Former adoption director avoids prison by paying up

By Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer

Published Monday, March 22, 2010

Times staff

TAMPA — The former director of a Tampa Bay area adoption agency who admitted bilking prospective parents will avoid prison time.

A Maryland woman convicted of killing her two adopted daughters and storing their bodies in a home freezer is sentenced to life without parole.

Renee Bowman, seen here being escorted into a courthouse in Prince Frederick, Md., on Jan. 8, was sentenced on Monday to two consecutive life terms in the deaths of two adopted daughters.Ann Heisenfelt / AP

March 22, 2010, 10:41 PM GMT+5:30 / Source: The Associated Press

150 Arunachal kids trafficked in 4 years

Mid-Day.com, Sunday March 21, 2010, Itanagar

Image courtesy: Mid-Day.com

Over the last four years, 150 children from Arunachal Pradesh have been trafficked to Phuntsok Choeling monastery in Kathmandu with the promise of a better education. As recently as last month, six of the 150 children have been reported missing from the monastery, located in Swayambhu.

The children were reported to have gone missing after one of them telephoned their parents in Arunachal, in the first week of February 2010, complaining about the cruel treatment meted out to them at the monastery.

Jennifer's kids want their mother back 21 Mar 2010, 0932 hrs IST TIMES NOW first showed you the story of Jennifer Haynes, who was sold to foreign parents at the age of 8 nearly 20 years ago and then deported to India in 2008 for having faulty adoption papers. Now, TIMES NOW has tracked her children in Chicago and they have just one wish -- to be reunited with their mother. For over two years, Jennifer Haynes has been living alone in Mumbai. Jennifer's only demand is to go back home and be with her children. She says, "Everyday I am without my children. Everyday I struggle, sit at home with nothing to do. All this definitely hurts me." Following her story, TIMES NOW went to meet her children back in Chicago. Six year old Kadafi and five year old Kassana live with their grandmother, while their father i.e. Jennifer's husband is away studying. The kids have not seen their mother in close to two years, ever since she was deported and thrown out because the Adoption Agency -- Americans for International Aid and Adoption -- never bothered to get her paperwork right. Her birth parents failed her and a flawed system too failed Jennifer. However, the children, who do not understand these legalities, just want their mother back. Kassana says, "I want mummy back. We miss her and love her."

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Published March 21, 2010, 10:20 AM
Malan Breton’s inspiration came from Hudson
While visiting the Hatch family for Christmas, New York fashion designer Malan Breton, who is a family friend, was so moved by what the family shared with him, he changed the theme of his February Fall 2010 Fashion Show.

By: Margaret Ontl, Hudson Star-Observer
 
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Nextview all offers | sign up for email offers | add your businessEmerson Hatch on the runway
 .
Emerson Hatch led the models out for the finale of Malan Breton’s February fashion week show. Photo by www.garyjcooper.net
 Talk about it While visiting the Hatch family for Christmas, New York fashion designer Malan Breton, who is a family friend, was so moved by what the family shared with him, he changed the theme of his February Fall 2010 Fashion Show.
“He asked if he could see the clothes and artifacts I have saved and collected for Emerson,” said Angelique Hatch. Emerson was born in Hyderabad, India, in 2000 and after a long adoption process she joined the Hatch family on March 5, 2002. “When I think about the little girl who came, she couldn’t sit up or walk and she was two years old. It is amazing.”
After looking at Emerson’s collection including her scrapbook, which mom has been creating for her, Breton, called back to New York to say he was changing the theme of his fashion show.
And change he did. Breton was inspired by Emerson’s journey and the beauty of her native the India: the fabrics, beadwork and culture. The show, which had fashion critics offer high acclaim, opened with nine-year-old Emerson Hatch performing an Indian dance she learned at The Phipps Center for the Arts. During the show Bollywood dancers performed and American Idol contestant Anoop Desai sang his world premiere for the finale during which Emerson led the models.
“It was an event bursting with Indian culture,” said Hatch. “Emerson visited with Anoop Desai backstage.” For the Hatch family this was Emerson’s big day and a once in a lifetime experience.
Fundraiser
During the adoption process Angelique Hatch became friends with the founders of Care + Share India, an organization which helps homeless children in India.
“Even a small amount can make a profound difference in their lives,” said Hatch. “Just think the impact we could make if everyone in Hudson gave $10.
“Malan is involved in this cause with me,” said Hatch. “He promoted it at his show and after party.”
The unique organization helps children in India.
For more information or to donate online, go to www.careshareindia.org
Locally, Angelique is holding a fundraiser for Care + Share India on April 30 at the Hudson Golf Club. Tickets are $30 per person or $50 per couple. It will include a silent auction, appetizers, cash bar, keg beer and live music.
For more information, call Hatch at (612) 804-6518 or e-mail her at

Three children from the BRESMA orphanage are headed to Guadeloupe tomorrow morning. The French government is sending children people they know and sending them to meet their parents in Guadeloupe. I offered to send our people and pay our own way there and back but they refused. I felt the children had already been severely traumatized and did not need more trauma in their lives right now. What would it have hurt to let some of the American staff go with the children? Please pray for the children and their travel. Pray that they will see this as a wonderful adventure and not a nightmare! GLA has one little girl, Nadege, ready to travel to France but since they would not let one of us go with her to Guadeloupe, her mother is coming to GLA to take her child home.

