Couple won't talk about agency collapse
Couple won't talk about agency collapse
August 04, 2009
BY BRIAN CALDWELL, RECORD STAFF
CAMBRIDGE — A couple at the centre of a bankrupt Cambridge adoption agency aren't talking publicly about its sudden collapse or allegations of suspect expenses.
Susan Hayhow was executive director of Kids Link International Adoption Agency – which operated as Imagine Adoption – and two related organizations, Global Reach Children's Fund and Saint Anne Adoption Agency.
Andrew Morrow was one of three directors of Imagine and a staff member of Global, which was trying to raise almost $5 million to build a village in Ethiopia.
Imagine went into bankruptcy July 14, shocking more than 400 families across Canada who had paid thousands of dollars in fees to adopt children from overseas, mostly Ethiopia.
Hayhow and Morrow, whose estranged spouses also held key positions at the agency, began a common-law relationship this spring.
They were in Ethiopia when the agency went bust, but have since returned and are now living in a large stone house they own together in the Galt area of Cambridge.
Morrow answered the door of the house Tuesday, but only opened it a crack to politely say that he and Hayhow have no comment.
Families affected by the bankruptcy have so far filed about $3 million in claims against agency, which had just $500,000 in bank accounts when its assets were frozen.
But they voted unanimously at a creditors' meeting last week to explore saving the agency under new management rather than try to get their money back.
Waterloo Regional Police, meanwhile, are conducting a fraud investigation after the other two directors of Imagine alleged there were more than $300,000 in improper expenses going back to early 2007.
Included were two trips to Disney World in Florida, a $13,000 hotel stay in New York last Christmas, a $3,000 horse with a $2,700 saddle, clothes shopping at Holt Renfrew, spa visits and renovations at the stone house, such as a $13,500 wrought-iron fence.
Alan Brown, one of the directors who began scrutinizing the agency's finances in May, said in an interview that most of the suspect expenses were charged to corporate credit cards by senior staff members.
Susan Hayhow started the Christian agency in 2005 and oversaw rapid expansion until its recent collapse.
Imagine rented an office for $7,000 a month in the Preston area of the city and employed 16 people, all of whom took a trip to Ethiopia as a group earlier this year.
Her now-estranged husband, Rick Hayhow, was an administrator at a Christian children's charity with an office in Cambridge before leaving to work for his wife at Imagine.
Susan Hayhow earned $180,000 a year and had the use of a $72,000 Lexus. Rick Hayhow made $140,000 and drove a $42,000 Nissan Pathfinder leased by the agency.
The couple had previously worked as dorm parents to 80 students at Heritage Baptist College, a private Christian school in Cambridge.
“We are simple people with simple needs,” the Hayhows wrote in a 2000 letter seeking a donation from a local service club for a medical device for one of their two daughters.
“We do not have a lot of material possessions.”
Rick Hayhow, who resigned from Imagine in April after his wife's relationship with Morrow came to light, now lives on the top floor of a new Cambridge building billed as a luxury apartment. He was not home Tuesday and did not immediately respond to a message.
bcaldwell@therecord.com