Girl adopted for £13,000 must be sent back to US
AN English couple who adopted a baby girl for $19,000 (£12,700) from a Texan adoption agency have been ordered by a High Court judge in London to send her back to America.
Social services in England had contacted the American adoption agency to say there were compelling reasons to believe that the couple were not suitable adoptive parents. The judge was highly critical of how the adoption process had been handled, saying he did not think "anybody could begin to believe this was a proper way of deciding the future of a human being".
Mr Justice Johnson, a senior judge in the Family Division, said the girl was born on Dec 18 and immediately handed over to the adoption agency by her mother, who had relinquished all parental responsibility. Two days later the adoptive father flew from England to America, paid the agency $19,000, and the girl, who had been given a new name, was handed over after the signing of an adoption agreement.
The judge said the agreement provided for the adoption to be finalised within seven months if matters progressed satisfactorily and referred to "home visits" being made to the adoptive parents. But after signing the agreement and paying the money, the adoptive father returned to England with the child and no home visits had taken place, said the judge.
The adoption had proceeded on the basis of a report from an independent social worker with no professional qualifications. It was surprising, said the judge, that the adoption agency made an important decision as to where the girl, identified only as "J", should be brought up on the basis of such a report.
Britain requires a report to be compiled by an approved adoption agency on a couple contemplating adoption from abroad and for the report to be registered with the Department of Health. Since January it has been a criminal offence for a person not attached to an approved adoption agency to compile such a report.
The judge said that when the local social services department discovered that the baby girl was living with the couple and their 15-year-old son it was concerned because it believed there were compelling reasons why the couple should not be regarded as able to provide a safe and secure home for J. The girl was taken into care and placed with foster parents and the department contacted the American adoption agency.
The agency then requested the return of J to America but the adoptive parents declined. This led to the agency's application for the girl's return under the Hague Convention on child abduction, which was supported by the local authority and the Official Solicitor. The judge said he was "satisfied that if returned to Texas, J would not be placed in an intolerable situation".
He added: "This little girl is American and her future should be decided by an American court and by American procedures and by American ways." The judge, who ordered that none of the parties in the case should be identified, said that what had happened to J seemed a "thoroughly bad example of the way things happen in the US".
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