Poverty, Corruption Fuel Romanian Baby Trade

June 8, 2001 -- Imagine selling your child to the highest bidder — and getting away with it. For many Romanian families, it's not a nightmarish fantasy, but a common strategy for survival.

In a country whose capital was once known as the "Little Paris" of Eastern Europe, the illegal sale of babies has become a multimillion-dollar enterprise, sanctioned in some cases by corrupt public officials.

After years under the heel of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanians have struggled to get by in one of the poorest nations in Europe. The average salary is less than $1,000 a year, and an increasingly popular way to make a living is the sale of babies to brokers who make them available for international adoption.

Bargain Basement Babies

Adoption agencies have been accused of paying birth parents to sign away their parental rights, sometimes approaching the birth mothers while they are still in the maternity ward.

"I myself have been offered, by a mother, a child for $1,000," says missionary Michelle Kelly, who runs a private orphanage in the northwestern city of Oradea.

Posing as prospective adoptive parents, 20/20 reporters found Romanian parents offering to sell their babies for even less than $1,000.

Kelly, who came to Romania three years ago from North Carolina, claims it is not just parents and orphanage directors who profit from such illegal sales.

She alleges that corruption and kickbacks occur at all levels of the adoption business in Romania. And she says she received death threats after she alerted the U.S. Embassy to her suspicions about such corruption.

Simple, Cheap and Quick

In the city of Pitesti, 20/20 correspondent Tom Jarriel and producer Janice Tomlin visited a couple who reportedly supplied babies to a local orphanage director for $1,000 per child.

Their apartment building was dingy and dark. A sleepy, unshaven man greeted the Americans, whom he assumed from the outset were interested in babies.

Though his wife was absent, he offered to sell a 2-month-old baby named Mihai for the equivalent of $700.

The man said he would also provide the name of an orphanage director whom he promised could get the "official stamp of approval."

At a nearby hospital, the baby's desperately ill mother quickly agreed to her husband's price. In spite of her ailments, she accompanied Jarriel and Tomlin across town to the Children's Hospital, where Mihai lived with 25 other abandoned babies.

In short order, the baby was whisked to the sink for a bath, bundled up, and handed over to Tomlin.

The entire process took less than an hour.

The couple said Mihai was the 12th child they had put up for adoption — selling their own babies had become the family business.

It turns out, they are not that unusual.

Jarriel and Tomlin visited an impoverished Gypsy village where the baby business was said to be booming.

A woman called Argentina claimed she had an 18-month-old girl named Mihaela available for sale.

"She's a very beautiful girl," said Argentina. "You can see her, you take her only if you like her."

Her price: Enough money to buy herself a new house — less than $1,000.

Where Does the Money Go?

Without a visas and official adoption papers, it is unlikely Jarriel and Tomlin would have been able to leave the country with a baby, even if the they had obtained one.

Typically, Romanian parents will instead hand over a child to an orphanage with connections to adoption foundations. Those foundations then match the baby with an interested potential parent abroad.

Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geona acknowledges the problem and says the current government is determined to reform the adoption system.

"I think we'll be able, this time, to eventually deal with this problem," he said. "This will take only one or two or three years."

But according to an informal U.S. Embassy survey conducted five months ago, the average Romanian foundation receives $20,000 for every adoption it handles. Last year alone, at least $40 million were paid to Romanian foundations by Americans and Europeans hoping to adopt.

The money is supposed to be reinvested in programs and projects for abandoned children, but many of the orphanages remain understaffed and dilapidated.

Kelly is angry and demoralized that millions of dollars intended to improve the lives of the children cannot be accounted for.

"[The orphanages] don't have enough money to feed the children," she says. "I see what these children eat in the hospital, so if money is going back into child welfare, why aren't children eating?"