Most foreigners adopt children illegally: Official

Most foreigners adopt children illegally: Official

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Days after he was taken to a city-run orphanage in Cipayung, East
Jakarta, two-and-a-half year old Erwin or Tristan was unable to
sleep tight like his friends in the center.

He moved from one end to the other on his small bed in a
dormitory he shared with several other toddlers and often woke up
looking straight ahead with vacant eyes at the people in front of
him.

"He has not talked much since he arrived here. He seems to be
so afraid of everything. It's getting worse as many television
cameramen have come to take his picture. We don't know what has
happened to him," Rani, one of ward attendants told The Jakarta
Post on Wednesday.

Erwin is one of at least 60 Indonesian children illegally
adopted by foreigners through three local women, identified as
Rosdiana, MRT, and ER, and a U.S citizen identified as JW.

City police arrested the three women in Ciputat, Tangerang
last week for persuading poor mothers in several areas in the
capital to sell their children to foreigners.

Police said they were still tracking down the U.S citizen and
an Irish citizen identified as Joseph Dowse, who is accused of
illegally adopting Erwin.

Dowse adopted Erwin from his mother Suryani through the South
Jakarta Court in 2001 without a recommendation from the ministry
of social affairs as required under existing adoption
regulations. The Irish government granted Erwin Irish citizenship
in the same year.

Dowse later left Erwin at an orphanage in Bogor, West Java
after his wife got pregnant. The couple subsequently asked the
Irish government to cancel Erwin's status as their child but his
government rejected the request.

Knowing that Erwin was suffering, the ministry of social
affairs launched an investigation into the case, and found out
that many other children had been sold by Rosdiana.

City police and the ministry took eight children, including
Erwin, from Rosdiana's house in Ciputat and placed them in
several orphanages across the city.

Rosdiana and her accomplices allegedly paid each mother around
Rp 1 million (US$105) for a baby and sold the children to
foreigners for between Rp 40 million and Rp 50 million.

Head of the sub-directorate for children at the Ministry for
Social Affairs Afrinaldi said that Erwin and the other 59 cases
were only a tip of the iceberg as according to monitoring
conducted by his office, thousands of Indonesian children had
been adopted illegally.

He said that a recent survey conducted by his office found
that out of five adoptions by foreigners, four did not follow the
proper procedures or had one or two fake documents.

The survey included the examination of adoption documents
submitted by foreigners to their respective embassies.

"Every embassy is supposed to send us adoption documents filed
by their citizens for verification after the court grants the
foreigners their adoption request. On average, four out of five
requests have incomplete or fake documents," Afrinaldi said.

He said that more illegal adoptions might go unnoticed as not
every embassy reported their citizens' adoption documents to his
office.

Afrinaldi also wondered how the court could grant permission
to a foreigner to adopt a child without complete documents and
proper examination of them.

He said that Dowse's negligence of Erwin was an example of
poor screening of foreign parents.

Observers have warned that the number of children being sold
for adoption, especially in troubled areas such as Aceh and Nias,
would be even higher as many suffering families had to let go
their children to ease their financial burden.