The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption (8 page)

In the camp’s main hall, in a dining area lined with three rows of sixty-foot foldout tables, covered in plastic tablecloths and Christmas knickknacks, I met Larissa Benz, a petite, attractive forty-seven-year-old in jeans and a burgundy leather jacket, her dark hair pulled into a neat ponytail. She introduced me to the staffers playing with the children—ten mostly preteen kids on loan from an orphanage in the Zaporizhya region of Ukraine who were learning to play kickball on the lawn outside the main hall. Watching from the benches were three Ukrainian women: Katya Chislova, BridgeStone’s interpreter and orphan ministry leader; Julia, the orphanage representative sent to monitor the program; and Natasha, an independent adoption coordinator, there to talk to US parents who decide to adopt one of the children. Each group of ten children that Bridges of Faith brings over for a month-long stay costs more than $65,000 in fees, airfare, and expenses, including the round-trip travel fees for the Ukrainian adults accompanying them. As an independent agent among Ukraine’s numerous adoption facilitators, Natasha, a platinum blonde in her twenties, came to Alabama unpaid (besides her airfare) but with the assumption that the trip will generate upon her return a number of adoptions and, thus, corresponding facilitators’ fees—from $4,000 to $12,000 per child. The business implications were clear. A previous facilitator had been unable to come on this trip, Natasha told me, because he was too busy in Ukraine finalizing the adoptions that had resulted from a prior group. By September 2011, 85 percent of the first two groups of children BridgeStone had hosted were in the process of being adopted.

Climbing into a small white golf cart, Larissa gave me a tour of the property. It was a testament to the work that had been going on over the past two years, with its two sets of clustered cabins, numerous staff buildings and trailer homes, a rec room, chapel, and pool as well as a paintball field, horse barn, and manmade pond, all connected with two miles of rutted dirt roads. We arrived at CenterPoint, a unique construction of two modular trailer buildings the Air Force donated and connected by a central living area that one of BridgeStone’s supporters designed. CenterPoint is where the Ukrainian kids stay with their translator and a rotating group of American houseparents. When I visited, the houseparents were a willowy young woman in her twenties named Reagan and her husband Tee, a taciturn man in a baseball cap, who together had a two-year-old boy. They had come as a part of their church mission team after hearing about Benz’s program through their homeschooling group. Perhaps unbeknownst to them, they had also been plucked as potential adoptive
parents. Benz and the rest of the BridgeStone staff choose as houseparents young couples who already have children, in part so they will have parenting experience but also because they’re people whom the BridgeStone group thinks would make good adoptive parents.

“We have a lot of people who come [thinking], ‘Gosh, the mission field’s come to Alabama!’” Benz explains. “‘We can drive thirty minutes and reach out to kids’. . . . And then they come and fall in love with the kids and say, ‘I’m going to take one home.’” “Fall in love” is a phrase in heavy rotation at BridgeStone, as staff discuss how they fall in love with each group of children. They want new volunteers to come and fall in love too.

It seemed to be working already. “The kids are very accepting,” Reagan said with a soft smile. “They cling to you. From the moment we came in the youngest came up and put his arms around me. I thought it was going to be harder with the language barrier, but you figure it out.”

But the fact of the children’s easy affection gets back at BridgeStone’s thin ethical line. As Larissa showed me the rest of the grounds, her phone rang. It was Tom—his ringtone on Larissa’s phone sounds like the main riff of Muddy Waters’s “Mannish Boy”—calling to meet up and take over my tour. He met us by the camp’s manmade pond in an SUV with a cracked windshield—Benz at least was not getting rich off this program—beaming widely with a Bluetooth in his ear. He seemed guileless: quick to laugh at himself but smarter than the first impression he gives—of someone so open as to be naive, believing in his plan so completely that he can’t imagine anyone seeing it differently. Within minutes of our meeting, Benz launched into the duality at the heart of his ministry: loudly touting its adoption promotion to US supporters but masquerading as a cultural exchange program when speaking to US or Ukrainian governments.

