James and Rachelle's Story: Wading through deception longing to know the truth about 3 precious children

We debated as to whether we would share our story publicly, but after prayerful consideration, we have decided to speak up. We will not continue to sit in the dark and ignore what has been done, pretending it hasn't affected our family and many others. As Christ's followers, we have a responsibility to speak the truth, especially when the truth will act as a voice for children that God loves so much!  We are desperate for others to know the truth and then be moved to action. We long for others to see the truth for what it is, not what they wish it to be. We also desire to protect others from experiencing something similar, so we are being vulnerable with our messy adoption story. 

Some people have been criticized for standing up and sharing on a public forum, but the truth is, they have a voice, and we have a voice. Despite the fact that our family does not belong to a well known organization who can "publicly make a statement" and it be just fine, we have just as much a right as any other to speak the truth, and we will. Following is our experience thus far, however we are certain that the Lord is not finished with us and is going to make beauty from ashes. 

James went to Haiti to help friends start their mission in March of 2011. It was during this trip that he met Heather Elyse and learned of her organizations, Giving Hope Rescue Mission and Voice of the Orphan. We began following her on FB and the Voice of the Orphan and Giving Hope Rescue Mission websites so we could keep up with what was happening. We already knew we were called to Haiti and both agreed that we would go through her organizations when we did finally decide to pursue an adoption. The reasons we chose VOTO and GHRM were because we were told the kids learned about the love of Jesus there and that nobody made money off the adoptions; it appeared that everyone truly had pure hearts and cared deeply about the children. Another reason we chose to go through this agency/crèche was because we were promised that our fees and documents would be returned to us if staff was unable to get us into IBESR (the Haitian government's department of children and family services). The main deciding factor was that the children at GHRM were all "legally free for adoption" as stated by Heather and posted on the GHRM website. It was and is very important to our family that the kids at the crèche we adopted from were legitimately there and had nobody who could or wished to care for them. Heather also shared that she had completed over 50 adoptions in Haiti and had a 100% success rate, so we felt confident in her ability to complete ours as well.

In August of 2012, we began our adoption journey through VOTO and Giving Hope Rescue Mission.

We didn't meet any of the criteria and were informed our case was "high risk," but Heather felt that we would be approved. We were told that a dispensation would grant us forgiveness for not meeting the criteria. We were also asked to write a cohabitation letter and have our doctor write an infertility letter. Heather told us it should take 12-18 months to complete our adoption. We had our completed dossier turned in by September/October of 2012. We rushed to get it there and sent money immediately ($12,000) to cover half of our adoption fees. We requested a boy and girl both under the age of 3 (younger than our biological daughter) and wanted a sibling set. 

We went on a mission trip to Giving Hope Rescue Mission September 2012. During this trip, We were allowed to spend the afternoon at the beach with two children from GHRM that we felt a strong connection with. There were two babies, who were living at Club Indigo at the time, that we asked to spend time with and were allowed to. We also met the children that we eventually received a referral for during this trip, spending quite a bit of time with the youngest girl. 

After this, we waited...and waited for a referral. We kept being told that it was nearing time for a referral but never would receive one. Heather contacted us throughout the next few months on a few occasions, asking us to consider 3 children. The final time that Heather asked us to consider three children, we prayed about it and then told her that we would consider a set of three but that we still wanted them to be siblings and not be older than 4.  In April 2013, we got our referral of a sibling set of 3, who we were told needed a family desperately and were all legally free for adoption. We were initially told that they were true orphans (no living parents) and it should be an easy case since the bio parents were no longer living but then many weeks after accepting our referral and paying our fees, we were told it was one of the most difficult messy cases they had seen and that the boy may have a living father. We were also told that their family who they lived with prior to coming to GHRM had severely neglected them and that if they did try to come back and get the kids that Heather would take them to court to prove that it was not in the best interest of the kids. We officially and excitedly accepted our referral a few short days after receiving it and immediately sent in the other $6000 to cover half of the fees for adding a 3rd child. We also immediately began paying $947 a month to Room for Grace International (our contract stated we must send payment through them) to cover child care costs. While talking with Heather about our referral she explained how she came to match us with the specific children. She shared that as she listened to my husband's testimony, their faces kept playing over in her head and that she knew they belonged to us.

