YEARS OF HEARTBREAK: Zabeen's birth mother Fatima at a local tea shop; her daughter was taken as she played outside
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TIME has learned that Australian authorities had plenty of warning that MSS was a suspect agency and could have ended adoptions from it well before Zabeen's was processed. Five years earlier, a Western Australian family had their MSS adoption of a five-year-old girl canceled after an Indian court found the orphanage was lying when it said she had been abandoned. In reality, she'd been claimed by her uncle. Orphanage director Ravindranath told authorities the child was hallucinating when she insisted she had a family.
Documents obtained by TIME show that the Department of Community Development in W.A. was so concerned about the case that it sought a report on it in the mid-1990s. TIME has also been told that after the traumatic experience nobody in the state, including the government adoption unit, would deal with MSS. W.A. Child Protection director general Terry Murphy says he is unable to comment on the case until archived files are recovered, but notes: "We are aware that MSS are not currently licensed by the Central Authority in India to undertake inter-country adoptions." Elsewhere in Australia, it was a different story. MSS admission papers reveal that after the W.A. case, children were adopted to Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland. Some of the documents bear the same suspiciously vague details of mother and address as Zabeen's MSS papers do.
Alarm bells
Authorities had another warning in 1999, when MSS' licence was suspended after one of its staff was arrested for handling four babies stolen from a hospital. He passed the children to another adoption agency, Madras Social Service Guild, known as MASOS, which has also sent children to Australia. Charges against the agencies were dropped, since it could not be proved they knew the children were stolen; both had their licenses restored.
In 2001, India's Central Adoption Resource Agency, which is responsible for clearing children for inter-country adoption, inspected MSS' home. It found there was no midwife or nurse present and that medical files were not properly kept. MSS had made little effort to place children with parents in India — something they were obliged to do before offering them for adoption overseas. And in most cases the surrender forms were signed by the same two witnesses. The inspectors also found that MSS was double-dipping on government funding, taking money from two sources for the same group of children. Key documents on child admissions were missing. Children listed at one unit did not exist, while children in other units had no records. Many children were neglected, undernourished and had diarrhea.
MSS director Ravindranath died in 2006, but his wife Vatsala, who was the organization's president, last week denied all charges, saying MSS had no idea the children were stolen. "I'm not handling the surrender. I don't remember it," says the grandmother, who must report daily to police in Chennai as part of her bail conditions. "I trusted [my staff] because I asked them, If there is anything, please tell me. They are promising on the heads of their children."
At least two parent support groups in Australia are still collecting money for MSS. As recently as last week, Adoption Support for Families and Children in W.A. was seeking donations on its website to help MSS with sponsorships and to fund its medical clinic. Mrs. Ravindranath says MSS has no medical clinic. Documents seen by TIME indicate that ASFC last year paid nearly $7,000 to MSS. The group launched an investigation into the issue this week after being contacted by TIME; president Khris Ryan-Wilson says it has been donating sponsorships, but there has been no suggestion they were not above board: "ASFC has had no reason to doubt that those funds do reach and benefit the children for whom they are intended."
MSS says it received about $3,420 last year from Victoria's Australian Support for Intercountry Aid (Children). President Glenys Chandler says she liaised closely with a number of families who adopted from MSS, and dealt with the agency herself, but was unaware of any problems. The Victorian Human Services Department is aware of two adoptions through MSS, but a spokesman says it had received "no approaches about the adoptions from India." One of the adopting families has told TIME that their two children were personally delivered to Australia by Dinesh Ravindranath, son of MSS's principals. "We would definitely like to find out what has happened," says the mother. "You are telling us more than we have ever been told." MSS records indicate the children were transferred from the Crying Children's Adoption Agency; it claims their mother surrendered the pair because they were born out of wedlock, although the children were born a year apart.
"Each department needs to contact those families," says ASIAC's Chandler. "If the children get wind that their placement may be in jeopardy it would be very concerning." She says inter-country adoption is "a very splendid thing, and when it runs off the rails it's extremely sad." MSS says it received funds from both agencies, but that the money was destined for children not connected to the adoption agency, to help with their schooling. ASIAC says it is sure its money is being used for that purpose.
Indian human-rights organizations are now studying donations made to the suspect agencies. "Payment sustains the whole trafficking network," says Sujatha Mody, a lawyer who runs the Malarchi Women's Resource Centre. "Some people say, Why are they bothered about one child? But [payment for] one child sustains the whole philosophy of making children a commodity."
For the unsuspecting Australian parents, the potential custody cases are a nightmare in waiting. But former Family Court Judge John Fogarty, who compiled a Victorian government report on inter-country adoptions, says the chances of the biological parents reclaiming their children are remote. "I wouldn't like to be acting for the Indian parents," he says. "You might get pro-bono lawyers, but the bottom line would be the best interests of the child, and that may be a one-way street. If you compared the position of the child in Australia returning to poverty in India, you would have to be a pretty dramatic judge to send a child back to the slums."
Fatima knows the chances of her daughter returning to Chennai are slim, but she still dreams. "If she wants to come back we will embrace her," she says. "But if it is her desire to stay where she now is, we will only wish her well."