Flurry of Marshallese Adoptions in Arkansas Raises Red Flags

Adoptionland NewsAdoption Trafficking, Excerpts, Videos

A surge in private adoptions of U.S.-born Marshallese infants in northwest Arkansas led award-winning journalist Kathryn Joyce, an expert on international adoption and child trafficking, to travel to the Ozarks to investigate. We talk with Joyce about her findings, as well as with Melisa Laelan, a northwest Arkansas Marshallese community leader who is monitoring the situation. To listen to interview …

“Do you understand that your baby goes away and never comes back?”

Adoptionland NewsAdoption, Adoption Trafficking, Agency Complaints, Excerpts, Indigenous Communities, Long Lost Family, Media, The Americas

Nurses traded horror stories involving tearful and confused new mothers, who asked whether they were allowed to hold or feed their babies. On July 29, 2014, Maryann and Dexter Koshiba, 32 and 37 years old, sat, utterly exhausted, in a recovery room at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. That morning, Maryann had given birth to a baby girl, …