In May 2013, myself, my husband and our 5 year old daughter went to spend 3 days with our new children. We paid a fee of $700 to travel. In addition we paid for airfare, hotel, all food, and brought everything our children needed while they stayed with us. They spent the night with us two nights and spent 3 full days with us. The oldest one called me Momma, and we were told by GHRM missionaries they had been practicing saying Momma and Daddy so they would know who we were.

Shortly after this trip, we were told that there was going to be an opportunity for dossiers to be submitted but that we would need to send $3000 per dossier to pay an "influence" to get the dossiers into IBESR. We sent the money ($9000) without question and immediately. We didn't want to miss an opportunity to be submitted and actually start the process to bring our kids home. We were also told during this time that our dossier was in IBESR and that it was a guarantee that we would be assigned a number once the missing documents were added to our file. 

On June 3rd, we received a text message from Heather stating that court did not go well. We had no idea our kids had court that day and immediately called Heather because we were under the impression that they would have already had any court dates to secure an abandonment document, since we were told they were "legally available for adoption." At this time we were told that the "uncle" said he was the father in court and refused to sign the abandonment doc and that he then fled and could not be found. Heather said that she could not have seen this coming and that she was going to send out a search for the uncle/dad and take him to court and/or send out a search to find 6 different family members to sit in the 6 member council so we could get the documents we needed. We expressed our concern about it to Heather and several other VOTO people. They all seemed to understand and assured us they would be working to find out what the next steps would be. For the next 6-7 weeks, we continued to ask what was being done about our case but never got an answer. 

There is an Adopting from Haiti page that we are members of and saw at one point a particular attorney posted that if somebody hadn't gotten into IBESR to let him know so he could help. We had heard of several other VOTO families using an independent attorney so we messaged him and asked if it was possible for him to help us. This was the same attorney that the other families were using, as we found out in corresponding with him and the other families. He said he could try to find the uncle/dad but that he would have to have Heather's permission to help with the case. We then asked Heather if we could allow him to help. She adamantly refused, telling us he is not a real attorney and that he will create false documents which will hurt our adoption when it heads to immigration in the US. Heather told us that we could use this attorney but that she could have nothing to do with him adoption related and that we would have to transfer our kids to another creche if we chose to use him.

We stopped asking questions about this because we didn't want to lose our kids indefinitely and weren't sure how Heather would take our constant asking to change things up; Heather had told us in person that she was known for cancelling adoptions when parents chose not to wait well.

It was shortly after this that "Wesmin" posted on the Voice of the Orphan page that all children were part of the GHRM family and would not be moved, that if families wanted their money back, they could have it but the children would not transfer.

We also found out through this season of our journey that this attorney who we were told was not a real attorney had represented GHRM against other adoptive parents in the past in Haiti. We wonder if he is not a real attorney, why Heather/GHRM would or could use him.

We had continued to ask several times what the status was of finding the uncle/dad of our son. Heather replied to us early July and told us that she did not have the money or manpower to have a man hunt for the uncle and that "per Wesmin, the kids are simply not adoptable." She then told us that she had 3 other kids for us to adopt that were paper ready and could send us a referral immediately and submit our dossiers that upcoming Friday, which was only 4 days later. She directed us to a picture of one of the little girls and said it was a cousin to one of her daughters and that this girl lived at the Justice Rescue creche. 

Just 4 days after finding out our kids were "not adoptable," we received an email from VOTO telling us that adoptions were frozen through GHRM and VOTO due to false allegations of 3 formerly contracted families. They asked that we write letters of praise about VOTO and GHRM and send them to our state rep, IBESR and USCIS. 

With just losing our referral, we were not ready to accept another one yet. We also needed to do some more research into what exactly was going on before continuing with an adoption in Haiti. We wrote a letter to VOTO and asked for our money and dossier back. We cc'd Heather Elyse and Tim Rowe. 

Then began a month of horror for our family. August 2013. We will never forget it. We talked to an authority who gave us facts only and also gave us multiple phone numbers, including a contact in Indiana to check on the VOTO license at the time we signed our contract. She said she didn't want us to take her word for any of it but wanted us to find the facts ourselves. It was at this point we found out that VOTO was not even legally able to perform adoptions AS AN AGENCY when we signed our contract last year and that they and GHRM should never have sent us a referral at all because they were not allowing pre-matched dossiers any longer. We also talked to many other families like ourselves in similar situations, most far worse than ours. 

