Haitian orphans settling in with adoptive families

PENFIELD, N.Y. — Under a towering Christmas tree, 3-year-old Sevil Fletcher giggled in delight amid some not-so-rough roughhousing with his brother and sister.

There were snow drifts outside the comfortable suburban home, and the warmth of a close-knit family inside, as his parents, Brian and Emily Fletcher, recounted how Sevil — his infancy spent in a faraway orphanage — came to be their son.

It's a remarkable tale, all the more so because it is shared to a degree by hundreds of other American families who were seeking to adopt children from Haiti when the cataclysmic earthquake struck nearly a year ago, on Jan. 12.

There was initial panic, then a welcome update that the child was alive. Next came more worry and doubt — would the quake-induced chaos in Haiti further delay adoptions that in many cases were still a year or two away from completion?

"All of a sudden it was, 'What's going to happen to my baby? Am I ever going to get him home?" Emily Fletcher remembered thinking.

And then, for these particular families and children, uplifting news at a time of so much death and destruction: An unprecedented commitment by the U.S. government to allow these children in the adoption pipeline to be airlifted swiftly to America even though their paperwork was incomplete.

Sevil and many other orphans were flown to the U.S. within 10 days of the quake, and by April the program began to phase out. In all, it has enabled about 1,150 Haitian children to be placed with adoptive families across America — among them Sevil with the Fletchers and their two biological children in this town just east of Rochester, N.Y.

It wasn't perfect. A few airlifted children weren't actually in the adoption pipeline and arguably should have stayed in Haiti. A few adoptive families, faced with a suddenly expedited timetable, gave up their plans and relinquished children to federal authorities.

Overall, though, the operation was a striking example of multiple government agencies working with each other, Haitian authorities and the adoption community to get a huge number of children out of danger and into welcoming homes.

"It was absolutely unprecedented, and it was unbelievably fast," said Tom DeFilipo of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, which represents many adoption agencies. "Getting kids out of harm's way was the motivating factor."