Mureithi strongly denies that allegation. She and her colleague Jen Odiya, a senior child protection officer for the Child Welfare Society, maintain that their issue was not with the Nelsons, but with Little Angels' exclusive partnership clause with Carolina Adoptions.
"We went for a meeting with Little Angels to ask them if they could open the clause," says Mureithi. "They refused." Tom Jackson, the international director of Carolina Adoptions says the organization partnered with Little Angels because they felt it had the most integrity. "Realistically, there was one agency that was prepared," says Jackson. "We looked at the other agency and we were unprepared to deal with some of the issues surrounding it. After three months of wrangling, the Nelsons were finally told that Mercy was going to be adopted by a local couple and that they had been rejected.
Odiya says that because Mercy was placed in the care of Child Welfare Society, Little Angels and Carolina Adoptions should have included it in the process from the very beginning.
"The scenario would be different if they had started in a courteous manner," says Odiya. "To give up completely our rights to Little Angels was not acceptable."
Both Little Angels and Child Welfare Society deny that they are in the "business of adoption" and claim that all decisions are made in the best interest of the child. But The Cradle's Odero says after organizations meet the government's requirements for registration, there's little oversight on how they are actually run.
"The National Adoption Committee should be the regulating arm of what the adoption societies do," says Odero. "It needs to look into and be supervising the whole issue."
Kenya is not known for international adoption, but the country does have its share of orphans.
The government's Children's Department only collects official data on the country's total number of orphans every three years, but according to a 2006 address launching an initiative for children given by Moody Awori, the former vice president of Kenya, there are an estimated 1.8 million orphans in the country, mostly due to HIV/ AIDS deaths of parents. Children's rights advocates expect that number to rise this year because of post-election violence. The number of adoptions, by comparison is much smaller. In 2006 the government recorded only 100 international adoptions, and 69 domestic.
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