An international adoption agency staff person pled guilty yesterday in a South Carolina court to providing fraudulent documents to the State Department and to bribing Ethiopian officials. The tragedies created by these actions are unforgivable, and families in the US and in Ethiopia continue to suffer as a result. The ramifications for other adoption agencies and the scrutiny they now find themselves under will be intense–I hope. Particularly important will be Ethiopia’s reaction to the bribing of officials there in the name of international adoption.
Alisa Bevins, former director of Ethiopia programs in the US for the adoption agency International Adoption Guides, yesterday pled guilty to fraud in Ethiopia adoptions. She admitted that she, along with others, submitted fraudulent documents to the US State Department and paid bribes to Ethiopian officials in order to facilitate adoptions.
The “others” would be Mary Mooney, former executive director of IAG, James Harding, former programs director for IAG, and Haile Mekonnen, the IAG Ethiopian programs staffer in Ethiopia. Mooney and Harding are awaiting trial. Mekonnen has not yet been charged and is, I believe, still in Ethiopia.
The fraudulent documents were created to move children from orphanages into adoptive US families, but these children may well have had living family in Ethiopia, may not have been eligible for adoption, and may not have been in orphanages listed on their paperwork.
According to the Department of Justice press release: “In entering her guilty plea, Bivens also admitted that she and others paid bribes to two Ethiopian officials so that those officials would help with the fraudulent adoptions. The first of these two foreign officials, an audiologist and teacher at a government school, accepted money and other valuables in exchange for providing non-public medical information and social history information for potential adoptees to the conspirators. The second foreign official, the head of a regional ministry for women’s and children’s affairs, received money and all-expenses-paid travel in exchange for approving IAG’s applications for intercountry adoptions and for ignoring IAG’s failure to maintain a properly licensed adoption facility. Sentencing for Bivens will be scheduled at a later date.”
Per my post “Trial Scheduled for International Adoption Guides,” Bivens could receive a lesser punishment for this plea, and will not go to trial. Mooney and Harding are still scheduled to go to trial in September. I don’t know what the impact of Bevins’ guilty plea will be on the Mooney/Harding trial, but they could make a plea agreement as well, right up to the time of the trial.
Many people for many years have raised concerns about the role of money in international adoptions. This case shines a light on money as bribery, offered to and accepted by those ostensibly involved in international adoption, not child trafficking. It’s painful to consider, and it would be extremely naive not to do so.
None of this can undo the damage done to vulnerable children and families here in the US and in Ethiopia. Let’s hope, though, that justice is served in this case.