After 4-5 weeks from the date we initially asked, we were given a refund of our adoption fees. Our dossier, however, has still not been returned. We had been asking for it multiple times a week for around 7 weeks and kept being told that VOTO staff were looking into it. We were told 3 different stories by 3 different staff members. The final story we received was that when Heather was detained at the airport on July 31, that all her belongings were with her and that our dossier was one of those items. We were told that her things were stolen and have still not been returned and that they have exhausted all efforts to get them back. We were told that we should consider them stolen. We were also told that the embassy was aware of the situation. When we called the embassy, they denied having any knowledge of this situation. After calling multiple people of authority to verify this story and attempt to report our missing dossier, we have become aware that the story of our dossier being stolen is not true and that the only thing taken at the airport that day was Heather's passport. AUTHORITIES TOLD US THAT OUR DOSSIER LIKELY INCLUDED FALSE DOCUMENTATION which made it appear that we met criteria to adopt and therefor could have been destroyed rather than being returned to us. We will now have to recreate our entire dossier to proceed with an adoption in Haiti, which will cost nearly $6,000.

We sent an email to VOTO, Heather and Time Rowe, explaining what authorities told us about our dossier and begging them to transfer the kids we were matched with to a licensed creche so we could work with an approved agency to find the truth of their past, and if they are adoptable, attempt to adopt them. We were responded to by "Wesmin" and told that this could not be done unless Heather made an exception (which she had already told us in a previous message we could do). He also told us that now GHRM has information on our kids and has found the missing family member so we could continue with our adoption through MLJ (who isn't even working with Giving Hope Rescue Mission any longer).

Heather responded by telling us how much the email hurt her and that she would have to heal before responding to us. She still has not addressed our email other than to say "I would not do that to your dossier."

Despite our questions regarding new information about the kids' situation, we still have received no new information. We question whether there is new information to share due to the lack of transparency by GHRM. We have received zero answers to the many questions we have asked regarding our children but have received plenty of texts and correspondence bullying us, specifically regarding emails we sent in confidence to an entity in Indiana as a complaint against the way our adoption was done. The way our family has been treated has been unprofessional, at best.

We have recently been in contact with Tim Rowe, president of Voice of the Orphan. Due to the constant emotional manipulation from Heather, we have chosen to stop communication with her and only communicate with Tim. We requested from VOTO that they pay a fee in place of our missing dossier, and Tim shared that Heather agreed to reimburse us for our missing dossier (approximately $4700, because that is what we kept receipts from) and to transfer the children to a place that we and GHRM both agreed upon. We continue to wait to receive a check for the dossier amount, and it has been several weeks since this agreement was made. We also continue to wait for just under $3,000 reimbursement for child care costs that Heather offered to pay back WITHOUT OUR REQUEST.

 It has been three months since Heather stated she would pay that back. In no way has Heather or GHRM assisted us as they relayed to Tim Rowe that they would do. Nothing has been followed through with. Because of this, we see that there was never intention to "reconcile" as Heather stated she wanted to do. After talking with IBESR in person, we now realize how many lies we have been told. We have much more insight as to the way adoptions in Haiti are to be done and also now realize that aside from IBESR, nobody can give permission to move children elsewhere. WE HAVE BEEN TO IBESR AND TALKED TO THE DIRECTOR OURSELVES. Do to the number of false documents USCIS has retrieved from numerous other dossiers from GHRM and the small number of GHRM children actually registered with IBESR, AUTHORITIES QUESTION WHETHER THE CHILDREN WE WERE REFERRED AND OTHER CHILDREN AT GHRM ARE LEGALLY ELIGIBLE FOR ADOPTION. In our kids' case, it has not ever been determined.

In speaking with other adoptive moms, it has come to our attention that the oldest girl we received a referral for was also proposed to another family, unofficially. She was proposed to family A in October 2012 and was given the name "Naomi" and was supposedly alone and without siblings. We received the referral for the same child in April 2013. The name given to us was "Biance" and she came with a younger sister and male cousin. The photos shared with us for our referral and the other family are THE EXACT SAME CHILD. Now on top of the confusion we have already experienced, we question whether these children truly are related and if we have even been given their correct names. At this point we question everything we were told.

Our 5 year old still prays for her sisters and brother in Haiti. She still cries at night when she asks if they will come home, and we are honest and have to tell her probably not.

There are too many inconsistencies with our kids' story and whether they have a living parent or not or if they are even really siblings. However, we still have hope that we will know the truth about "our" children and stay in contact in some way. We would be willing to sponsor them in school and help provide for their needs if it is found that they are not able to be adopted. If they truly are adoptable, we pray they are moved elsewhere so we can pursue them once again. We love them very much and intend to be their voice and advocate on their behalf until the Lord asks us to remain silent. We appreciate your prayers for our family as well as the other families and children affected.

