LilMtnCbn
07-03-2004, 05:35 AM
http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2004/07/02/news/news02.txt
Adoption nightmare continues; Galindo convicted, but heartbreak lives on
By Tom Finnegan - The Garden Island
Editor's note: This is the second of two parts of a story concerning a civil
lawsuit filed by Kalaheo resident Summer Harrison against Hanalei resident
Lauryn Galindo and others. Harrison alleges that she was not told of the
numerous defects in the baby girl she adopted.
Hanalei resident Lauryn Galindo, 52, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit
visa fraud, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering, and
"structuring," in federal court in Seattle. She will be sentenced in September.
But the pain she caused some of those adoptive parents she supplied babies to,
and some of her former associates, lives on.
Galindo's indictment, which names Galindo's sister Lynn Devin, 50, and their
Seattle International Adoptions, details two adoptions where an ill baby was
swapped for a healthy one without changing the identity of the baby on visa
forms.
Kalaheo resident Summer Harrison, also a Galindo client, has filed suit in
First Circuit Court against Galindo and numerous others, for fraud after the
adoption which, Harrison claims, went terribly wrong.
Harrison said that Galindo and others named in the civil suit represented that
her now 4-year-old daughter was premature, which she was, while not telling her
that the youngster was also suffering from serious prenatal injuries that left
her mentally and developmentally challenged.
Galindo, in an interview Wednesday, said that Harrison was well aware of the
problems Hannah developed, and took her anyway.
In the phone interview, Galindo said, on the advice of her attorneys, she would
not comment on her recent guilty plea.
In a separate phone interview form Seattle, one of her staunchest supporters
did comment.
Deborah Porter, a former school psychologist, became a customer of Galindo's,
and then went to work for SIA. She also ran one of the largest Web sites
dedicated to Cambodian adoptions, and traveled to Cambodia on humanitarian
missions with Galindo.
She says that to understand Galindo's actions, one must understand the culture
of Cambodia.
"It's improbable to know the truth," she said. "Cambodians will tell you what
you want to hear." Misleading stories or downright untrue information is the
norm, rather than an exception, she said.
Many children in orphanages have some sort of family, and in many cases if one
parent is gone and the other is poor, a child qualifies as an orphan.
A child adopted by American parents would be stopped and called "lucky baby,"
Porter added.
"You find destitute Cambodian mothers with nine children who have seen at least
one of their kids die. It's easy to see why they want their kids adopted,"
Porter said.
Porter's adopted child, it turned out, had two siblings. Galindo actually found
out that her first daughter had a sister in the same orphanage. So she adopted
both of them, and later added a younger biological brother to the family.
She said she couldn't even find out how old her kids were.
On a later trip, she tracked down her kids' biological grandmother. And all she
could find out was the year they were born. When they were brought to the
orphanage, their ages were changed to make it easier for them to be adopted.
The problem, she said, was it got to a point where people didn't care where the
kids were coming from.
"Clearly people were coming to do business," said Porter. "Lynn (Devin) did it
on the goodness of her heart.
"That's where it went wrong — (people wanted) healthy infant girls quick,"
she said.
Meanwhile, Galindo, who had been getting kids out of Cambodia for a dozen years
or more, saw an adoption market explode from 40 or 50 kids a year in the
early-1990s to 100 a month by the time Cambodian adoptions to the United States
were halted in 2001, Porter said.
The U.S. leaders "could've initiated reform. They could've investigated. But
they didn't," Porter added.
They just shut the doors, leaving sick kids stuck without treatment, waiting to
go to the United States, dying, maimed from curable diseases, she said. Her
son's adoption was held up for a year and a half as investigators looked at
every single case. He was healthy. She said she knows parents who weren't so
lucky.
"It was really inhumane throughout," Porter continued. "The U.S. government
then painted everybody with a broad brush. The INS (Immigration and
Naturalization Service) couldn't tell the difference between corrupt adoption"
and people trying to help.
"They went after Lauryn because she was doing it the longest. And they went
after Lynn to get to Lauryn," she added. "Lynn's a soccer mom.
