MARSHALLESE ADOPTIONS

Rise in cases concerns leaders

The fast-growing number of Marshallese women in Northwest Arkansas giving up their children for adoption has prompted the area’s legal, medical and advocacy communities to call for more oversight throughout the process.

They worry some of the women are signing documents in a language they don’t understand and may not know they have no rights to the child once he’s adopted. In the Marshallese culture, adoptions are open and birth mothers often share in the child-rearing.

Community leaders openly question whether the women know all their rights, such as the right to withdraw consent for an adoption.

Others want to tighten requirements about how the expectant mothers are reimbursed for expenses related to their pregnancies.

Washington County Circuit Judge Doug Martin said his concerns over the number of Marshallese adoptions he and other judges are seeing prompted a meeting about six months ago with state legislators. The meeting focused on state law and adoption finances, he said.

Sen. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, said he drafted a bill to address the issue after the meeting.

“It is all about the money at the end of the day,” Woods said. “There are concerns with people brokering deals with families for a dollar amount for a child.

“You don’t want to encourage people having a child to sell it,” he said. “It has raised a lot of concerns and it looks horrible.”

Legislation has to protect children, but also not restrict the rights of people wanting to adopt, he said.

“It is complex,” Woods said. “You have some

families that believe it is their calling to adopt these children.”

Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, said he also has been approached about Marshallese adoptions.

“I do think there are people brokering deals that need some type of statute that requires them to do some reporting to shut down their operation,” Lindsey said.

MARSHALLESE ADOPTIONS UP

Martin said he saw a shift in adoptions between the time he served as an appointed circuit judge in 2009 and 2010 and when he was appointed to fill a second vacancy in 2013. Martin served a term on the Arkansas Court of Appeals in the interim and was elected to his current seat last year.

“I didn’t have a single Marshallese adoption in all of that time,” Martin said. “I spent two years working in Little Rock, and, when I returned in 2013, all of a sudden about 90 percent of those adoptions were Marshallese.”

Washington County judges have reworked their schedules to make room for the increase in adoptions, Martin said. He said this includes one judge every Friday afternoon overseeing Marshallese adoption consent hearings.

Washington County has led the state in adoptions since 2013, according to data from the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts. There have been 312 adoptions in Washington County this year. Benton County follows with 263 adoptions, and Pulaski County with 237.

Race and ethnicity of adoptions are not tracked by the office.

Benton County Circuit Judge Doug Schrantz said he also has noticed more adoptions involving Marshallese people. He said the only time he sees Marshallese individuals in his court is for adoption proceedings.

Marsha Woodruff with Woodruff Law Firm in Fayetteville said she has handled more than 200 adoptions since 1978. She said her business also has seen a shift from Hispanic to Marshallese adoptions in recent years.

Seventy-five percent of Woodruff’s cases involve Marshallese babies.

“I did adoptions for 25 years before I saw my first Marshallese birth mom,” Woodruff said.

Julianne Walsh has been watching adoption in the Marshallese community since the 1990s. This includes adoption booms in the Marshall Islands and later Hawaii. Walsh, the University of Hawaii at Manoa assistant specialist for the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, said attention has shifted to Arkansas in recent years.

Walsh said financial incentives could play a role in the increase of Marshallese adoptions in the state. The Marshallese could have more adoptions because they often have low incomes, she said.

“The rich don’t relinquish” their babies, she said. “It is the poorest of the poor that they are targeting.”

Forty-one percent of 4,960 Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders in Arkansas were in poverty between 2007 and 2011, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Marshallese population is categorized as Pacific Islander in census records.

Thirty-one percent of 174,123 Hispanics living in Arkansas were in poverty, the report states. Another census report shows 18.4 percent of all people living in Arkansas were in poverty in 2011. It is estimated 2.9 million people lived in the state in 2011.

The only other state with a higher percentage of poverty for Pacific Islanders was Nebraska with 50.8. It had 1,121 Pacific Islanders recorded in the state.

A low-income mother could have few options if she can’t afford to raise a child, Walsh said.

Martin

Schrantz