The case is the first link between armed child snatching gangs and international adoptions in Guatemala.
A DNA test given to little Esther stopped an adoption that would have placed her in the United States and forever away from her 27-year-old shop worker mother.
“I can’t explain how excited and happy I am,” Ms Escobar said last week after hearing the good news. “There are people who don’t believe in miracles and then there are people to whom miracles happen.
“Carrying the picture of Esther gave me comfort and company through these 16 long months. I will tell her the story as soon as she can understand what happened”.
The Central American country makes a large earning from international adoptions. It has often been speculated that the children in some of these adoptions were stolen from their homes but that was never before proven. Last year the government started to crack down on fast track international placements that can cost new parents about $30,000.
“This was run by a mafia, and we going after them,” said Jaime Tecu, director of a team now reviewing all pending adoptions from Guatemala. “This is the first time that we’ve been able to show with irrefutable evidence that a stolen child was put up for adoption.”
The largest majority of these adoptions due with families in the United States. One in 100 children that are born in Guatemala will grown up with new parents in the US.
Ms. Escobar is a testament for mothers whose children have been ripped from their arms by gunmen in the small nation. She and five other mothers at one point went on a hunger strike to demand the government take action on their pleas. For 18 months she tracked down hospitals, orphanages and looked at the children running alone in the street looking for her Esther.
A miracle happened in May when she was sitting at the National Adoption Council offices. A little girl that strongly reminded her of the six month old daughter that she had lost was ushered into another room. The office tried to tell her all the papers were in order for that little girl including DNA results that said another woman was her mother. That didn’t stop Escobar, she convinced the authorities to retest the DNA. This week she learned that her feelings were correct. Esther was the girl in the other room.
Mr. Tecu says that officials are now investigating those involved with the child’s adoption from the lawyers to the doctor who falsified DNA tests.
Because Ms. Escobar identified the gunman and was high profile in her campaign to find her daughter she is in hiding.
Guatemala has been under the microscope for some time when it comes to international adoptions. Last year the United Nations urged the government to suspend all adoptions because of corruption.
The nation is now implementing the Hague Convention that regulates international adoptions. Lawyers have been removed from the process and in their place is an independent commission.
In 2006 there were 4,135 children adopted children sent to the US. The only nation with a higher US international adoption rate is China with 6,493 in that year.
There is controversy on all sides of this issue. Some innocent people have been accused of being baby thieves, their lives ended by lynch mob. There have been reports of baby farms where poor women have been paid to supply the adoption trade.
There are also the children whose parents do honestly hope for a better life for their children putting them up for adoption. Those children may face a more difficult time with the new restraints put on the adoption trade.
In the end though after the bits and pieces of regulation are ironed out children will be the victors. At least that is the hope.
