Falsified Record: More Living Family

I started looking at Ethiopian adoption in the fall of 2007.  I had recently completed an adoption from Guatemala and was watching that program close due to corruption involved in the process there.  It was important for me to find another program and one that I thought would be more ethical and transparent.  I also wanted to find one where the children were well cared for.  Ethiopia seemed perfect.  I researched agencies and finally chose one that had a small Ethiopian program that was geared towards older kids and with a good reputation as far as ethics go.

As my process moved along, I accepted the referral of a little girl who was said to be 5 1/2.  I was reminded by my agency multiple times that she would probably be older but it was hard to know for sure.  Her paperwork said that she'd been relinquished by her grandfather because he was elderly and unable to care for her any longer.  It said that her father was unknown and her mother died when she was one.  

Between referral and court, I was able to send over additional questions for the orphanage staff.  I asked about her mother and was told that she did not seem to be aware that her mother was dead.  

Time passed and we passed court and I traveled to Ethiopia to meet my new daughter.  During our time in Ethiopia, she told me repeatedly that she was 7.  She didn't know her birthday but she was adamant that she was 7.  

We traveled back to the US and started to build our lives together.  Her English got better and better.  We talked about her age and went back and forth as to whether she was 5, 6, or 7.  She continued to maintain that she was 7.  She also started talking a lot about her family in Ethiopia.  She talked about her mom as if she were still alive.

I asked probing questions over time, trying to figure out the story about her mom.  I never could.  Finally, one day I asked her directly, "you know how your adoption paperwork says you were 5 and a half and you said you were 7?  Well, it also said you mom is dead."  She immediately replied, "my mom's not dead."  Okay.

Soon after, I hired a private searcher to investigate my daughter's story.  It took the searcher a day to find her family, including her living mom.  Just one day...

Finding my daughter's family was like lifting a huge weight off my shoulders and off my daughter's shoulders.  I didn't realize how much she had been worrying that she'd been lied to, that maybe her mother really had died and no one had told her.  I had many questions answered by the searcher and more answered when I later traveled to meet my daughter's family.  From everything I've learned, I do not believe the agency I used was involved in falsifying my daughter's story.  I don't even think her first orphanage was involved.  I believe it came from her family, lying to relinquish her, and the local officials who took the story.  

While I don't blame my agency for the actual falsification of my daughter's paperwork, I do blame them for not investigating.  They knew my daughter "didn't seem to be aware that her mom was dead" and they did nothing about it.  It's not like the investigation would have been difficult since, with the paperwork I was given, it only took one day to find my daughter's family.

My daughter's story falls into what many would be classify as benign corruption.  Still, it is corruption.  Without searching, my daughter would have completely lost her true story.  There is nothing that makes that okay for a child that has already lost everything else.