JAMES AND RACHELLE 

Zach and Karena's Story: We put our trust in the wrong person

On May 25th, 2012, approximately 17 months after we initiated the adoption of three Haitian children (not via Giving Hope Rescue Mission), the lawyer representing our adoption sent us this email:

"The presidential waiver is requested only when the adoptive parents have biological children. This last months IBESR has been very strict with the requirements for the adoptive parents' age and number of year of marriage. Even if you have been married for more than 10 years you will have a problem with your age. The actual law is clear: One of the spouse has to be at least 35. However we are expecting new adoptions regulations and we are partially sure that some of those requirements will change. I am so sorry! Best regards”

After we got this email we were devastated. We knew that we didn’t meet the adoption qualifications for Haiti but had always believed, based on what we were told, that we could get a presidential dispensation. 

We called and talked with the director at the orphanage where our kids were living and she told us that the attorney was correct and that we would need to wait until we were 35 years old or the law changed. She said we should pray for the law to change and that was pretty much it. We were not given any other option. Waiting until we turned 35 meant waiting another 4 years to submit our file and then however long it would take to process. So we started praying about this and started contacting other Haitian adoption attorneys for advice.

What we found was that most Haitian attorneys would not take our case. They also told us the lawyer we had already spoken with was correct and there was nothing they could do. We continued on our search for someone that could help us.

On June 12, 2012 we had our first contact with Heather Elyse. I sent her an email with some detail about our situation and the kids we were adopting. Within a few hours I received an email back from her stating.

“Oh dear that doesn't sound good. Let me see if we can process your adoption. I know we have a waiting list... Maybe we can sneak you in. Please don't wait 4 years ... That's ridiculous. I'm 31 and adopted three Haitian children ... It's risky. Takes longer... Sometimes over 1-2 years.  It's 100% risk. No guarantees. Lots of ups and downs.  If you are willing to go through the fire for your kids... I would be happy to go through the fire with you. They are worth it and definitely need someone to fight for them. I am sorry I can't make this longer. On a plane headed back to Haiti. Let's talk on the phone soon. (number removed for privacy) 

Don't be discouraged. Also... Hopefully you haven't paid anyone anything??? 

The impossible can be done. ..... I am living proof of This.”**** see footnote

Her response at the time brought tears to our eyes….. We had been hoping for someone to give us some hope and here we had it! I emailed her back to set up a time to talk and waited for her response and then on June 15, 2012 I called Heather in Haiti and we talked for almost an hour. She assured me that she would be able to get us into the adoption process. She said we would be a high-risk case and she didn’t want any money from us until our kids were home… She said even if we didn’t have the money then we could make monthly payments to her. We talked about how much she would charge us to process our adoption. She would be getting completed U.S. side dossiers from our family and completed individual dossiers (Haitian paperwork needed for the process) for each of our children from their orphanage, so we basically just needed help getting into IBESR and through the rest of the process.

She told me she would need to talk to her lawyer but she thought they could get everything done for $4,500 per child. I asked her multiple times that night if she needed us to pay money up front and she said no many times. She told me the most important thing was to send her our dossier. She wanted me to email Michelle (cofounder) several of my documents so they could look at them and make sure they were how they wanted them. She told me that they (Giving Hope Rescue Mission) submit stuff “differently” to IBESR and everyone there at the IBESR office in Haiti loves them.

I contacted Michelle and she wanted a few things changed. We had our homestudy agency add approval for a 4th child and we got an infertility/pregnancy complications letter from our Ob/gyn saying that we should not have any more biological children. We had the changes made and scrambled to get everything back to Michelle.

On July 14^th 2012 I drove our dossier to meet Michelle and I was told it would be going to Haiti the very next day! Once the dossier was in Haiti the next step would be Pre-IBESR where our dossier is reviewed and legalized (generally takes 2-4 weeks.) On July 17, 2012 we were told on the private Voice of the Orphan adoptive families facebook group that our file had entered Pre-IBESR. We were excited we felt like a big step was just completed and our file was moving! We were then told one month later that our file had exited Pre-IBESR on August 16, 2012 and we were now ready to enter IBESR.

The only thing needed was the kids dossiers….