“Our program in Ukraine,” he said, navigating deep rainwater trenches in the dirt roads, “if it were about adoption, it couldn’t happen. . . . Everyone knows it’s about adoption, but it can’t be about adoption.” He looked at me to see if I followed. Just as he had tried to do in Haiti, Benz has positioned Bridges of Faith as an educational opportunity for children to learn English and experience another country. Every time he brings a new group of children over, he said, the US embassy in Ukraine sends him an e-mail and hard-copy letter telling him that “You know this can’t be about adoption.”

The reason it can’t be about adoption is because Ukraine has cause to enact limitations on its hosting exchanges. Although Ukraine has long sent children for international adoption in the United States, in recent years it has tried to replace this with domestic adoption by Ukrainian
parents instead, as the nation’s economy has grown and the country faces its own increasing infertility issues. In past years the pressure to find children for lucrative foreign adoptions has led to scandals, including a baby-selling scheme in which Ukrainian mothers’ children were stolen after birth and offered for adoption as orphans. These days there are no healthy children under three years old available for international adoption from Ukraine, and very few under six.

But even the adoption of older children has run into problems. Although Benz doesn’t officially call Bridges of Faith a hosting exchange, it is very similar to the hosting programs that have become ubiquitous in US Christian communities. In these programs, often organized through churches, families host Eastern European orphanage children for a few weeks or months, ostensibly as a foreign exchange program but in practice frequently as an informal adoption audition to see if they bond with the child. This host-to-adopt scenario is widespread despite the fact that the Ukrainian government retains all control over assigning children for adoption and forbids nongovernmental parties from circulating information or pictures about children available for adoption. Although the Ukrainian government has banned “preselection” of its children for adoption—in which foreign adopters request a specific child, likely one they had hosted, since no one outside the government is supposed to know children’s adoption status—in reality government officials often look the other way when it comes to requests for older children, who are less in demand by Ukrainian parents.

But even though they’re common, these programs can be harmful for both the adoptive parents and the children. Because the government, not hosting programs, controls adoptions, US families hosting children may be preparing to adopt children who aren’t actually available.
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But the greater danger is for the children, who are often all too aware that the trip may be an opportunity for adoption, having seen their friends undergo the process before. For those not chosen by host families, the repercussions can be severe, as the children feel rejected and face an increased risk for suicide.

In other words, there’s a reason for all the rules that Benz breezily dismisses as bureaucracy. But because of these legal requirements, Benz said,
“When you go on our website you’ll see very little about adoption. It’s for that reason.”

But on the ground it’s all about adoption. Tom estimates that he spends four Sundays out of five speaking at churches to enlarge the circle of volunteers, prospective adoptive parents, and donors, including a local state senator who donated $25,000 to bring one group of children over. And behind the scenes in Ukraine it’s about adoption too, as Benz and his Ukrainian staff work with orphanage directors to select children who are available for adoption to come to Alabama and meet potential parents.

“These kids are not told it’s about adoption,” Benz said with a boyish smirk, “because in Ukraine, it’s not about adoption. But the kids all know. . . . They’re all smarter than the government.” Many orphanage kids have seen their friends go abroad, then get adopted shortly after their return. Adoptees sometimes call or Skype back to the orphanage to stay in touch with friends and tell them about their life in a new country. So when the orphan groups come to Alabama looking for families, Benz said, some kids will “suck up” to a family they like or petition the adoption coordinator, Natasha, to allow them to spend more time with a particular set of potential parents.

Acknowledging this seemed to spark some doubt in Benz as he reflected on the August 2011 group that came, a group of preteen and teenage boys who had generated the fewest requests for adoption (possibly because girls are often favored in adoption). “The worst thing about these groups is sending them home,” admitted Benz. Recalling their departure at the airport with sadness, he said, “I never got so many manly handshakes and manly hugs.” But when the boys got through security, he continued, “they were bawling like babies,” asking Larissa, “‘What if I’m not adopted? What if I’m not adopted?’” Benz grew somber for a moment, thinking. “We’re not supposed to talk about it, but some of them found out anyway.”

