Cambodia's "Stolen Children" Sent to the US

[CEOCambodiaNews]

Student-led documentary investigates Cambodian adoption mystery
By Anna Busalacchi, Managing Editor
May 19, 2021

Elizabeth Jacobs sits on her nanny’s lap prior to her adoption from an orphanage in Cambodia. Courtesy of Elizabeth Jacobs

From 1997 through 2001, American Lauryn Galindo facilitated 800 Cambodian adoptions to American couples, some of which were illegal. It is unknown how many of these children were orphans, or how many were stolen from their families.

Two Columbia students are among a group of documentarians working to tell the complex, emotional story of exploitation that has impacted hundreds of children and families.

Elizabeth Jacobs, a junior at the University of Massachusetts triple majoring in marketing, film and communication, is the director of “The Stolen Children,” a documentary feature film powered by a team of college students across the country, including the two Columbia students.

The project is for Jacobs’ honors thesis about her experience revisiting Cambodia in hopes of reconnecting with her biological family and uncovering the missing information of her adoption.

“As a child I always knew that I didn’t have any information on my biological family, and it wasn’t until I grew up, in high school, I started asking my friends who are also adopted,” Jacobs said. “It turns out more often than not, a lot of people had information on their biological parents.”

Jacobs said the film highlights the Asian-American adoptee experience and addresses the issue of child exploitation in Cambodia.

“The main themes are trying to find identity, growth and rebirth,” Jacobs said.

According to Jacobs’ research, Galindo used baby recruiters throughout Cambodia who targeted vulnerable families, saying their children would be taken to temporary daycares or orphanages.

Galindo profited nearly $8 million from organizing adoptions. She pleaded guilty to money laundering and visa fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2004, according to ABC News.
Full article: https://columbiachronicle.com/student-l ... on-mystery

Backstory on Lauryn Galindo, the US woman who arranged 800 adoptions of Cambodian children; many of these children are believed to have been bought or stolen:

U.S. Families Learn Truth About Adopted Cambodian Children
By ALAN B. GOLDBERG and DEB APTON
11 January 2007, 19:53
• 13 min read

March 25, 2005 — -- When Judith Mosley decided to adopt a Cambodian child, she thought she was offering a better life to an orphaned child in an impoverished land. She later learned that the woman who arranged the adoption, and hundreds of others like it, failed to share vital information about her daughter -- specifically, that she had family members in Cambodia.

The American woman who arranged the adoptions, Lauryn Galindo, is now facing an 18-month prison sentence for visa fraud and money laundering. "20/20's" Elizabeth Vargas traveled to Cambodia to investigate and meet the women and children at the heart of the story.

"They were commodities to Lauryn Galindo, she created the very market that existed, and she's responsible for that. There are enough orphans in this world to go around without recruiting children that are from happy families," said Mosley, who adopted her daughter, Camryn, through Galindo.

Galindo, an adoption facilitator in Cambodia for 13 years, admits to poor recordkeeping but insists that she was not involved in trafficking children. "I have never been involved or charged with anything other than paperwork errors. And that's what I pled to, that's what I'm going to go to prison for," she told Vargas.

But the U.S. government insists it was more than simple errors, citing what it says is evidence that her adoption business paid Cambodian mothers for their babies, sometimes for as little as the cost of a bag of rice.

Last year, Galindo pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud and money laundering in 17 cases. She denies baby trafficking but admitted falsifying documents that wiped out the identities of Cambodian children in those cases.

From 1997 to 2001, Galindo facilitated 800 adoptions for American families -- more than half of all Cambodian adoptions. No one knows how many of those orphans were in fact real orphans. Galindo insists it was the responsibility of the Cambodian government, orphanages and her own staff to make sure children were legally abandoned. She says she never checked to make sure they were really orphans.

Galindo told Vargas, "I never wanted to hurt anyone. You have to understand my motivation was pure in helping these children."

"What I pled to was knowing that there was additional information elsewhere to be had. And indeed, I did. And as I said, I made some mistakes," she said.

But her actions caused wrenching emotional pain to women who are grappling with the idea that they are raising another woman's child.

"I went in to adopt an orphan. I didn't go in to adopt a purchased child from a vulnerable woman," said Carol Rauschenberger, who adopted her son, Sam, using Galindo's services.
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/Internation ... 826&page=1

[CEOCambodiaNews]

From the Cambodia Daily, almost 20 years ago:

Is Lauryn Galindo a Baby-Buyer, a Benefactor, or Both?
By Richard Sine -
June 22, 2002

Once upon a time, international adoption facilitators were angels who braved the harsh climate of impoverished foreign lands to give poor abandoned orphans the chance at a better life with wealthy, loving new parents.

But the angels have fallen in recent years, with credible allegations of baby-buying and even baby-stealing emerging though human-rights groups, embassies and the media. Today, accused of being the middleman in a distinctly nasty business, facilitators might be expected to wear horns and breathe fire, like the most famous fallen angel himself.

Then you meet Lauryn Galindo, and you return to the ethereal realm again. Soothing guitar music seeps from Galindo’s stereo as she welcomes you into a fan-cooled riverfront apartment tastefully decorated with Khmer-style furniture. Silk pastel pillows tumble off a traditional “kdaa ngoeu,” or wooden bed. A wooden apsara dances on a chest, a ceramic dragon undulates on the tile floor and a little fountain murmurs in the background all day.

Galindo has light blue eyes and a gentle manner. Raised in the US state of Hawaii, she is a semi-professional hula dancer, which helps to explain her waist-length hair. She sits on pillows with a visitor as she leafs through one certificate after another: Awards and thank-you letters for her many donations for orphans and young children.

Late last month the government awarded her a special medal for national reconstruction at a ceremony attended by top politicians and dozens of children supported by her through fees paid by adoptive parents.

