Last year, a BBC report on abuses in foreign adoptions of Liberian children named an Eden Prairie-based organization that operates an orphanage and school in Liberia and arranges adoptions by American parents. My colleague David Shaffer picked up on the story and reported Jan. 14 that the West African nation had temporarily halted adoptions by that agency, the West African Children Support Network (WACSN). As Dave wrote, “International adoptions have flourished in Liberia since its 13-year civil war ended in 2003, but the country has faced international criticism for child trafficking and fraudulent adoptions.”

On Monday, in her Annual Message to the National Legislature in Monrovia, the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced the suspension of U.S. adoptions by any agency because the system had “gone amok.” Here are more details from her speech:

The gross mismanagement of the adoption program (which aims primarily at placing orphans in homes in the United States), by both Liberian and U.S. personnel in the concerned NGO is the subject of a report by a Special Committee which I appointed for this purpose. Essentially, we have discovered that many of the children in these orphanages are not in fact orphans but children taken from their living parents on the promise of support and a good life in America. Moreover, we found that young children were being sexually abused at some of these orphanages, while others including officials of government, have used the program to extort money from potential adopters. We have thus suspended the adoption program until laws, policies and proper guidelines have been established and we have asked our concerned friends and partners in the United States to be patient as we try to correct the serious malpractices which exist. We expect the National Social Welfare Policy and National Adoption Act which will be submitted to you during the course of the year, will provide guidance and prevent such abuses in the future.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Businesses in hot water, Corruption. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.