Posted on: Monday, March 15, 2004
ISLAND VOICES
Lauryn Galindo gets a bad rap
By Rick Bernstein
Honolulu resident
Given the state of worldwide child welfare, it is ironic that the United States government is taking dead aim at Hawai'i resident Lauryn Galindo for trafficking in babies.
Lauryn is a sweet, gentle and determined woman who has helped to unite more than 700 desperately poor children from Cambodia and Thailand with loving adoptive families in the United States.
Having known Lauryn for more than 25 years, we have seen the good she has done for adopted children and their appreciative adoptive parents.
If there were paperwork glitches, as there always are in the Third World, so what? It boggles the mind to imagine what goes on inside corrupt governmental agencies in these poor countries.
The world remembers Robert Schindler as a hero for the many Jews he helped survive hellish German concentration camps. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures where human life is concerned. Without Lauryn, these children, had they survived, would likely have been sold into sexual slavery.
Lauryn is being cast as an evil baby thief/trader who bought babies from unwilling mothers. These charges are nonsense. Unmarried young women in the affluent United States give up babies for adoption because they cannot afford the burden of a child. In the Third World, poverty and the prospects for survival are many times worse for single mothers.
I know that compassion was the motivation for Lauryn's actions. Granted she made money doing this heroic work, but she also risked her life and health dealing with tough people in foreign countries.
Giving back much of her earnings to Cambodia, she generously supported orphanages and schools. She also started a program to empower impoverished women. In fact, the government of Cambodia awarded her the highest medal of honor for her support of national reconstruction.
A childless woman, she found a way to rescue needy children and give deserving adoptive parents an opportunity to complete their familial destiny. Lauryn is not a criminal, although she probably suffers from a Robin Hood complex.
The criminal charges seem to be politically motivated. Large, connected, East Coast adoption agencies put pressure on the Bush administration to go after a small, politically unconnected player who was too successful.
This case is a shameful waste of taxpayer money and governmental manpower. Imagine sending a team of investigators to Cambodia to try to build a case against a woman who spends her life, righteously, helping others transcend worldly suffering.
If the government wants to prosecute real child abusers and visa defrauders, they needn't go so far from home. There are countless pimps and predators who prey off the flesh of Southeast Asian orphans. Now teenagers, these poor, uneducated girls are forced into prostitution and sexual slavery.
Why do we rarely hear about visa fraud regarding international racketeers who act with impunity and make fortunes from trafficking in human bondage? What are the Bush administration's priorities? The cartels carry on, unchallenged, while the U.S. government vilifies and threatens a single woman with decades in prison.
The U.S. Justice Department and President Bush should drop all charges against Lauryn Galindo. It would be a far better use of our tax dollars to hunt down the international criminals who profit from the suffering of victimized and enslaved teenage girls. Then, like the government of Cambodia, the United States should give Lauryn a humanitarian award.
Free Lauryn Galindo!
