Adoptions

A Villa Park adoption attorney who pleaded guilty to immigration fraud charges stemming from her role in an international baby-bartering scheme was sentenced on Monday to an 18-month federal prison term. Janice J. Doezie, who had hoped to be sentenced to home confinement, buried her head in her arms and began weeping as U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler issued her ruling.

When babies make headlines, it's often because they are found abandoned in dumpsters, are born to parents addicted to drugs or are orphans kept in warehouses in Romania. But for every unwanted child there may be an unhappily childless couple who are eager to provide the warmth and love that child needs. Avenues to adoption in Orange County center on three basic options: the county's public adoption agency, private agencies and attorneys whose specialty is adoption.

Unable to have children of their own, Kathy Stasiowski and her husband placed their names on a list of prospective adoptive parents and waited for two years without success. Then they heard about Marianne Gati, an Irvine woman who was in the business of arranging for American families to adopt Hungarian babies. Stasiowski, a banker from Nashville, said she telephoned Gati, who wasted no time in naming her terms.

An animal welfare group says it will stop cat adoptions until after Halloween because of the possibility that felines might be tortured during satanic rituals. Bill A. Larson, founder of The Free to Live Animal Sanctuary, said the agency gets several requests to adopt black cats this time of year.

A national group is pushing legislation in California that would strip the confidentiality from adoption records, revealing the identities of thousands of parents who gave up their children between 1938 and 1984. The bill also would help parents find children whom they relinquished long ago and would give adoptive parents the same access to confidential records that their adopted children would be entitled to.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered its independent watchdog who oversees children's issues to investigate a controversial adoption case in which social workers were found to have impeded a white couple's efforts to adopt a black child "solely" on the issue of race. Childrens Services Inspector General Victor Greenberg, hired by the board to oversee the massive Department of Children and Family Services, will report to the supervisors in 30 days.

Malawi's high court said Monday it will rule next week on whether a coalition of human rights and child advocacy groups should help decide whether Madonna is fit to adopt a 13-month-old boy. Justice Andrew Nyirenda said he will rule next Monday on whether to admit the 67-member coalition, which includes the state-run Malawi Human Rights Commission, as a party in the adoption proceedings. The coalition maintains the proceedings have been irregular.

In Madonna's first interview since her controversial and legally challenged adoption of a 13-month-old Malawi boy, she took aim at the media on "Oprah," saying the coverage has done "a great disservice" to African orphans. "I understand that gossip and telling negative stories sells newspapers," she told Winfrey in an interview that aired Wednesday. "But I think for me, I'm disappointed because it discourages other people from doing the same thing."

Police in Chad arrested nine French people as they prepared to fly more than 100 children to France to have them adopted, Chad's government and French diplomats said. They included the head of Zoe's Ark, a group that said this year that it intended to bring orphans from Sudan's Darfur region to France for adoption. Chad's interior minister, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, said the nine French citizens were arrested at Abeche airport in eastern Chad.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor rejected Tuesday an emergency request to delay an adoption records law from going into effect, allowing adoptees 21 and older access to their birth certificate. More than 2,200 adoptees already have paid $15 and filed applications with the state Health Division to get their original birth certificate. Most are eager to know their parents' identities, and many want to know more about their medical histories.