Child laundering
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Child laundering is a tactic used in illegal or fraudulent international adoptions. It may involve child trafficking and child acquisition through payment, deceit or force. The children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal adoption processes are used to send them to adoptive parents in another country.
Child laundering rings are often large and involve the black market. With Westerners willing to spend thousands of dollars to adopt a child, there is a monetary incentive to extend the laundering ring from the middle classes to societies' more affluent groups. These "baby broker" families subsequently forge a new identity for the laundered child, "validating" the child's legal status as an orphan and ensuring the scheme will not be uncovered.
See also
- Child-selling
- Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
- Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption
- International adoption
- List of international adoption scandals
- Trafficking of children
