Cambodian Adoption

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Cambodia. The stunning landscapes, historic temples, and beauty of its people often mask its wrenching poverty and widespread corruption. It is nation ripe for exploitation. Most Americans who came here to adopt orphans were unaware that the woman they trusted to find their children was under suspicion for being the ringleader of a baby selling operation.

JUDITH MOSLEY

063150 They were commodities to ... to Lauryn Galindo, she created the very market that existed, and she's responsible for that.

LAURYN GALINDO

T9 09:17:28 I have never been involved or charged with anything other than paperwork errors. And that's what I pled to, that's what I'm going to go to prison for. //

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But the US government insists it was more than simple errors, Lauryn Galindo, they say, was involved in baby trafficking. They found evidence her adoption business paid Cambodian mothers for their babies, sometimes for as little as the cost of a bag of rice.

JUDI MOSLEY

060750 There are enough orphans in this world to go around without recruiting children that are from happy families. //

LAURYN GALINDO

T8 08:11:00 I never wanted to hurt anyone. // 08:27:17 you have to understand my motivation was pure in helping these children. //

NARRATION

This is a story of tragedy and betrayal, a war between women who longed to adopt a child and the woman they trusted to make it happen. What terrible secrets did parents discover once they returned home that turned the joy of adoption into heartbreak?

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

T2 [02;28;23;13] I went in to adopt an orphan. I didn't go in to adopt someone, a purchased child from a vulnerable woman. //

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By all accounts, Lauryn Galindo's work started with good intentions. In 1990, amidst unthinkable human suffering, Galindo traveled to Cambodia. Decades of war and the genocidal murder of nearly two million people had destroyed Cambodia and left it one of the poorest nations on earth. Stories of selling children were common—whether for prostitution, slave labor or even adoption. With thousands of children in need of homes, Galindo set up the first US adoptions from Cambodia. And American parents, like Judi Mosley, eager for a child looked to Galindo for a quick adoption.

JUDITH MOSLEY

T24 063021 that's why people used to like to adopt from Cambodia, you'd get three week old infants, and one after the other after the other, there was just no shortage of baby girls, or baby boys, //

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For Carol Rauschenberger, a child from Cambodia would be her first adoption.

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

[01;02;36;06] I wasn't able to have any more children. And so thought that adoption would be a good way to grow my family. //

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Michelle Goff of North Carolina hoped to adopt a baby girl.

MICHELLE GOFF

We got a phone call that said, we've got referrals of some little girls out in Cambodia. And our daughter was one of them. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

You got on the airplane at that point? // 02:19:51 Had you ever been to Cambodia before?

MICHELLE GOFF

No.

ELIZABETH VARGAS

What did you think when you saw it?

MICHELLE GOFF

02:19:55 I thought, oh my, get the ... get the cattle off the runway, which was my first thought, which, I mean if you've been there, you know. //

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Closer to their dream, these adoptive parents described arriving in a strange country disoriented but anxious to meet the child they had only seen in pictures.

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

[01;12;16;24] And the driver picked me up straight from the airport, // and took me straight to the orphanage. // it was a little strange at that moment because // they ran out to the car with my son in, um, the nanny's arms and just handed him to me. [01;12;43;19] And they told me just to get in the car and go to the hotel. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

[01;12;54;04] So you never spoke to anybody? They just handed you this child?

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

[01;12;56;26] Yeah. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

[01;13;09;08] Did that feel…odd?

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

Yeah. It did. It did. //

JUDITH MOSLEY

T24 062451 and you're whisked in and whisked out of places, and you really don't get much time to think about anything, // 062416 If you want to get home with your child, then just do as you're told and question nothing. //

NARRATION

Parents passed the days waiting in hotel rooms for their baby's exit visas and for Lauryn Galindo to show up to collect, in cash, what she called an orphanage donation fee. In 1999, that's what happened to Carol Rauschenberger and her 5 month old adopted son Sam.

ELIZABETH VARGAS

[01;26;29;08] How did she strike you when the two of you met? //

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

// T1 [01;26;44;10] she sort of smiled at Sam with a kind of a glazed over look and got to business. It was sort of like the child was the incidental in, in the transaction here. // And // she asked for the cash, which, you know…

ELIZABETH VARGAS

[01;27;09;13] Right away?

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

Yes. And, um, I gave it to her. // [01;27;34;03] But I thought for giving back to the children in Cambodia, I'm happy to do that. //

NARRATION

Galindo directed some families back to the orphanage if they wanted more information about their child. When Rauschenberger drove to Sam's orphanage she learned from the director who his birth mother was.

