[MLRJ]

Hi- I have waited awhile to tell this story-I am telling it because I hope to prevent another family from going through the terrible ordeal we did.

We began our process in December 2004- we were paper ready- accepted 2 referrals, a boy and a girl. The attorney was newer for our agency- and I questioned that-but the Guat coordinator said they had several cases running really quickly with him, so we went ahead. By February after weeks of being told the DNA was getting done ( not!) I began e-mailing the US embassy- only to hear the dreaded words"your initial adoption paperwork has not been filed" I put another round of queries out on our attorney on the big list ( had done it in December as well) but this time I got a response- a woman told me to call her and i did. What I learned was shocking- our "attorney" was not an attorney but a facilitator and this agency woman had had 16 cases with her that had dragged on most of them for over a year!!! She told me even more upsetting details. I was horrified and called my agency and told them. They assured me that they planned to "stay on her" and get him home- I was so upset and even considered dropping the referral, ( My dh said now way!)but our agency assured us they would help us.

At this time- we lost our little girl's referral and our faciliator was supposed to come up with another-s he kept saying she had one and not coming through with it- we ended up taking a referral from a different attorney after waiting two months-( much to my relief) but the problem was that now she had been paid in full for our son's adoption as our agency said they could not get the money back. They assured us that they would "push" the case.

Well- DNA was pushed by our agency and finally got done after lies and lies- at about 10 weeks. Then in April we finally entered PGN. And there we stayed. We got a few kickouts- later I learned that our facilitator would let weeks lapse by after the kickout before she even told us- so it took us ahwhile to get new documents down there- All summer our lovely Guat coordinator e-mailed me "any day now" as to when we would exit PGN. Yeah right!

By the end of August- at 4 months in PGN I was distraught. I wanted our little boy home- I just could not take it any more- then we got our fifth kickout! I had had it- We decided to hire AS. We chose to hire them for a secret investigation- where they do not even contact the attorney because we were afraid of retaliation from our facilitator as we knew her history. AS advised to tell our agency as our agency had called them about several other cases and they thought they would handle it well- They did not really- but grew used to the idea- AS got us out of PGN two weeks after we hired them (9/14)- Itwas such a relief to me knowing what was actually happening in PGN- and I am thankful to AS for getting us out. We would probably still be there if it were not for them.

When we got out of PGN I warned our Guat coordinator that we needed to wait until the facilitator found out we were OUT- because we were afraid if she knew we knew she would suspect something. well- things went along okay and she had applied for the BC and it seemed that all had gone well -UNTIL our agency Guat coordinator went to Guatemala in Mid October. Then all hell broke loose.

To this day we do not know the entire truth of the events that occured. The first thing to happen was that another client e-mailed me that the Guat coordinator has contacted her and told her that our facilitator said that AS had gone to the FM's house ( of our little boy) and taken him away. I knew that this was a complete lie ( as AS does not operate this way at all) and why was the coordinator e-mailing another client about our case???? And why would our Guat coordinator believe this wild story?????

Then the agency director called us from Guat and asked me if we were in Guatemala- seems our facilitator had first told them AS had taken our boy- then she told our agency that WE (my dh and I) had hired our own attorneys to finish the case and we were in Guatemala trying to steal him. ( The fact that they believedthis story is just laughable to me now) The Guat Coordinator was going on about how could we do this???? I assured her that we were at home and did not even know anybody in Guatemala and that this was a complete lie.

The next day the story had changed to -we sent some of our own attorneys to the FM's house so PGN ordered an investigation of our little boy's case and they put him in a state run orphanage. AS assured me that PGN does not do this on cases that our completed. I was more than upset at this story and put a desperate plea out for prayers for our son on the forum. I did not know if he was in a state-run orphanage but he had been taken froom his FM and no one knew where he was!!!!! Our agency director realized finally after several pointed e-mail communications that we had nothing to do with this and it was all our facilitator- we then learned ( again through another client) that our Guatemala coordinator had TOLD our facilitator that we had hired AS in PGN!!!!!!!! At least now we knew why this was happening! Our agency director discovered this as well and she basically took over our case. I cannot tell you how angry I was and still am about this-This idiot of a woman put our little boy in serious danger.

Our agency tried to dispel the state run orphanage story because I was SO upset about it- But then I kept asking them- Where is he???? And they could not tell us. For one month, no one at our agency knew WHERE our child was. ( did they offer to go down there and get to the bottom of things- no)I asked if we could go down there and we were told that would mess things up more- I begged them to go to the FM and find out what really happened- they told us they could not as they were not Guatemalan and she would not confide in them. So for one month we lived in fear of where our child was and what was happening to him- I just begged God to keep him safe.

In the meantime, our facilitator began to attempt to extort additional money ($6,000) as she said that she had to hire attorneys to get him out of the orphanage and that we had caused all of this mess. My dh took over the communications( as I was too distraught) and our agency director tried to help us-Finally our director on the advice of AS whom we had both been consulting, told us to write a threatening letter to all involved in his case that we would be reporting the extortion to the US embassy and the Guatemalan tax authority. This got results and all of a sudden they faxed his passport to us ( along with some angry e-mails) It took two more weeks to get the pink slip (11/14)and the pick-up trip meeting with our facilitator was not pleasant for my dh- She refused to give him our boys paperwork unless my dh paid her additional money- Our agency assured us they would take care of this ( ha ha)- Of course we finally got the paperwork by calling our facilitators husband ourselves and arranging a meeting when I traveled to get our daughter- our agency just could not be accountable for even this- at one point the Guat coordinator actually said, "My hands are tied" If anything had to be done - we had to do it.

Now, Christopher is home- He is a shiny star- and we adore him. His adoption was the worst experience of my life thus far. At times- I did not know if he was coming home at all. I want to thank the people here on the forum who offered me endless support and prayers and thank the forum hostesses Stephanie and Brandy who both offered me help and advice. I truly would not have made it through this ordeal without the people here. Thank you all of you.

Catherine's adoption was not smooth either- there were major complications- but her attorney was not really at fault- the biggest problem was our agency giving us little to no/faulty communication on the case.( We were told the Birthmom was in a coma and she was not) Like we needed more trauma with what was happening in our son's case!

What can you do for me? Please be sure to read the name of our facilitator in the attorney feedback thread or pm me for it. I do not want another family to suffer through an experience like this one. I have also put our agency name in the agency thread- Though our director did try to help- our agency did not do their homework on their attorneys and basically was not accountable for anything during this process-They were incompetant and would not take responsibility for anything-

Thank you for reading my story.

MLRJ