Vietnam halts adoptions after U.S. finds problems

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - Vietnam, which growing numbers of Americans have turned to for adopting babies, announced yesterday it was halting all U.S. adoptions after allegations of baby-selling, corruption and fraud.

The abrupt cutoff cast uncertainty over pending adoptions in the Southeast Asian country, which have surged as China, Guatemala and others have tightened restrictions on foreign adoptions.

The announcement came days after the Associated Press published details of a U.S. Embassy report that outlined rampant abuses.

The abuses included hospitals selling infants whose mothers could not pay their bills, brokers scouring villages for babies, and a grandmother who gave away her grandchild without telling the child's mother.

"It is tragic for children that the U.S. government has not been able to find ways to work with the Vietnamese government to prevent adoption abuses while at the same time processing legitimate adoptions," said Tom Atwood, president of the Washington-based National Council for Adoption, a research and advocacy organization.

U.S. adoptions have boomed in Vietnam, with Americans - including actress Angelina Jolie - adopting more than 1,200 Vietnamese children over the 18 months ending in March. In 2007, adoptions quadrupled from a year earlier.

In its nine-page report, the embassy said some U.S. adoption agencies paid orphanage officials as much as $10,000 per referral, while others took them on shopping sprees to the United States in return for a flow of babies.

It said questions arose after routine investigations turned up widespread inconsistencies in adoption paperwork.

There was also a suspicious surge in the number of babies listed as abandoned, making it impossible to confirm the children were genuine orphans or that their parents had knowingly put them up for adoption, as required by U.S. law.

Vu Duc Long, director of Vietnam's International Adoption Agency, called the U.S. allegations "groundless." Yesterday, he said Vietnam was scrapping a bilateral agreement with the United States that sought to regulate the adoption system.

In a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam said it would stop taking adoption applications from American families after July 1 but would continue to process applications of families matched with babies before that. Adoption arrangements with other countries were unaffected.

It was not immediately clear how many U.S. couples were affected by the decision.