BENZ ISN’T ONE
of the bad guys in this book. On the contrary, he seems like a genuinely nice man with a sincere love of children. But Benz’s type of eager, well-meaning naiveté is, in many respects, more dangerous for appearing so benign. Besides the fact that Benz’s Haiti plans fell through before he could implement them and that he seems like such a nicer person, how much did his scheme differ from that of Laura Silsby? And how different is the strategy he eventually implemented in Ukraine, similarly misleading two governments as a result of his own confidence that getting children to America justifies bending the rules and the truth?

Benz’s plans are an illustration of how temporary the lessons from Haiti can be, how common its ethical scandals are to other countries, and how supportive advocates nonetheless remain of adoption projects established as rescue operations. Tom Benz is undeniably a more sympathetic representative of the Christian adoption cause, giving voice to an urge to help children, an urge that many could share. However, his approach to adoption, whether from Haiti or Ukraine, was undertaken with the same beginners’ zeal and faith that drove Laura Silsby: that his good intentions outweigh other countries’ laws. It’s a faith that is epidemic in the world of international adoption, particularly in the large and growing community that sees adoption not just as the means to build a family but also as a rescue mission assigned by God. Although in character Benz may be worlds away from Laura Silsby, in the larger picture that may be a distinction without a difference. In an international adoption field where scandals routinely originate from idealistic plans, good intentions simply aren’t enough.

THAT NIGHT BENZ,
Larissa, and I drove through dark country roads to one of the next closest towns, Millbrook, where BridgeStone’s thirty-something project coordinator, Eric Carr, had helped plant a church at the local YMCA. Benz reflected on the exotic places his missionary work has taken him, from garbage dumps in Mexico City to jungles in the Philippines. “But nothing in my life strikes me as more sacred or more profound than bringing these kids,” he said, expressing a hope that he can continue this work for the rest of his life.

Carr shares his sense of mission and has passed it on to his staff and a growing circle of volunteers. Many church members at Carr’s small congregation at the Y are involved with BridgeStone. In addition to the three biological children Carr has with his wife, Wendy, they have three children adopted from foster care and a Ukrainian orphan on the way. They have taken their calling so seriously that they live in one of BridgeStone’s donated trailers rent-free in lieu of salary for their work. Members of the congregation followed his lead: a number have become houseparents or volunteers at BridgeStone, and at least four families had already adopted through the year-old program or were in process. The state trooper who had flown in the surprise birthday cake for one group of children was himself a member of the congregation.

As Eric would tell me, adoption has become a guiding identity not just for his family but also for the church. “It’s who we are, not what we do,
which is a totally different thing. I could be a pastor, but we are about adoption.” His statement offers a glimpse into what’s driving Christians like the Benzes as well as Christians like Laura Silsby. Behind these seemingly disparate adoption activists is a growing movement that encourages Christians to see adoption as the ultimate emulation of Christ and an imperative for evangelicals who seek to do their part in the world.

When we left the Y that night, Eric, a lanky blond with a thoughtful drawl, piled a rag-tag collection of people into the battered family minivan: “ghetto-fabulous,” he said wryly. Carr had run a coffee shop before Benz hired him, and he stressed that he knew his lifestyle—living in a trailer in the deep country and making his income between pastoring and odd construction jobs—is not what most would consider success. But his conviction that adoption was God’s purpose for his life guided him. “I believe that’s probably the clearest picture of the gospel: someone who literally doesn’t know you or have to do anything for you, taking you in to love and care for you. That’s the picture of Jesus.” It hasn’t always been easy, however. One of the children Eric and Wendy adopted from foster care, a fifteen-year-old girl who joined their family at ten, has struggled with emotional and psychological issues. According to Wendy, the daughter is now in a psychiatric facility, dealing with a diagnosis of depression with psychotic features, notably among which were threats to the family. “We found out a long time ago that we’re not the answer,” Wendy told me sadly. “Our love is not enough.”