(L) Baby Elizabeth Jacobs, who was adopted from Cambodia, with her adoptive family. (R) Present-day Elizabeth Jacobs. Collage: VICE / Photos: Courtesy of Elizabeth Jacobs
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For many years, fraud was rife among some Cambodian orphanages, suspected of buying babies and selling them to American adoption agencies. A LICADHO report from 2002 described predatory orphanage workers who approached impoverished women in hospitals, soon after they had given birth and in an emotionally vulnerable state, enticing them with small cash “donations” for the temporary surrender of their children to the institution, where they said the babies would be looked after.“My family was so poor at that time, I thought that the orphanage would be a good place for my children to study and get good knowledge… I did not think that my children would go abroad and not be able to come back.”
A photo of a younger Neang Phol, who says that three of her children were sent abroad without her consent. Photo: Courtesy of Neang Phol
Neang Phol today, sitting in a construction site in Phnom Penh where she lives and works with her current husband. Photo: Pen Chanborey
Within months of arriving at the orphanage, two of Meta’s children, aged six and seven, were sent to Austria without her knowledge—something she found out from her remaining children during a visit. When a distraught Meta arrived at the orphanage demanding the return of her children, she was escorted out by police summoned by the head of the orphanage, who said that she was accusing them of child trafficking.“It's an injustice because they took my children there without letting us contact them,” said Meta, who still tears up when talking about that time. “There is no worse suffering than when I lost my children. It's so much pain.”Both Neang and Meta sent their children to orphanages, struggling with finances and misled into thinking they would offer their children better care. Their experiences are disturbingly common, according to Rotabi-Casares. “There are many instances in which children are sent to homes because they're fed and they're educated there, and there's no intention of relinquishing or severing their legal ties to the child,” she said. “It is a result of poverty. It's not an adoption plan. However, many of these children have fallen into adoption networks.”“It's an injustice because they took my children there without letting us contact them… there is no worse suffering than when I lost my children. It's so much pain.”
Ten babies, plus a three-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, were retrieved in a police raid on the Asian Orphans' Association in September 2001, with five people arrested for allegedly buying the babies in an illegal adoption scheme. They were released later as police said the arrest was the result of a misunderstanding. LICADHO, who initially tipped-off police, slammed the decision. Photo: Philippe LOPEZ / AFP
Sam Schmir as a child in the U.S. with Fred the cat. Photo courtesy of Sam Schmir
When she returned to Cambodia for a trip with her adoptive mother in 2014, 13-year-old Gosch saw firsthand the desperation that might have led her mother to give her up all those years ago. Walking around an open-air market, the pair was approached by a woman holding a baby out to Gosch’s mother in an attempt to sell him. “She went up to my mum, saying something like ‘Baby, $30,’” Gosch recalled. “Then she was like, ‘$25,’ and kept going down until we walked out of range.”“The pain in her eyes, I'm sure that wasn't an easy thing to be trying to do. But maybe she wanted to give her child a better life.”The encounter still haunts Gosch today, a sharp reminder that among Cambodia’s impoverished are parents desperate enough to sell their children. For decades, intercountry adoptions have been intimately linked to this poverty, and now they are resuming, Jacobs, who’s just now beginning to unravel the mystery around her origins, is acutely aware of the exploitation that could be unleashed by a new marketplace for Cambodian babies.“As a kid, I thought, ‘I want to adopt from Cambodia as well. When I have children, I want kids that look like me’,” said Jacobs. “After learning about the scandal and after hearing about them opening borders again for intercountry adoptions, it made me really think… the reason why they kept it so closed off was concerns about corruption bursting at the seams.”“Once they open, everything is going to come rushing back.”Follow Koh Ewe on Twitter and Instagram.“After learning about the scandal and after hearing about them opening borders again for intercountry adoptions, it made me really think… the reason why they kept it so closed off was concerns about corruption bursting at the seams.”