E.J. Graff, associate director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, published an investigative article in Foreign Policy Sept. 12 examining the actions undertaken by the United States State Department between 2007 and 2008 to address systematic corruption in the Vietnamese adoption system.The article, titled, "Anatomy of an Adoption Crisis," is part of the Institute's Gender and Justice Project, which focuses on "continuing injustices and biases that are harming women and their children . and yet are not being fully or accurately reported," according to the Institute's website. The Institute has published five other articles on corruption in international adoptions, including Graff's "The Lie We Love" in 2008, which received four journalism awards.

In an e-mail to the Justice, Graff wrote that the Institute "originally began investigating fraud and corruption in international adoption when sources made it clear that a significant problem-exploitation of birthfamilies [sic] in poor countries-was being reported only piecemeal, not in depth."

Referring to "Anatomy of an Adoption Crisis," Graff wrote, "In 2008, I heard a great deal about the extensive problems in adoptions from Vietnam; sources told me that the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi had tremendous concerns and was on the verge of halting all U.S. adoptions from Vietnam." She wrote that the Institute subsequently submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, which calls for full or partial disclosure of unreleased information controlled by the U.S. government, related to the State Department's evidence of problems in Vietnamese adoptions. The documents received through the Freedom of Information Act requests are available on the Institute's website.

In her article, Graff writes that these documents revealed that the U.S. State Department had discovered "a network of adoption agency representatives, village officials, orphanage directors, nurses, hospital administrators, police officers, and government officials who were profiting by paying for, defrauding, coercing, or even simply stealing Vietnamese children from their families to sell them to unsuspecting Americans." Graff's investigation explores how the U.S. State Department struggled to take efficient measures "to shut down the infant peddlers while allowing the truly needed adoptions to continue."

According to the article, the U.S. government had three "imprecise tools" to address concerns about the Vietnamese adoption system. Graff writes that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers could have investigated the circumstances behind Americans' applications for "orphan visas" but that this option was "time-consuming, and it elicited vehement objections from the Vietnamese government." She writes that U.S. consular officers and diplomats could have pressured Vietnam to uphold the 2005 Memorandum of Agreement-a bilateral agreement on adoption-or the United States could have stopped accepting adoptions from Vietnam all together.

"Understanding how little the State Department and USCIS could do, despite how hard they tried, helps reveal what these U.S. government agencies need to respond more effectively in the current adoption hot spots, Nepal and Ethiopia," Graff writes in her article.

Graff writes that today the U.S. does not allow adoptions from Vietnam but that Vietnam has began prosecuting baby sellers involved in the corrupted adoption process. "[The Institute] wrote about Vietnam because we received hundreds of compelling documents that illuminated the problem. That's not always been the case. We have filed many Freedom of Information Act requests about other countries; we are still waiting for some to be answered by the U.S. government," Graff wrote in her e-mail to the Justice.

Graff also wrote in her e-mail, "Our goal is to report the facts in enough depth to spur policy discussions, so that concerned citizens and policymakers can identify and take any steps needed to reform injustices, oversights, and abuses." She wrote, for example, the Institute had been informed that reading "The Lie We Love" had prompted Congressman Albio Sire to focus on corruption in international adoptions in order to draft corrective legislation.

"['Anatomy of an Adoption Crisis'] has spurred some very thoughtful and moving discussion. We will be posting some of it on our website, when we are given permission," Graff wrote in her e-mail.

Florence Graves, the founding director of the Institute, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice," ['Anatomy of an Adoption Crisis'] is about Vietnam-but it illustrates just how easily fraud can be committed in very poor countries where prospective U.S. parents are paying more than $20,000 to adopt a child. That kind of money can easily lead to corruption in very poor countries where many people live on a dollar a day-and our system needs to come to terms with that." As Graff's editor, Graves also collaborated with Graff in writing the article.

"What's really very important to understand is that this series of investigations into corruption in international adoption ultimately illustrate[s] just how desperately poor millions of people are in countries throughout the world . These stories illuminate the world's foreign aid failures-and should force even more attention on what the world needs to do to help desperately poor people around the world. This is the bottom line significance of our several related investigations," Graves wrote.