Irish couples return home from Mexico after child adoption nightmare

Scam was running for 30 years according to reports

Lawyer Montoya claims the sums involved were in the thousands.

“When they’d arrive here, they would be charged more money for expenses, about $4,000 extra,” he said.

“They would also have to pay the lawyers’ fees, which would be another $4,000. They had to pay $38 a day in nanny services for the children already born. And for the unborn children, they had to pay the mother’s hospital costs before she gave birth.”

The Irish involved were told to stay in a hotel in Guadalajara and then travel from there to Ajijic, a tourist resort on the coast, where the babies were delivered to the couples in their hotel rooms.

The Irish parents believed that the babies were unwanted and had been left by their mothers in welfare centres for adoption.

The scam was discovered when a woman reported her sister-in-law to police a fortnight ago for allegedly trying to sell her babies for adoption.

Police have since detained seven women and two men.

On Thursday last, 15 Irish men and women gave statements to the police in Mexico after which they were urged to return to Ireland by their lawyer Montoya.

The Mexican authorities believe the Irish couples are innocent. The state prosecutor reportedly said that the Irish had “done nothing illegal."

Ireland’s Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, told the Sunday Independent: “Obviously, for any couple who have been caught up in this, it’s a nightmare scenario. Inter-country adoption can be fraught and this is why you have to have procedures.

“If a baby has been registered here and if the Adoption Authority has satisfied itself that everything has been done according to the procedures, then clearly one would expect that those are de facto legitimate adoptions.”

It has also transpired that Ireland’s Adoption Authority issued seven advisory notices in the last 15 months warning prospective adoptive parents not to enter into private arrangements in Mexico.

The country recently signed up to the Hague Convention, which allows for inter-country adoption between signatories such as Ireland.

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Nster.com