As we were getting Heather all of our U.S. paperwork and our file was going through Pre-IBESR we had been in contact with the orphanage director where our three children were living (they had never lived at Giving Hope Rescue Mission.) We were trying to work things out so we could use Voice of The Orphan to process our adoption. Our orphanage director had some reservations about us contracting with Voice of the Orphan and Giving Hope Rescue Mission, but we continued to push on feeling this was what God was telling us to do.

During this time I had requested some information from Heather and she had her assistant call me and talk with me. Our orphanage needed some information from Heather regarding Voice of the Orphan (for which she was Vice President) and their Hague status. Our orphanage was also requesting attorney information so they could check out the attorney used by Heather/Giving Hope Rescue Mission in Haiti. I talked with Heather’s assistant on the phone and provided her with the questions that needed to be answered. 

They/Voice of the Orphan never could give us what we had asked for. Which should have been a red flag. But we continued on. On July 30^th we sent Heather’s assistant an email with our kids’ info and whom she needed to contact in Haiti at their orphanage to be able to obtain their dossiers. Heather had made multiple promises to call our orphanage but it never happened. It was our understanding that Heather was going to set up a meeting with our orphanage director and meet with her and hopefully be able to work together in getting our file into IBESR.

On August 10^th 2012 (just days after Heather’s child was supposedly murdered in Haiti see story I here) I received an urgent call from Heather who said she was in Colorado at the time. We were in MN for work and I remember stepping outside of the Mall of America in the cold to take the call. I remember the phone call lasting 30 minutes or longer. We always took notes during each call and so they are vivid in my memory. Heather told me that Wesmin Garcon, her adoption liaison, had called and talked to the staff at our childrens’ orphanage and that they were very mean to him.

Heather told me that our orphanage told Wesmin that they were not willing to let us adopt the children, that we never asked for an approval to adopt the kids, and that they only adopt to “elite” families. They supposedly told Wesmin that they only worked with 3 agencies, case closed.

This information was shocking. It didn’t sound like something our orphanage would say (we had been in relationship with them for a long time) and I thought surely there must be a misunderstanding. I was in a fog and we had no idea what we were going to do.

Heather proceeded to tell me she was “on the floor crying” for me and praying and how sorry she was. Heather told me she was so upset about this, she felt we had been mistreated and lied to by our orphanage, and she wanted to “expose” them. She went on and on about how bad our orphanage was. She wanted to bring bad media coverage to our orphanage. She said what they were doing was “fraud, exploitation of children and deceptive practices.” (Little did we know that was Heather’s game and she was good at it!) She then told me she felt our case was a “fraud” case and she would process the adoption for free. Heather told me she had to go and I was to call her back that evening to get our game plan together as to what we were going to do.

I tried calling her back multiple times that night and never heard from her.

On August 16, 2012 I finally heard back from Heather by email. She wanted me to call her that night and we could talk more. We spoke to Heather on the phone that night and the plan she had come up with was for us to let her submit our dossier with one of the babies living at Giving Hope Rescue Mission creche! She explained that doing this would get us in to IBESR and then when she was able to get our kids dossiers from our orphanage she would just “add them to the file.” She told us IBESR lets her add children to dossiers all the time and this wouldn’t be a problem. She told us that if we didn’t want a 4^th child it would be ok and that Tim Rowe (President of Voice of the Orphan) would “fix everything” when we got home.

Very similar to what she posted on the VOTO adoptive families group (of which Tim was a member):

We really weren't sure what to think. We had been to visit our kids in Haiti 4 times over the previous year. How in the world could our orphanage, which had previous supported our adoption, not approve us to adopt the kids? It just didn’t make sense. We had paid our orphanage money towards our adoption. We had signed contracts. The story just didn’t add up and we felt suspicious.

After speaking to our orphanage about this incident they told us a whole different story of what happened. They were unclear who Wesmin was and when he called them he didn’t explain who he was and talked to them about sponsoring our kids instead of our adoption. He asked for their dossiers but he never mentioned our names. The conversation Heather described to us did not happen in the way she portrayed it. We were, of course, glad that our orphanage was not willing to give away our childrens’ adoption paperwork to a stranger who was calling and not explaining his intentions!

On September 8, 2012 our orphanage finally agreed to let us use Voice of the Orphan (against their better judgement they told us) and VOTO/Giving Hope Rescue Mission’s Haitian attorney Guerdine. We emailed VOTO right away to let them know and to make them aware that our orphanage would be calling Guerdine on Monday. We just didn’t want anything getting messed up as we felt we were so close.  We got a response from VOTO via Heather’s assistant giving us Guerdine’s contact information so we could let our orphanage know who to call. We never heard anything from Heather.