Russians, Pa. Officials Meet On Boy's Death

YORK, Pa. (AP) ? Prosecutors in central Pennsylvania have met with a delegation from Russia to outline how they will handle the case of a couple accused of killing their 7-year-old son, who was adopted from Russia.

Michael and Nanette Craver were arrested in February at their home near Dillsburg after an autopsy concluded that Nathaniel Craver had about 80 external injuries — including 20 to his head — at the time of his Aug. 25 death. The Cravers are charged with homicide, conspiracy and child endangerment.

According to court documents, Michael Craver told police that the boy hit his head on the stove the night before he was found breathing but unresponsive in bed.

Andrey K. Yushmanov, counsel general of the Russian Federation in New York, and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tim Barker met along with other officials on the matter Friday.

Adoption regulator clueless on SC order

20 Mar 2010, 0916 hrs IST

There seems to be no respite for the surrogate German twins. Adoption

regulator Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) seems to be clueless on a

Supreme Court order to make an exception in the case, allowing the

AMERICAS NEWSMARCH 20, 2010
U.S. Aids Arrest of Player in Haiti Abductions



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By JOSÉ DE CORDOBA And EVAN PEREZ

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti—Dominican police accompanied by U.S. agents arrested the former self-styled legal adviser to a group of U.S. missionaries whose detention on charges of abducting Haitian children after the earthquake caused an uproar.

The emergence in January of Jorge Puello, 32 years old, reignited pending charges against him in the U.S. and El Salvador.

Mr. Puello was arrested Thursday night in the capital of Santo Domingo. Agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were present, U.S. law-enforcement officials said.

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Associated Press
Jorge Puello, seen in February, was detained in Santo Domingo.

These officials said they were acting on warrants from the U.S., where Mr. Puello is wanted in Vermont on charges of human trafficking and alien smuggling, and in Pennsylvania for parole violation on a bank-fraud conviction.

The U.S. plans to seek his extradition, the officials said.

In interviews last month conducted by telephone and email, Mr. Puello said he had also been known as Jorge Torres, the name on a 2003 Vermont indictment on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement human trafficking investigation.

That case went dormant but was revived when Mr. Puello stepped into public view carlier this year, according to a U.S. official.

Mr. Puello said he was also the person wanted in an El Salvador probe in connection with a sex-trafficking ring, broken up last year, in which women and girls from the Dominican Republic and elsewhere were lured into prostitution.

In the interviews, Mr. Puello said he was innocent of all charges. He couldn't be reached to comment Friday.

Soon after Haiti's Jan. 12 quake, Mr. Puello presented himself as the lawyer representing 10 U.S. Baptist missionaries arrested on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 as they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country.

The missionaries said they were rescuing children, including orphans from the quake, and taking them to a facility in the Dominican Republic that was being remodeled into an orphanage.

The children turned out not to be orphans. They had been given up by their desperately poor families to the missionaries, who promised the children would be cared for. They have since been returned.

Mr. Puello later acknowledged that he wasn't a lawyer.

The missionaries spent weeks in detention in Haiti while a judge investigated charges of child abduction. All but their leader, Laura Silsby, have since been released. Ms. Silsby is in jail, awaiting the judge's decision on whether to press formal charges.

Haitian officials complained that the attention given to the case was frustrating efforts to deal with the disaster that killed more than 220,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.

Mr. Puello's relationship to the missionaries also jeopardized their defense when it came to light that the dual U.S.-Dominican national was wanted in El Salvador on charges of leading a prostitution ring.

The revelations cast a shadow over the missionaries, characterized by their defense lawyers as naive do-gooders seeking to help Haitian children. The judge investigating the case said he needed to deepen his inquiry to see whether Mr. Puello had known the missionaries prior to their arrest. Both Mr. Puello and the missionaries denied any relationship before the missionaries' arrest.

Since 2004, Mr. Puello had also represented himself as a Sephardic Jew in the Dominican Republic and in El Salvador who had discovered large communities of "lost" or "crypto" Jews—descendants of Jews forcibly converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal during the 15th century. He obtained more than $5,000 from Kulanu, a U.S. Jewish foundation to support his work with "lost Jews."

Since Mr. Puello's background came to light, Kulanu has issued a statement repudiating him.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com and Evan Perez at

Adoption Agencies Banned From Asking Parents About Guns

by Mallory Creveling (Subscribe to Mallory Creveling's posts) Mar 19th 2010 6:36PM

Categories: Adoption, In The News

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A new bill, passed by the Florida Legislature and awaiting the governor's signature, bans adoption agencies from inquiring about potential parents' gun possessions, The Miami Herald reports.