To the rescue

Federal officials put dent in human trafficking

FNWA DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE or all the gruff the federal judiciary gets in the national political back-and-forth, when it comes to criminal cases, the system can often deliver exactly what’s needed.

Adoption attorney Paul Peterson last week received a six-year, two- month prison sentence on the allegations by federal prosecutors that he ran a human trafficking ring in which he paid pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the United States and give up their babies for adoption. Peterson, according to the accusations filed in court, charged would-be adoptive parents up to $10,000 per adoption plus expenses, with another $25,000 to be paid once the adoption process was complete. He ran this operation in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas.

It was a phone call to the FBI from Washington County Circuit Judge Doug Martin in 2015 that set the investigation in motion. Martin had seen a spike in adoption cases involving Marshallese women. It was enough to raise his suspicions that something just wasn’t quite right. Kudos to Martin for being alert and prepared to report his suspicions.

It turned out Peterson was attracting pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to move to the United States. Because the United States has special treaty arrangements with the Marshall Islands, it’s easier for people to travel from the islands than from other nations. Northwest Arkansas has the largest concentration of Marshallese in the contiguous United States.

Peterson, according to investigators, kept as many as 12 pregnant women at a time in a single-family home in Springdale as part of his adoption racket. A similar circumstance was found in De Queen.

One can always argue whether a prison sentence is too long or too short. The part of U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks’ actions we appreciate was the no-nonsense stance he took when Peterson tried to suggest he didn’t realize he was violating any laws until after he was indicted. “No. No. Mr. Peterson, you knew every single time you had these women come in and lie,” Brooks told Peterson last week, referring to fabricated stories Peterson instructed the women to tell immigration officials and state court judges.

“It’s like you rationalized your actions so long, you can’t quite give it up,” Brooks said. “We don’t sell babies.”

The promising word from U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes is that the Peterson case has given U.S. prosecutors a roadmap for how to prosecute such cases in the future. The freedom of travel makes it hard to prove individual violations of a law that prohibits migration for the purposes of adoption, Fowlkes said, but going after attorneys who arrange the adoptions produce results.

“Can you think of anyone more susceptible to being exploited than someone desperate to have a child?” Fowlkes said of the manipulated parents-to-be in the United States. Pregnant women who are poor, he said, are also easily manipulated.

We’re also glad to see Brooks add time beyond sentencing guidelines in part because Peterson’s role as an attorney and an elected official put him in a position of public trust. Peterson was the elected assessor for Maricopa County, Ariz.

The success of this prosecution offers hope of some protection for vulnerable women in the Marshall Islands and here in the United States. They deserve better than to be viewed and treated as a sellable commodity, and no one should get rich by brokering deals that manipulate the emotions of people who simply want a baby to love.

Judge Martin, federal investigators and prosecutors deserve credit for helping to derail this human trafficking operation.