This baby business

THERE could hardly have been a more dramatic conclusion to the whole sorry tale of the internet baby adoption. Police and social services swooped on the hotel in Wales where British couple Alan and Judith Kilshaw were staying with the twins and took the children into care.

According to reports, 47-year-old Mrs Kilshaw could be heard screaming as the twins were taken away. Afterwards, a drawn and devastated Mrs Kilshaw told reporters: "I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. They put themselves physically between them and us. I'm going to get myself a damn good lawyer, first move, and then I'm going to put in a complaint about the police."

The Kilshaws claim they have been hounded like criminals ever since bringing the twins to the UK.

But many would say the adoption system which permitted them to pay £8,200 to adopt the two little children when an American couple Vickie and Richard allen had already 'paid' £4,000 for the twins is itself little short of criminal.

"If this is what can go on in the American adoption system, God help children," says York businesswoman Leslie Beattie. "It's like a black market trade in goods. It could have been tee shirts or jeans - it was children."

Leslie speaks from the heart. She was adopted herself at the age of two and admits she was appalled at a live television slanging match between the Kilshaws and the Allens over who should be allowed to keep the twins.

"To see these two couples having this exchange, this bitter wrangle, it was horrendous," Lesley says. "It was all to do with money, we did it before you, we paid this. There was not one word uttered about the girls themselves."

Lesley learned at the age of 12 that she was adopted - and spent 30 years not knowing who she really was or why she was placed into care at the age of two. Her adoptive parents were super, she stresses. But the need to know was overwhelming.

Lesley knows that as they grow up, the six-month-old twins will be just as desperate to find out where they come from. The huge publicity and the bitter wrangling that surrounded their double adoption could make that a traumatic experience, she says.

"The experts can say what they like, but I've been there and I know," Lesley says. "These two little babies, how are they going to look back on this in ten or 20 years time?

"There will be this feeling we're not sure about this, we don't understand, we don't know who really loves us."

Lesley is not alone in feeling that. Jody Sheppard, manager of Yorkshire charity After Adoption Yorkshire, is equally worried about what the future will bring for the little girls.

"Most adopted people have a strong need to understand their birth history and how they got from their birth family to their adopted family," she says. "That seems to be an important part of the feeling they get about who they are. How will that happen here?"

The saga of the twins Belinda and Kimberley is an awful illustration of how adoption can go wrong when it is not regulated by caring professionals.

Which makes the growth of Internet adoption agencies all the more worrying.

It is not difficult to sympathise with the desperation of couples who have been unable to have children of their own and see adoption as their only chance of having a family.

To many, faced with the lengthy process of vetting and checking that is needed in this country before you can legally adopt a child, adopting from abroad may seem the obvious answer - especially when there are so many orphaned or homeless children in desperate need of a family to love them.

There is no shortage of Internet sites ready to help.

Simply keying in the word adoption on an Internet search engine will bring up a listing for dozens of adoption agencies, many of them American. Many play on the would-be parents' feelings, using highly emotive language: "little angels" waiting for a "family of their own".

One such site has a "featured child" on its home page - click the photo-listing button and it lists details of the "lovely children we have available for adoption", each with an accompanying photograph. Children such as Seda, "a tender, fine, quiet child. She is very obedient and very affectionate. She takes part in collective games with a great willingness." Or Franka, a "lovely little girl in an orphanage in Bulgaria".

Despite the emotive language, many of the sites display a distinctly hard-nosed attitude to cash. One has a page detailing exactly what the cost of adopting a child will be. Children of different nationalities come with different price tags. A Chinese infant or child, the site says, will cost up to $19,000 (£13,000), an Eastern European child up to $26,000 (£17,900) and a US or Caucasian child up to $34,000 (£23,450).

Lesley Beattie, while not against adoption itself - her own adoptive parents, she says, gave her a wonderful home - is appalled at the way some sites appear to be "advertising" children. "It can't be right that you can just put up a picture of a child like this," she says. "It's like saying do you like this dog, this cat, this handbag?"

By no means all Internet adoption agencies are in the business of buying and selling children for profit. Howard Lovelady, group manager for adoption and fostering at City of York Council, says some local authorities in the UK have their own sites, making use of the latest technology to try to find suitable homes for children in their care.

The problem is regulation. The Adoption (Inter-Countries) Act, which was passed in 1999, has not yet become law, making regulation of overseas adoption by British citizens difficult, he says. Providing a couple comply with adoption law in the country from which a child is adopted, immigration should not be too difficult.

But just because you can legally adopt a child does not necessarily mean it is in the best interests of that child to be adopted by you.

Mr Lovelady points out that the reason for the sometimes slow and bureaucratic adoption procedures in this country - which can on occasion lead a couple to look elsewhere - is that local authorities put the interests of the child first.

Prime Minister Tony Blair may be about to press ahead with new adoption laws to clear away some of the bureaucratic obstacles. "But we have to be careful for the sake of the children," says Mr Lovelady.

"I do deal on a day-to-day basis with a number of people who look forward to adopting. I know the pain and difficulty they have been through in not being able to have children. But our initial concern is that the children's needs must be met."

Jody Sheppard agrees that it must be the interests of the child that remain paramount.

"I'm not saying adults' needs shouldn't be taken into consideration," she says. "But the primary thing should be, if a child cannot live with their own birth mother, if they have to go to someone else, are they the very best 'second best' that can be found?"

Belinda Kimberley cannot decide who that is for themselves. Qualified and caring professionals must now make that decision for them.

Updated: 10:34 Friday, January 19, 2001