Official charged in human trafficking adoption ring
AN ARIZONA elected official ran a human smuggling scheme that promised pregnant women thousands of dollars to lure them from a Pacific Island nation to the US. They were crammed into houses to wait to give birth, sometimes with little to no prenatal care, prosecutors allege.
Paul Petersen, the Republican assessor of Arizona’s most populous county, was charged in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas with counts including human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The charges span about three years and involve around 75 adoptions.
“The commoditisation of children is simply evil,” said Utah Attorney-General Sean D Reyes. The adoptive parents are considered victims along with the birth mothers, and no completed adoptions will be undone, authorities said.
Petersen’s attorney, Matthew Long, defended his client’s actions during a Tuesday court hearing in Phoenix as “proper business practices” and said they disagreed with the allegations.
Republican Arizona governor Doug Ducey said Petersen should resign.
Petersen served a two-year mission in the Marshall Islands for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Reyes said. He was later recruited by an international adoption agency while in law school because of his fluency in Marshallese, according to a 2013 Phoenix Business Journal story.
Prosecutors said Petersen used associates there to recruit pregnant women by offering many of them $10 000 (R150 298) each to give up their babies for adoption. The expecting mothers were often crowded in the homes, with Marshallese women Petersen employed helping with things such as translation, transportation, legal documents and applications for Medicaid benefits, prosecutors said.
Petersen sold the house this spring as complaints mounted from neighbours in the working-class area in suburban Salt Lake City, said new owner Alanna Mabey.
In Arkansas, it wasn’t uncommon to find a dozen Marshallese mothers on the verge of giving birth in one house, said Duane Kees, the US attorney for the western district of Arkansas.
“Many of these mothers described their ordeal as being treated like property. Make no mistake: this case is the purest form of human trafficking.”
Petersen charged families $25 000$40 000 per adoption and brought about $2.7 million into a bank account for adoption fees in less than two years, according to court documents. |