An independent voice for ethical adoption
Sierra Leone parents seek answers in adoption case
From CBS News:
Balia Kamara’s mother sent her to a center in northern Sierra Leone so the 5-year-old could receive an education and food, and stay out of harm’s way during the West African country’s brutal civil war.
The mother visited Balia at the Help A Needy Child International center, known as HANCI, regularly for two years until 1998, when the children there were taken to Sierra Leone’s capital for medical examinations. They never returned.
Parents of about 30 children at the center say they only later learned that the children had been adopted by Americans and sent abroad without permission.
“We were reluctant to hand over the child,” recalled Balia’s mother, Mariama Jabbie, in an interview with The Associated Press. “When they told us that they were going to educate her up to college level, we decided to hand her over. That was how they were able to entice us to do so.”
In 2004, the center’s director and two of his employees were arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate adoption laws. Those charges against them though ultimately were dropped and the case disbanded, according to court records.
Now more than a decade after the children disappeared, Sierra Leone’s government said late Wednesday it is setting up a national commission of inquiry to re-examine the case of the HANCI children following years of pressure from their biological parents.
Abu Bakarr, who is now the coordinator for the birth parents of the adopted children, said that the HANCI center in Makeni refused to return the children to their parents in 1998. Those who ran HANCI said reducing the number of children at the center would affect its funding, Bakarr said.
HANCI ultimately contacted Maine Adoption Placement Services (MAPS) to foster U.S. adoptions, and MAPS says it placed 29 of the 33 children from the home with adoptive parents in the U.S. HANCI maintains the parents gave informed consent. It said the agreements also were taken to Makeni’s magistrate court for clearance
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