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

She gave me the name of the village, and, // said // that his mother had, // relinquished him because she had, uh, five other children and, and, um, no husband at that time. [01;18;34;16] //

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But then just before leaving the country, Galindo handed Rauschenberger Sam's paperwork that strangely listed his birth parents as "unknown." Odd, she thought, but satisfied that Sam was a legitimately abandoned, she took her baby and left Cambodia. Over the years, Rauschenberger, through a third party, sent photos of Sam back to his birth mother; pictures that last year unlocked an awful secret when she read this newspaper article about baby selling in Cambodia. In it a birth mother, riddled with guilt, told how she was coerced into giving up her baby boy. The article described photographs the birth mother had received. To Rauschenberger's horror she realized the boy in the pictures was her adopted son Sam and the article said he had been sold by his birth mother.

carol rauschenberger

T2 [02;12;16;20] And I think at first, you know, it's almost like your blood runs cold. // [03;12;23;21] So I have another mother's baby, // that, um, I didn't mean to have. // I have the worst case scenario. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T3 [03;28;09;29] Do you still feel guilty?

CAROL RAUSCHENBERGER

Um hum. // [03;28;12;25] I think that, um, I was part of a process that I'm not proud of. //

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From 1997 to 2001, Galindo facilitated 800 adoptions for American families, more than half of all Cambodian adoptions. No one knows how many of those orphans were in fact real orphans or how many Cambodian mothers were tricked into selling their babies. Galindo insists it was the responsibility of the Cambodian government, orphanages and her own staff to make sure children were legally abandoned.

LAURYN GALINDO

08:10:28 I ... was not part of the abandonment of children ever.

elizabeth vargas

You never checked to make sure that the babies that you went to the orphanage to pick 08:26:40 up and give to American families were really orphans?

LAURYN GALINDO

08:26:45 All the children (Overlap)

ELIZABETH VARGAS

08:26:46 You relied just on the Cambodian government?

LAURYN GALINDO

08:26:47 Absolutely ... I did. // 08:16:36 it's clear that there are going to be some mistakes over 13 years.

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T8 08:17:31 It's a pretty big mistake (Overlap)

LAURYN GALINDO

(Inaudible)

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T8 08:17:32 ... though. // T8 08:17:40 shouldn't they expect to be adopting children who truly are either orphaned or abandoned? And not some other mother's child.

LAURYN GALINDO

T8 08:17:51 I agree. And ... to the best of my knowledge ... the children were all properly abandoned. // T9 09:09:44 And all I could tell her is I am so sorry. And how can she live with it? She can continue to, you know, just be the best mother she can be. //

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Michelle Goff also became suspicious when the documents of her 16 month old child showed the birth parents as "unknown." Concerned--and having grown up in a law enforcement family--Goff set out to find more facts. At the orphanage she was shocked to learn that for a price she could look into a book of records no one was suppose to see.

michelle goff

T66 01:08:29 he popped the book open, and laid it down. There were little pictures of children going down the sides. And there was a little tiny picture of my daughter over there. And he said, for 500, we'll translate the information. So I paid him. //

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The hidden book -- like this one -- contained names of mothers and fathers suggesting that some children weren't orphans after all. Goff, fearing her daughter was not a real orphan, raised concerns to officials at the US embassy. Incredibly, despite the appearance of fraud, an official cleared Goff and her new daughter to leave Cambodia.

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T66 01:10:02 he just told you, we know that this sort of lying happens on the visa applications, and no big deal ...

MICHELLE GOFF

T66 01:10:07 (Overlap) ... we know that the allegations in the books existed, that our case was cleared, and to go ahead and go. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T66 01:10:36 Did you consider leaving her in Cambodia?

MICHELLE GOFF

01:10:40 It's like being split in two. You want to be a mother, but you don't want to do something wrong. //

ELIZABETH VARGAS

T66 01:13:18 At that point, too, how bonded had you become with your daughter? //

MICHELLE GOFF

T66 01:13:21 When you look in the eyes of a child, that you think needs 01:13:38 to have a parent, and you want to be a parent so very badly again, you can't separate the heart strings.

narration

Suspicious or not, hundreds of American families took their babies and left…some, completely unaware that their children were recruited from desperate Cambodian mothers like this woman, who told us she sold her child in exchange for American dollars.

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