As the "searchers" who track down adopted children's histories increasingly uncover stories of fraud, corruption, and worse, these specialists are facing threats and even violence
 |
| Graph taken from the website: |
"The adoption industry has become so lucrative and so strong, especially in rural parts of the country, that many people who've raised questions about the process say they've faced intimidation and harassment from the industry."
Finding Fernanda, by Erin Siegal
The book unfolds amid the highly politicized landscape of Guatemala’s adoption industry, a multi-million dollar trade that was both highly profitable and barely regulated. Children have been stolen, sold, and placed as orphans in corrupt international adoptions to well-intentioned Western parents ever since the industry began in the 1980s, during the country’s civil war. Both the governments of Guatemala and the United States repeatedly proved unwilling and incapable of regulating the baby trade. Until now, no book has tackled the pervasive human rights violations in international adoption in detail— abuses that continue today in countries around the world that send children abroad in adoption.
