Are They Orphans? (The American Prospect)

One version of the orphanage scam has just been uncovered in India by the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation. Several years ago, a now-infamous child-trafficker traveled through Nepal’s Humla province, asking families to pay him to take their children to boarding schools in Kathmandu. Instead, according to information I received from Joseph Aguettant of the child welfare NGO Terre des Hommes, many of the boys were sold into international adoption, while many girls were sold into the sex trade in India. (You can see Joseph Aguettant’s documentary of the Nepal adoption issues, “Paper Orphans,” on You Tube here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4).

Parents paid a child-trafficker more than £100 to take their daughters to good schools in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, but instead they were taken more than 1,200 miles to Tamil Nadu, southern India. Some of the girls were a bit luckier, as reported by the Nepali Times and the UK newspaper the Telegraph:

At the Michael Job Centre, a Christian orphanage and school in Coimbatore, they were converted to Christianity, given western names and told that its charismatic founder, Dr PP Job, was now their father.

On websites, the children were given serial numbers and profiles. The charity claimed they had been either abandoned by their parents who did not want the financial burden of raising girls, or orphaned after their “Christian” parents were murdered by Nepal’s Maoist insurgents.

The profiles were used to attract financial sponsors from around the world.

Read more to break your heart.