"If you were in the business of helping the true orphans of Cambodia, the work
was much harder," she continued. "It was blatantly obvious who was corrupt or
not."
Judith Mosely, now living in Saipan after adopting one child through Galindo,
agrees with Porter, but doesn't let Galindo or Devin off the hook.
Mosely, whose story was published in People magazine in January, said in a
phone interview that while she agrees all overseas adoptions have run amok and
that the government may have made Galindo a scapegoat, Galindo is still living
in a three-bedroom house in Hanalei and driving a nice car.
Galindo's 2000 Jaguar is registered to a Samoan company, Lakshmi, Ltd., of
which, according to court documents, Galindo is the sole owner.
Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth.
Mosely, the mother of seven, two biological and five adopted from different
countries, said her daughter, adopted through Galindo, was taken from her birth
family. A precocious 6-year-old, her daughter told the story of a full family,
and she cried for them after leaving the country.
"Children's histories were just swapped for one another. It was just sloppy and
greedy, and it could've been done right," she said. "It's your blueprint of
your life. You have a right to know where your starting block was.
"The fact is it was callous for documents to say ‘unknown,'" she continued.
"It doesn't matter if they had a better life in the U.S. Our money doesn't
entitle us to the children of the poor. They can still be loved."
Mosely and Harrison both said they paid around $11,000 for their children,
giving Galindo directly $3,500 in new, clean, $100 bills, as a "orphan donation
fee." Mosely says she has a receipt.
Meanwhile, the orphanages the two women described are squalid, with half
formula given to infants because full formula was too expensive.
"The children were laying on baskets on the floor," Harrison said.
"Even put half of what Galindo pocketed, and put them into orphanages," it
would be a model system for other countries, said Mosely.
"I believe one pays for their crimes," said Mosely. "Somebody said (online that
Galindo's detractors) are gleeful.
"There's no glee when an 8-year-old is crying her eyes out every night because
she missed her family.
"Had she been a baby, she never would've known she had a whole (biological)
family."
Harrison asked that other families who adopted Cambodian children with
erroneous medical records contact her at summer@aloha.net.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Adoption nightmare continues; Galindo convicted, but heartbreak lives on
By Tom Finnegan - The Garden Island
Editor's note: This is the second of two parts of a story concerning a civil
lawsuit filed by Kalaheo resident Summer Harrison against Hanalei resident
Lauryn Galindo and others. Harrison alleges that she was not told of the
numerous defects in the baby girl she adopted.
Hanalei resident Lauryn Galindo, 52, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit
visa fraud, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering, and
"structuring," in federal court in Seattle. She will be sentenced in September.
But the pain she caused some of those adoptive parents she supplied babies to,
and some of her former associates, lives on.
Galindo's indictment, which names Galindo's sister Lynn Devin, 50, and their
Seattle International Adoptions, details two adoptions where an ill baby was
swapped for a healthy one without changing the identity of the baby on visa
forms.
Kalaheo resident Summer Harrison, also a Galindo client, has filed suit in
First Circuit Court against Galindo and numerous others, for fraud after the
adoption which, Harrison claims, went terribly wrong.
Harrison said that Galindo and others named in the civil suit represented that
her now 4-year-old daughter was premature, which she was, while not telling her
that the youngster was also suffering from serious prenatal injuries that left
her mentally and developmentally challenged.
Galindo, in an interview Wednesday, said that Harrison was well aware of the
problems Hannah developed, and took her anyway.
In the phone interview, Galindo said, on the advice of her attorneys, she would
not comment on her recent guilty plea.
In a separate phone interview form Seattle, one of her staunchest supporters
did comment.
Deborah Porter, a former school psychologist, became a customer of Galindo's,
and then went to work for SIA. She also ran one of the largest Web sites
dedicated to Cambodian adoptions, and traveled to Cambodia on humanitarian
missions with Galindo.
She says that to understand Galindo's actions, one must understand the culture
of Cambodia.
"It's improbable to know the truth," she said. "Cambodians will tell you what
you want to hear." Misleading stories or downright untrue information is the
norm, rather than an exception, she said.
