansas' state rights to facilitate interstate and intercountry baby selling of exactly this nature, and implicitly denouncing the English for criticising American institutions that facilitate "positive" adoptions (by which he apparently means secret, commercial adoptions).

I am very concerned that the public may draw the wrong lessons from this whole episode, allowing the media to portray either the Allens or the Kilshaws as innocent victims of fraud, perpetrated by the adoption facilitator against one couple or the other, with the commodity, two human infants, in dispute like any other type of commercial merchandise.

This is emphatically not the issue here. The real issue is the ethics of legalised baby selling and the commercialisation of adoption.

In the court of conscience, neither the Allens of California nor the Kilshaws of North Wales are in the least admirable. Tina Johnson, the San Diego-based adoption "facilitator" who sold the children to the highest bidder, and the Arkansas judge who sanctioned the adoption despite the fact that neither the birthmother nor the agency nor the adoptive parents have anything to do with Arkansas, really do have a lot to answer for to the American and British people.

US adoption practice must be brought into line with internationally accepted standards of practice

. If you are in the US, please ask your legislators to move to stop people like Tina Johnson from profiting from commercial adoptions and to raise the bar on the ethical standards of practitioners. If you are in the UK, please contact your MPs and ask them to use this opportunity to take a strong stance against intercountry commercial adoption and to reassess the UK's adoption compact with the US.

On both sides of the Atlantic, we should call on our legislators to take urgent measures to stop all intercountry adoptions that do not cohere with the letter or spirit of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, and possibly to enact emergency measures to regulate or outlaw private intercountry adoption facilitation services until the US can implement the Convention, a process that may take years.

If you are in Arkansas, please ask your legislators to change the law to impose residency requirements on either birthparents or adoptive parents or, at a minimum, adoption practitioners seeking to finalise adoptions in your state.

If you are in California, please use this opportunity to focus the media's attention on commercial adoption facilitators, like the San Diego-based Tina Johnson's "Caring Heart Adoptions".

I also believe that hearings should be sought at both the state and Congressional levels about the issues raised by this unwinding scenario. The proliferation of inter-state and intercountry commercial adoptions, driven by for-profit US practitioners, is a global disgrace and an affront to any conceivable standard of human decency.

Frustrated by her 10-year-old son's behavior problems, a Northern California woman gave up her child to a Florida couple she met on the Internet, police said. The boy -- who police say did not want to go to Florida -- is now in protective custody as his mother, 29-year-old Helen Chase, faces criminal charges.

Police in Vacaville, a city about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, learned about the illegal adoption when they received a call earlier this month from a therapist, said police spokesman Jan Makowski. One of the therapist's patients lives in the same house as the 10-year-old. The patient -- who apparently is the son of Chase's female partner -- told his therapist that the boy had left to live in Florida, Makowski said. Legal adoption failed Chase "freely admitted" to police that she had given up her son, Makowski said. "Apparently, she was having difficulty controlling him. She asserts that she was just trying to do what was best for her son," he said. "She didn't feel she was a fit mother and couldn't deal with his behavior issues." The son's father was not available to help because he is in state prison, said Makowski, who did not know the length of his term or why he is imprisoned. Chase tried to contact an adoption agency, but "either the process wasn't fast enough or she didn't like the red tape," Makowski said. "So she went online and sought out someone who would be willing to take him." Convinced they did nothing wrong It's not clear where Chase went online, but she did find willing takers in Gustaf and Deborah Sjoberg of St. Petersburg, Fla., police said. Gustaf Sjoberg flew to California and left with the boy April 20. On July 8, child protection officials in St. Petersburg went to the home of the Sjobergs and took the boy. He remains in protective custody there, police said. The Sjobergs did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. "They are convinced that they haven't done anything wrong," said St. Petersburg police spokesman Dan Bates. Boy didn't want to go Back in California, Chase was arrested on charges of child endangerment, abandoning a child and failing to provide for a child. She was released on $10,000 bail. There are no charges pending against the Sjobergs, although Makowski said an investigation is continuing into whether they paid for the child. "If we determine that money has changed hands, then we have a crime. Otherwise, we don't," he said. Officials in Vacaville hope to get a court order tomorrow that will allow the child to be returned to California, he said. "The boy is fine. He's kind of mixed up by all this and naturally upset," Makowski said. "He really didn't want to go to Florida."

"DeHart has suggested that there may be only two legitimate grounds for non-recognition [by Congress ratifying the Intercountry Adoption Convention & Treaty]:

Neither would nullify an adoption made either abroad or in the United States as receiving State as contrary to public policy under the present wording of convention Article 22 unless recognition would also be contrary to the child's best interest."

Preservation of Information Concerning the Child's Origin "Article 25, as presently worded, requires States parties to the convention to preserve "information concerning the child's origin" until the laws of both countries involved in international adoption to have access to that information.

Such access may only become possible years or decades after an adoption takes place.

Many U.S. states have different provisions concerning preservation of such information.

Such information is likely to be gathered mainly by countries of origin from which a child is adopted. In order for the United States to be able to comply with its obligations to other countries party to the convention under Article 25 to preserve such information, the federal legislation may need to impose a uniform preservation obligation throughout the United States.

Federal legislation would presumably not impose any requirements for access, which would be left for the individual states of the United States to set."

---Peter Pfund, Assistant Legal Adviser for Private International Law, U.S. Department of State (12//92 Memo)

The verbatim December 1992 Memo, above, is our U.S. State Department's legal opinion regarding legalizing adoptions of children illegally procured or kidnapped.

Pfund sent it to the U.S. Delegation (adoption agencies) to the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention -- and to Lori Carangelo, Americans For Open Records (AmFOR) in 1992, because the U.S. State Dept. would not approve "adoptee" and "birth" parent groups as Delegates, though the White House later appointed 2 adopters.

The Hague's First Secretary, J.H.A. Van Loon, permitted Carangelo/AmFOR to be a data source, reporting directly to Van Loon. AmFOR provided a Proposal and a great deal of "Exhibits" supporting the need for open adoption records worldwide and also provided Van Loon with a copy of the Pfund Memo, above.

For the past five decades, children illegally procured or kidnapped in the United States have also been legally adopted under state adoption secrecy laws

the number listed for him on the State Dept's website (The State Dept. does not release its staff's e-mails).....

For further information on the Hague Intercountry Adoption Treaty Conference and the U.S. procrastination at ratifying it, go to: