Adoptive Mother Takes Personal Risk Over Ethics Practices

Apparently, a lot of players in the international adoption world have been a little too glib about where these babies are coming from, and some children have been stolen from their parents to be adopted by people in the Northern hemisphere.

Even though it delayed and may have prevented her adoption, one adoptive mom, Jennifer Hemsley, got too suspicious. Her courageous battle with the system and great personal/family/financial hardship in order to do the right thing are a model of how to behave in an ethically cloudy situation, even if the outcome is the opposite of what you’re striving for.

Medical reports seemed obvious forgeries, without letterhead or doctor’s signature. And during a critical hearing, Hemsley said, her Guatemalan advisers tried to pay a stranger to pose as Hazel’s foster mother.

“Todd and I felt a lot like, ‘Gee, is this really happening?’ Maybe we should just look the other way and keep plodding along, because every time I tried to tell someone, nobody cared,” Hemsley said. “I couldn’t look the other way. I just couldn’t turn my head.”

Ricardo Ordonez, the Hemsleys’ adoption attorney, denied any fraud and vowed to clear his name by producing the birth mother for new DNA tests. Another court hearing is pending.

If the Hemsleys had walked away, as hundreds of other Americans did after problems surfaced, Hazel would likely have been abandoned or reoffered for adoption under another false identity, Tecu said. Instead, Jennifer Hemsley stayed with Hazel for months, draining more than $70,000 from a second mortgage on their home and paying for a trusted nanny.