Many children in orphanages have some sort of family, and in many cases if one
parent is gone and the other is poor, a child qualifies as an orphan.
A child adopted by American parents would be stopped and called "lucky baby,"
Porter added.
"You find destitute Cambodian mothers with nine children who have seen at least
one of their kids die. It's easy to see why they want their kids adopted,"
Porter said.
Porter's adopted child, it turned out, had two siblings. Galindo actually found
out that her first daughter had a sister in the same orphanage. So she adopted
both of them, and later added a younger biological brother to the family.
She said she couldn't even find out how old her kids were.
On a later trip, she tracked down her kids' biological grandmother. And all she
could find out was the year they were born. When they were brought to the
orphanage, their ages were changed to make it easier for them to be adopted.
The problem, she said, was it got to a point where people didn't care where the
kids were coming from.
"Clearly people were coming to do business," said Porter. "Lynn (Devin) did it
on the goodness of her heart.
"That's where it went wrong — (people wanted) healthy infant girls quick,"
she said.
Meanwhile, Galindo, who had been getting kids out of Cambodia for a dozen years
or more, saw an adoption market explode from 40 or 50 kids a year in the
early-1990s to 100 a month by the time Cambodian adoptions to the United States
were halted in 2001, Porter said.
The U.S. leaders "could've initiated reform. They could've investigated. But
they didn't," Porter added.
They just shut the doors, leaving sick kids stuck without treatment, waiting to
go to the United States, dying, maimed from curable diseases, she said. Her
son's adoption was held up for a year and a half as investigators looked at
every single case. He was healthy. She said she knows parents who weren't so
lucky.
"It was really inhumane throughout," Porter continued. "The U.S. government
then painted everybody with a broad brush. The INS (Immigration and
Naturalization Service) couldn't tell the difference between corrupt adoption"
and people trying to help.
"They went after Lauryn because she was doing it the longest. And they went
after Lynn to get to Lauryn," she added. "Lynn's a soccer mom.
"If you were in the business of helping the true orphans of Cambodia, the work
was much harder," she continued. "It was blatantly obvious who was corrupt or
not."
Judith Mosely, now living in Saipan after adopting one child through Galindo,
agrees with Porter, but doesn't let Galindo or Devin off the hook.
Mosely, whose story was published in People magazine in January, said in a
phone interview that while she agrees all overseas adoptions have run amok and
that the government may have made Galindo a scapegoat, Galindo is still living
in a three-bedroom house in Hanalei and driving a nice car.
Galindo's 2000 Jaguar is registered to a Samoan company, Lakshmi, Ltd., of
which, according to court documents, Galindo is the sole owner.
Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth.
Mosely, the mother of seven, two biological and five adopted from different
countries, said her daughter, adopted through Galindo, was taken from her birth
family. A precocious 6-year-old, her daughter told the story of a full family,
and she cried for them after leaving the country.
"Children's histories were just swapped for one another. It was just sloppy and
greedy, and it could've been done right," she said. "It's your blueprint of
your life. You have a right to know where your starting block was.
"The fact is it was callous for documents to say ‘unknown,'" she continued.
"It doesn't matter if they had a better life in the U.S. Our money doesn't
entitle us to the children of the poor. They can still be loved."
Mosely and Harrison both said they paid around $11,000 for their children,
giving Galindo directly $3,500 in new, clean, $100 bills, as a "orphan donation
fee." Mosely says she has a receipt.
Meanwhile, the orphanages the two women described are squalid, with half
formula given to infants because full formula was too expensive.
"The children were laying on baskets on the floor," Harrison said.
"Even put half of what Galindo pocketed, and put them into orphanages," it
would be a model system for other countries, said Mosely.
"I believe one pays for their crimes," said Mosely. "Somebody said (online that
Galindo's detractors) are gleeful.
"There's no glee when an 8-year-old is crying her eyes out every night because
she missed her family.
"Had she been a baby, she never would've known she had a whole (biological)
family."
Harrison asked that other families who adopted Cambodian children with
erroneous medical records contact her at summer@aloha.net.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