On September 11, 2012 we received a phone call from our children’s orphanage director stating that she had talked to Heather’s attorney Guerdine and that Guerdine she said she wouldn’t take our case for VOTO/GHRM. We called and emailed Heather to try and get answers but heard nothing from anyone. Our orphanage director told us about the conversation with Guerdine:

“She said that there are 2 problems.  One is your age and the second is that the kids are not registered to Voice of the Orphan.  That's why she refused the case.  I will be happy to talk with Heather and see what she says...  Praying...  Blessings!”

That was exactly what we were afraid would happen. No one from Voice of the Orphan had contacted Guerdine to let her know our orphanage would be calling and there appeared to be major miscommunication.

On September 13, 2012 we received another message from our orphanage that they still hadn’t heard anything from Voice of the Orphan and that our kids’ dossiers/paperwork was ready. The 14^th of September was the IBESR deadline for fall adoption submission and we knew we were so so close. All Heather and her staff had to do was go and pick up the kids dossiers and then we could be submitted.

Email from our orphanage director: 

“Karena, The files are completed and ready to be picked up.  No one has contacted me, but the files are ready.” 

I had been in contact with another VOTO staff member that day and it was my understanding that another staff member who was going to Haiti was going to pick up the kids' dossiers that day and then be able to submit the next day. Then that night around 6:30 we were told our kids dossier didn’t get picked up and they would be doing so in the morning. We were also being told that there might be an extension for submission to IBESR so just pray for the papers to be picked up and for an extension.

On the morning of 09/14/2012 we were told we were good. Heather and a VOTO staff member had talked to our orphanage director and they were on the way to get our kids dossiers. We were filled with HOPE this was going to be our day we had been through so much to get here but this was going to be the day! We had everyone praying for us and we were waiting. We heard nothing on the 14^th no news at all then on the 15^th came the news of “Heather has the dossiers. They are being analyzed!! . Will let you know the outcome.” We really didn’t understand this information since we thought we were being submitted. Why didn’t she try to submit us??  Then we were told that a 2 week extension was going to be granted so we were back to waiting again.

Then came the "question" from VOTO on September 21, 2013:

“Did we discuss that the way most have gotten in lately that are too young are also infertile? Would you be opposed to me taking out your bio kids from your HS (homestudy) ... not to say you don't have any but just not mention them so that it appears you don't have any. If they open again with the 2 week extension that will probably be the only way in. No mention of kids and an infertility letter. If you are okay with it or not okay with it, let me know. Please know you can't say anything to anyone because if someone made a stink your file could get pulled. In reality, IBESR doesn't care but for technicality sake of meeting the 1974 laws it has to appear the way the law wants it. ... Does that make sense?”

What in the world was this? We had been led to believe by Heather herself that Heather Elyse was this miracle worker and she was able to get dossiers in that didn’t meet the requirements… was this the way she was doing it??? We had thought Heather "had favor" with IBESR, not that she was having families lie on their documents.

This is what Tim Rowe had to say about how VOTO/GHRM were able to process adoptions quickly...(from article click here to view)

"We have an attorney that has some connections in the Haitian government and so … we’re hoping we can get our adoptions through the Haitian side in six to nine months and the U.S. side in two to three months." 

We were told by VOTO that this would be our best bet at getting in… They told us that this happens all the time… People take dossiers in to IBESR and they get rejected and then take them back a day or so later with information changed and they are accepted. We were 21 months into this adoption and we saw no end in sight and no light at the end of the tunnel. We told Voice of the Orphan and Heather that we trusted them fully and we wanted them to get our dossier in.

 

 It is our understanding that a VOTO staff member was encouraged to make several changes to our dossier that they felt would ensure us getting into IBESR when they opened back up. We should not have participated in this. But we believed we were working with a licensed and knowledgable agency that we could/should trust.

In October of 2012 Guerdine was let go and VOTO asked us to send a new power of attorney document to Haiti. IBESR did open back up in October but we again didn’t get in, we were informed it was due to our age. Another let down and we weren’t sure when IBESR would be opening back up or what the rules would then be if they did open.

In November of 2012 Heather asked us to write a plea letter to IBESR. Explaining what we had been through and asking for them to let us in to adopt. We wrote the letter, had it translated and sent to Heather. To our knowledge Heather never submitted this letter.