“When people ask me what I do, I don’t say adoptions,” she says. “I say humanitarian work.”

Whatever her label, Galindo is a pioneer in the field of international Cambodian adoptions, and is now likely the game’s biggest player. Since arriving in Cambodia in 1990, she has facilitated hundreds of adoptions, mostly to US parents. She was the facilitator this year for “Tomb Raider” star Angelina Jolie and her husband, Billy Bob Thornton. Two of her former drivers have founded their own orphanages.

But there could be another side to Galindo. She has been directly accused of baby-buying, and so has one of the orphanages which she uses and supports. Hounded by the media in the past, Galindo agreed to talk with a visitor to present herself as a benefactor, a scrupulous operator and reformer of the system.

“I didn’t come here to steal children of the nation,” she says. “I came here to do what I could to help.”

•••

Galindo had already been an international adoption facilitator for several years when she accompanied Haing Ngor, the actor who played Dith Pran in the movie “The Killing Fields,” and a family friend, to Cambodia in 1990. The two accompanied top CPP official Chea Sim by helicopter to a site where the government had asked Haing Ngor to build a school.

The Cambodian leaders made a good im­pression on Galindo, and she has had friends in high places ever since. She des­cribes Chea Sim as “like a father to me” and counts Sar Kheng and Bun Rany as friends. She notes that Chea Sim, HE and several ministers are all adoptive parents.

“I really felt like the leaders cared about their people and make themselves very available,” she said. “They wanted to know how they could help orphans.”
https://english.cambodiadaily.com/news/ ... oth-32863/

More here :
The reality of child trafficking and adoption
https://www.bcadoption.com/resources/ar ... d-adoption

[Biffsm]

A drop in the bucket compared to the millions of stolen children smuggled into the USA across the Mexican border...sold..resold..returned...sold again...
Or the millions of children whose mothers illegally cross the border or fly in from china where they give birth on US soil.
Sure, if this women made money selling stolen children she should rot in prison.
What now?
Send these adults back to Cambodia?
Be nice to know how many were adopted by loving parents.
Maybe Angelina Jolie has one?
Would it be better if they had been aborted?
Or, grown up in Cambodia selling flowers at midnight riverside?
Who are the victims?

[John Bingham]

What are you trying to say here man? Do you understand that these articles are 10-15 years old?

[Doc67]

At first blush I thought here's another youngster with air in their head and wasting their college $'s on a load of tripe.

But, I can't help feeling a sense of hope for her and her quest. I don't see much hope of her actually finding her biological family, but a DNA database might one day fix that and an NGO might take up this cause if you raise them enough money to fund their expense accounts. Good luck to her. (If she ever does manage to find them, I hope she's prepared to send plenty of money.)

However, my new found soft centre does not extend to one of the clients of the agency and her gripe that:

"I went in to adopt an orphan. I didn't go in to adopt a purchased child from a vulnerable woman," said Carol Rauschenberger, who adopted her son, Sam, using Galindo's services.

This silly cow has clearly wised up to the possibility that all might not be what it once seemed, a fact that was, or ought to have been known to her when she embarked on her mission. Perhaps she was wilfully blind at the time.

But now she wants HER victimhood status confirmed, despite any proof either way. Fuckin narcissist.

[Alex]

"It is unknown how many of these children were orphans, or how many were stolen from their families"

... or how many were sold by their families.

[newkidontheblock]

"It is unknown how many of these children were orphans, or how many were stolen from their families"

... or how many were sold by their families.

Families would like to use the word, stolen, please.

That way they can collect twice.

Once for the selling of their kids.

And a second time for claiming outrage.

How is this any different from the families who sell their daughter to the village auntie who when then ships them to Phnom Penh as born again taxi girls?

Or the ones that ship their kids to some relatives to feed and raise and see them almost never?

Or the orphanages with ‘orphans’ that stay there during the day, during ‘donor hour’ then go home to their nearby families at night?

Sadly, not all families have the same kind of love for their kids as we would like.

[Anchor Moy]

"It is unknown how many of these children were orphans, or how many were stolen from their families"

... or how many were sold by their families.

Families would like to use the word, stolen, please.

That way they can collect twice.

Once for the selling of their kids.

And a second time for claiming outrage.

How is this any different from the families who sell their daughter to the village auntie who when then ships them to Phnom Penh as born again taxi girls?

Or the ones that ship their kids to some relatives to feed and raise and see them almost never?

Or the orphanages with ‘orphans’ that stay there during the day, during ‘donor hour’ then go home to their nearby families at night?

Sadly, not all families have the same kind of love for their kids as we would like.

A touch judgemental, NKOTB ?
The American woman, Galindo, who set up an organisation buying and selling the poor Cambodian women's babies like they are bitcoins, and who made a fortune, (don't cry for me - US$8M !), from doing this, sent out "baby recruiters" into the Cambodian countryside to exploit the poor and the ignorant, who thought that their kids might have better opportunities for food and education in an 'orphanage' ,instead of starving at home in the village. Many people thought that their kids were going to a type of poor kids' boarding school, much like the pagodas, where they would get fed and would learn to read and write.

According to Jacobs’ research, Galindo used baby recruiters throughout Cambodia who targeted vulnerable families, saying their children would be taken to temporary daycares or orphanages.
Galindo profited nearly $8 million from organizing adoptions. She pleaded guilty to money laundering and visa fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2004, according to ABC News.

Who is the greedy one here ?

[newkidontheblock]

Westerners are always perceived as evil, greedy, and the root of all evil. Especially by western media. That’s always a given. While the Khmer are always portrayed as the victim of the westerners.

So yeah, thinking that everyone takes advantage, is a little jaded.

[John Bingham]

At times you can be amazingly astute New Kid, I commend you for that.