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Guatemalan Child Theft/Adoption

January 9, 2015 permalink

A journalist has assembled all of the pieces of the fraudulent adoption of a Guatemalan girl by a Missouri family. In January 2005 Dayner Orlando Hernández and his wife Loyda Rodríguez gave birth to a daughter they named Anyelí. In November 2006 she was kidnapped and within Guatemala's corrupt adoption system given the false identity of Karen Abigail Lopéz García and a false mother, Felicita Antonia López. When dna of the child did not match the purported mother, the adoption was stalled, but not for long. A Guatemalan court declared the child abandoned and the adoption by Missouri parents Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan was completed.

The birth parents pursued a diligent search for their lost daughter and eventually, given access to their country's adoption records, found her, but only four months after she had departed for the United States. Many Guatemalans involved in the fraudulent adoption have been convicted for their crimes or are awaiting trial. The adopters have used American law to fight all efforts by the real parents to connect with their daughter. Anyelí/Karen will soon be old enough to find her own story with Google, learning that the adults she thought of as loving parents were the ones who financed the entire fiasco with their adoption fees. When she reaches the age of majority, the US may refuse to treat her as a citizen because of the fraudulent documents used to obtain her initial US passport. She will have the choice of living in Guatemala, where she does not know the language and customs, or continuing as an illegal immigrant in the US.

To keep all of this story in one place, the investigative report has been added as an addendum to an earlier story Stolen Baby Found.

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