Over the next few months it seemed that the only person really trying to help us with our case was Shasta, a Voice of the Orphan staff person/GHRM volunteer who was assigned to work with “intervention” and “fraud” families. She worked day and night trying to get answers for us, was always available to us and always trying to figure out what was going on.

We heard from Shasta on January 6, 2013 

“I have been talking with Heather a lot today and.......I wanted to let you know that Heather is going to IBESR tomorrow to see if she can go ahead and get some dossiers in.  If not, we've been told the new official opening date is the 15th and they will take dossiers that meet the new proposed law.... whether it's been voted on or not.  That's the plan and what they are saying right now.  Until Heather posts something on VOTO (the private facebook group), just hold on to this info.  You can posts general things like "Pray for us because the next couple weeks are big ones for our documents" or something like that but there are lots of new families that want their docs in and you are first in line so we don't want all them begging her to take theirs in too. :)”  We aren’t for sure if this actually happen but we know we didn’t get in on the 15^th.

Then on January 18, 2013 we were told by email

“Hi guys.  We've heard that IBESR will now start accepting dossiers since the agency list has been sent out.  I have not talked with Heather today as I'm respecting their time with the xxxx family who flew in today.  I am pretty certain they will be at IBESR first thing Monday morning.  At this time dossiers will be submitted under MLJ, the approved agency we are partnered with.

And just to ease fears or confusion on the MLJ (adoption) agency, most other creches or orphanages in Haiti use a completely separate agency.  Heather just happens to be someone connected to BOTH an agency AND a creche so we just are fortunate enough that most of her adoptions have gone through her agency.  There is still a chance that future adoptions will go through VOTO but for now we will just use the name of MLJ to get them in.  It doesn't change anything really except the name of the submitting agency.”

We were then notified on January 27^th that IBESR would now be opening on Feb 4^th and Heather would be submitting us that day…. We were also told about the new limit for dossiers (IBESR would only accept 1 case/month per agency) submitted and they weren’t sure if they would be able to get us in.

In late January Heather posted a list of families, in order of how they would be submitted to IBESR, per the new quota of one case per month per agency. We were number 7 on this list (Price). Numbers 4,5,6 and 8 were all also intervention cases. ****

This gave us a little hope but then again not really… At the rate of one per month we were looking at 7 months just to begin the adoption process and we thought we had already been submitted 5 times before and always got a NO.

We decided to go to Haiti in February of 2013 and visit our kids. It had been 270 days since we had last seen them. We had previously decided that until we got into IBESR we weren’t going to visit. There was so much uncertainty we just didn’t want to do that to the kids. But it had been a long time and we wanted to check on them. We heard from Heather and she told us she would be submitting our dossier to IBESR while we were in Haiti in February. She had also planned on coming to the hotel we were at to meet us and see our kids. IBESR opened when we were in Haiti but our file wasn’t accepted again. We were told that IBESR would only accept 1 file per month and we didn’t make it. We also never saw Heather at our hotel.

Shasta had been giving us information, via Heather, as to when IBESR was going to accept files and what our options were. At one point in March of 2013 we were told that MLJ Adoptions would not be taking our cases because our children were not living at Giving Hope Rescue Mission and there was pretty much nothing else Voice of the Orphan or MLJ could do for us. (We were previously told in January MLJ was fine taking on cases of families with children in other orphanages besides GHRM.) Shasta was trying to find someone somewhere who would take our case or get a definitive answer from Heather on what we should do.

In early March 2013 we were put in contact with a guy in Haiti that some of our friends knew. This guy had a contact at IBESR and he thought he could help us get in. I ended up speaking with the contact at IBESR and he needed our dossier. We tried several times to get Heather or someone from Voice of the Orphan to meet with this IBESR contact to talk about our case. It became very apparent to me that our adoption was not a priority and we felt it was time to take matters into our own hands.

After trying for 2 weeks to get our dossier away from VOTO/GHRM (located in Montrouis) and moved into Port Au Prince, on April 17^th we finally had a friend succeed in connecting with a GHRM missionary who handed over our dossier and three others. Shasta had coordinated this handover with S, the GHRM missionary, and after asking me some identifying information S was very nice and helpful and he did what we asked him to do.

We then decided to move our file to an independent attorney and let him try to get it into IBESR independent of an adoption agency when they were opening to “old” dossiers in May 2013. We knew our case wasn’t a priority to Heather and Voice of the Orphan but hoped that it still had a chance to be submitted independently.

