Stolen Baby Found; Guatemalan Adoption Search Works
Adoption officials in Guatemala stated Wednesday that a baby has been returned to her biological mother after apparently being stolen and entered into the adoption system.
As most of you know, the Guatemalan adoption system has been under scrutiny for some time because of it’s practices. There are rumors of baby stealing and baby buying, making Guatemala known as a “Baby Factory” country, one that Americans flock to for international adoptions.
Ana Escobar told a familiar story to officials on March 26, 2007.
The baby’s mother, Ana Escobar, said armed men locked her in a storage closet at the family’s shoe store north of Guatemala City and took the 6-month-old.
“When I got out, my daughter was gone,” she told the AP in an earlier interview about the case.
To find her daughter, Esther, she searched orphanages and hospitals. In May, she was waiting in the National Adoption Council’s offices and saw a toddler who looked like her daughter. She convinced officials to show her the girl’s papers and to take new DNA tests (they soon proved her kinship).
Mr Tecu said: “This is the first time that we’ve been able to show, with irrefutable evidence, that a stolen child was put up for adoption.”
He said officials would investigate the lawyers who handled the adoption, the doctor who signed earlier, falsified DNA tests and anyone else associated with the process.
that poor woman, thankfully she has her daughter back
It’s comforting to know that the family was reunited. It’s also scary to know how easily all the evidence was falsified and it was pure luck that she saw her daughter!