The Ugandan government would later determine that Mata’s mother had been deceived, with a Ugandan court finding that the referral form had been forged and wasn’t actually signed by Ugandan police.īelieving that the story in the referral form was false, the Davises began their own investigation and contacted the US State Department about the discrepancies. They believe she was pulled from her home and placed in the orphanage after the adoption agency found an American couple – buyers, in a sense – with money to adopt a child. The referral form is dated Octo– exactly one week after the Davises say they got a call from European Adoption Consultants telling them Mata was available for adoption.Īt the time of that call, the Davises now believe, Mata wasn’t an orphan at all but was still living at home with a mother who loved her. “I had not realized that I had gone through a process to take away my parental rights completely,” the mother said in sworn testimony September 8, 2016. “I had all along thought and understood that the child was going to be educated and returned back to me.”īut the original orphan referral form that sent Mata to God’s Mercy painted a different picture, saying the mother was “helpless” and “can’t provide basic needs of the child for better growth.” Bars on the windows,” Jessica said.Īccording to an affidavit obtained by CNN, Mata’s mother ultimately told a Ugandan family court that she was grief-stricken after her husband died in a vehicle accident March 28, 2014, and was told about a way to get Mata a good education. That’s where the Davises met her: “She was at an orphanage. That’s exactly what happened in Mata’s village, Riley says: A villager-turned-trafficker made a pitch at a local church and managed to get seven children into the adoption circuit, including Mata, who was sent to a place called God’s Mercy, about a four-hour drive away. Traffickers “know when somebody has lost a husband in a tragic way and is vulnerable and is not coping – and then they get flagged.” “It’s easy to pull the wool over their eyes,” says Riley, who arranged the video reunion between Mata and her birth mother. Complicating matters, there is no word for “adoption” in the language many Ugandan villagers speak, Riley says, so mothers are easily deceived. The traffickers, she says, can include police and lawyers, teachers and local leaders. ![]() Keren Riley of Reunite, a grass-roots organization that helps return trafficked children to their birth mothers, says facilitators on the ground prey on vulnerable moms, often widows, promising educational opportunities for their children. Mata's home in Uganda she was one of seven village children taken from their parents with the promise of better schooling. CNN’s investigation discovered that multiple families were duped this way. ![]() ![]() The Davises shared their story exclusively with CNN, saying they believe that Ugandan children like Mata are being trafficked, with American families not knowing the real stories behind their adoptions.Īn investigation by CNN into this alleged trafficking scheme found that children are being taken from their homes in Uganda on the promise of better schooling, placed into orphanages even though they aren’t orphans, and sold for as much as $15,000 each to unsuspecting American families. As she absorbed the news, Jessica realized that she didn’t participate in an adoption at all but had unwittingly “participated in taking a child from a loving family.”Īnd she knew what she had to do: return Mata to her mother. The Skype conversation, on August 29, 2016, confirmed Jessica’s suspicions. How they cooked together, how they went to church together and how her mother walked with her to school. The 'orphan' I adopted from Uganda already had a familyīut in the months after she arrived in America, as Mata’s command of English improved, she spoke glowingly about her mother.
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