Adoption crackdown strands kids in Congo
‘Criminality’ prompts suspension
“I WAS IN THE CONGO FOR ALMOST FOUR MONTHS TRYING TO BRING OUR SON HOME AND IT WAS BY FAR THE MOST DIFFICULT TIME IN MY LIFE.”
EMILY MAUNTEL
Justin Carroll is the proud dad of a six-week-old daughter in Tennessee, but thus far he has done his doting via FaceTime video phone calls from Africa.
Since mid-November, Carroll has been living in Congo, unwilling to leave until he gets exit papers allowing two newly adopted sons to travel with him.
Carroll and his wife, Alana, are among scores of U.S. couples caught up in wrenching uncertainty as a suspension of all foreign adoptions imposed by Congolese authorities has temporarily derailed their efforts to adopt.
While most of the families are awaiting a resolution from their homes in the U.S., Carroll and a few other parents whose adoptions had been approved have actually taken custody of their adopted children in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital.
However, they say that promised exit papers for the children are now being withheld pending further caseby-case reviews, and the parents don’t want to leave Kinshasa without them.
“Justin is not going to leave the boys,” Alana Carroll said from the family’s home in Jefferson City, Tenn., where she has been caring for biological daughter Carson since her birth on Nov. 25. Justin Carroll wasn’t present for Carson’s birth — he had left for Africa almost a week earlier.
“In a dire situation, we would just move there,” Alana said, referring to Congo.
“Leaving our sons there is not an option.”
According to UNICEF estimates, Congo — long plagued by poverty and conflict — is home to more than 800,000 children who have lost both parents, in many cases because of AIDS.
Until the suspension was announced in September, Congo had been viewed by adoption advocates in the U.S. as a promising option at a time when the overall number of international adoptions has been plummeting. Congo accounted for the sixth-highest number of adoptions by Americans in 2012 — 240 children, up from 41 in 2010 and 133 in 2011.
There are varied explanations for the suspension — explanations that reflect how international adoption has become a highly divisive topic.
The U.S. State Department, in its latest Congo advisory, says all applications for exit permits for adopted children are facing increased scrutiny because of concerns over suspected falsification of documents. Congolese authorities earlier attributed the suspension to concerns that some children had been abused or abandoned by their adoptive parents or have been “sold to homosexuals.”
“The government wants to get a handle on this matter, because there is a lot of criminality around it,” Interior Minister Richard Muyej Mangez told The Associated Press last month.
The U.S. State Department has said it is trying to get accurate information with the hope of enabling some of the families — such as the Carrolls — to take home children whose adoptions had been approved before the Sept. 25 suspension. However, it has warned waiting parents that there could be significant delays.
American diplomats in Kinshasa have met with the waiting families and with Congolese officials to discuss the suspension, but Alana Carroll said the families wished the U.S. Embassy staff would press harder to get the cases moving.
“The ambassador said they didn’t want to ruffle any feathers,” Carroll said.
The Carrolls and four other families have dubbed themselves the Stuck In Congo Five and created a Facebook page to draw attention to their plight. Alana and two of the other mothers also have been communicating through their blogs.
One of them, Erin Wallace of Annapolis, Md., has been in Congo since October, awaiting exit papers that would enable her to bring newly adopted daughter Lainey home to her husband and their two other children. Katie Harshman, another of the bloggers, also has been in Kinshasa since October.
The Harshmans, Wallaces and Carrolls have been working with Africa Adoption Services, a Luisville, Ky., agency founded by Danielle Anderson, a former consular staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa.
In the past two years, Africa Adoption Services has helped dozens of families complete adoptions from Congo, generally for a cost of about $27,000, excluding travel.
Among the successful couples were Emily and Mike Mauntel of Atlanta, whose two-year-old son Moses came home in October. The couple also has a fouryear-old son and a six-yearold daughter.
“My heart is breaking for these five families stuck in the Congo and for the many more families waiting to bring their children home,” Emily Mauntel wrote in an email. “I was in the Congo for almost four months trying to bring our son home and it was by far the most difficult time in my life.”
Alana Carroll said one of her two new sons, Canaan, was sickly and introverted when her husband began caring for him, and is now thriving. But the long separation has taken an emotional toll.
“It was like a dream come true,” she said, “and now it’s like nightmare I can’t wake up from.”