bepress Legal Series

Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children

David M. Smolin, Cumberland Law School, Samford University

Article comments

This paper has been published in the Wayne Law Review: 52 Wayne Law Review 113 (2006).

Abstract

This article documents and analyzes a substantial incidence of "child laundering" within the intercountry adoption system. Child laundering occurs when children are taken illegally from birth families through child buying or kidnapping, and then "laundered" through the adoption system as "orphans" and then "adoptees." The article then proposes reforms to the intercountry adoption system that could substantially reduce the incidence of child laundering.

Recommended Citation

David M. Smolin, "Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children" (August 29, 2005). bepress Legal Series. Working Paper 749.
http://law.bepress.com/expresso/eps/749