As soon as the lawyer received our file he let us know that the file was missing our home study, IBESR letter, infertility letter, my husband’s medical records and our tax returns. Additionally it contained French translations from the W family’s dossier (another GHRM/VOTO family)!! And he told us that our file had never been through Pre IBESR this meaning our file was never submitted to IBESR all those times that Heather told us she was submitting it.

We contacted Shasta right away and she then contacted Heather to confront her about the situation. We received this email from “Wesmin” (could be Heather since she has very obviously written emails to families pretending to be Wesmin)… It is our opinion that this email was written by someone who was guilty and trying to cover their tracks.

We had someone at IBESR look at the dossier, two separate independent attorneys reviewed the dossier and another adoption contact reviewed the dossier and unanimously they all said the dossier had not been through Pre IBESR and was missing key documents.  But here is “Wesmin’s” response:

This was devastating but we were able to quickly get our attorney the original non altered documents and once our file was put back to its original state, including our BIO children, it went through Pre IBESR and our new attorney submitted it during the opening for old dossiers period IBESR had in May. We were accepted for adoption and finally got into IBESR once someone was completely honest with us.

We didn’t lose any money to VOTO/Heather Elyse but we lost time. Ten months that we can’t get back. Ten more months that our children had to live in an orphanage.

Once we stepped back and started looking at all the things that had happened we realized all those red flags Heather had always warned us about, particularly in her blog post about "How to survive the Mission Field" and on the website "Adoption Reform Talk". 

Some Excerpts (read the whole article here):

“Enough is Enough! I am tired of all the corruption surrounding the orphan and adoption. It’s time we as Orphanages/creches, adoptive parents, adoption agencies, etc STEP IT Up and simply, “Do The Right Thing.”

“Here is a list of “Red Flags” I am noticing as I am cleaning up four adoption scams currently:

(from paragraph one about Haitian orphanages)

"We are realizing many orphanages started with good intentions, they just simply “did not know.” I know there is no “How to start an Orphanage” for dummies handbook. ( hmmmm maybe I should write one! Ok getting off track!) I am amazed at how much trafficking is going on in this country and what is sad… It is done by most “so called” missionaries and non profits. I watched a video on Vimeo, of a missionary woman walking into a Haitian hut and literally taking the Haitian woman’s child from her. I was appalled. Two weeks later the very same woman who says she “rescued” the child from a life of poverty, promised this child to an American family, who fell in love with the child while on a mission trip."

"If you are not licensed to do adoptions, please stop promising your kids to hopeful adoptive families."

"Dear Orphanages, there are tons of legitimate cases of children in need. Please be extremely cautious and picky which children you accept."

"You can not come into a foreign country and decide to start an orphanage and just start taking kids in. If you are not licensed by IBESR, you are currently operating illegally." (Note from Zach and Karena -Giving Hope Rescue Mission creche does not currently have a license as far as we know.)

"If an agency or orphanage has to constantly tell you “they are telling the truth and wouldn’t lie to you” hmmmmm red flags!!"

"If your agency/orphanage/Creche are constantly bashing other organizations- big red flags should be going up. I saw a website, where lots of independent Haitian adoptions take place, say they disagree with orphanages charging monthly sponsorship fees or child care monthly fees, they called it unethical and cheating, yet they claim to only be charging in country fees, which I did the math… They charge 11,000-13,000 when their adoptions only cost them less then 4,000. So while they bash Those who charge monthly fees, they make close to 10,000 to help support their kids… Ugh! Tired of all the lies."

....she was guilty of doing a lot of them herself. We feel bad for not listening to our orphanage when they told us they didn’t like it that we were using Voice of the Orphan. They had a bad feeling about things. Our orphanage has been in Haiti for 15+ years. We should have listened to them. Heather tried to make our orphanage look really bad to us. In our opinion she was trying to manipulate us, use us to adopt an infant from the Giving Hope Rescue Mission creche to possibly relinquish to Tim or another family, and pull our support from the ministry/orphanage we had trusted and believed in. 

Zach and Karena

Our three little ones, still waiting for us.

**** To this day 09/20/2013 Heather has still never brought her “adopted” Haitian children home to the U.S. as far as we know. Here is a screen shot about what Voice of the Orphan, Heather's adoption agency, says about qualifications to adopt (note that Heather in her email to us said she was 31.)

***** It is our understanding that none of the "intervention cases" documents were legalized and none have brought their children home to date.