Thread by @kathrynajoyce

Thread: Yesterday, Arizona attorney Paul Petersen, who is also the elected Republican assessor of Maricopa County, was federally indicted for his involvement in a human trafficking adoption scheme. His involvement dates back years and spans three states.
abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSto…

Four years ago, I reported on Petersen in my first @newrepublic story (with ed @ChloeSchama), as part of an investigation on a grossly unethical adoption operation in northwest Arkansas, involving the large Marshallese diaspora community who live there.
newrepublic.com/article/121556…

After the U.S. contaminated its atolls with nearly 70 nuclear tests and set up a missile defense system there, Marshallese citizens were given the right to live and work in the U.S. without visas. Many came to Arkansas, where they worked in the dangerous poultry industry.

Private adoption attorneys there began exploiting the vulnerability of this largely poor community, many of whom spoke little English and who had a vastly different cultural understanding of adoption.

Some pregnant Marshallese women were enticed into adoption agreements because it was common knowledge that the attorneys would facilitate $8-12,000 in payments from the prospective adoptive families.

The resulting boom in Marshallese adoptions in the region alarmed some local hospital workers, like doctor @stacyfurlow, who alerted me to the story and who sometimes saw as many Marshallese adoptions take place in several days as her hospital used to see in a full year.

Nurses recalled tearful, confused new mothers who didn’t know whether they could back out. Some facilitators yelled at nurses not to talk to the women about adoption. One admitted to me that he’d told nurses “you’re not supposed to tell the birth mother anything she don’t know.”

Even courthouse translators and judges sometimes felt helpless.

Other pregnant women were flown directly to AR from Majuro—sidestepping an international compact that requires visas for adoption cases—and were often bunked in remote ad-hoc maternity homes, where they slept on the floor & were told to lie about how long they’d been in the U.S.

One such woman told me she’d been promised that the adoptive parents would buy her a house, find her a job, and bring her ailing parents to the U.S. The facilitators who she claims told her that were working on behalf of Paul Petersen, who’s conducted adoptions in AZ, AR and UT.

When I asked Petersen about it, he blamed the government for not enforcing the international compact. “If they really want to stop it, then they should bar all Marshallese people—women—from coming to the U.S. unless they have a medical examiner show they’re not pregnant.”

As of yesterday, it seems he may finally be held accountable. ABC News notes that the charges involve around 75 adoptions over three years. Also indicted was a woman who my sources told me in 2015 was involved in the maternity home they were sent to.
usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

But in the lead-up to this moment, some Marshallese women in Arkansas already have been sentenced themselves—on charges of adoption fraud for backing out of adoptions facilitated by these local private attorneys.

Some have served jail time and been ordered to pay restitution they certainly can’t afford. No justice for them yet.