4 from adoption agency sentenced to probation

Calling it a "highly complicated case," a federal magistrate Wednesday sentenced four owners and employees of an embattled adoption agency to probation, saying it was a "proper alternative" to a lengthy imprisonment for the sake of the children involved.

U.S. District Judge David Sam sentenced Scott Banks, 47, Karen Banks, 48, Coleen Bartlett, 52, and Karalee Thornock, 36, to five years probation, a lifetime ban from participating in the adoption business, and ordered them to make monthly payments to a trust account that will be established to help their victims.

The Bankses were the owners of the Utah company Focus on Children, an agency that adopted children mainly from Samoa, to families in about 13 U.S. cities. A total of 66 children were adopted.

The group misled the birth parents in Samoa into believing their children would be sent to a family in the United States to be raised and educated, and then returned when they were 18. Families in the United States were led to believe the children they adopted were orphaned or abandoned, even though some were still living at home when they were adopted.

In 2007, federal prosecutors unsealed a 135-count indictment against the defendants and the company. As part of the plea deal accepted last month, each individual defendant pleaded guilty to varying numbers of misdemeanor charges of aiding and abetting the improper entry of an alien.

Before a packed courtroom Wednesday of friends and family members of both the defendants and victims, all sides agreed that prison time would not be in the best interest of justice in this case.

But not all of the parents who adopted children from Focus on Children agreed with the sentence.

Elizabeth, who asked that her last name not be used for the protection of her adopted child, pleaded with the judge to make the Bankses serve some prison time. She then turned toward the defendants and addressed them in an emotional and often times very angry speech.

"There are no words to describe the disgust and disdain I have for every one of you," she said. "You have placed a burden on those children that will last forever."

Elizabeth said her family has spent thousands of dollars in care and treatments for their daughter who suffered from attachment disorder and post-traumatic stress.

"Never in my life have I been so angry with people," she said. "We trusted you with the most important thing on this earth, our family. The betrayal I feel in unfathomable. … No child should ever be subjected to their entire world turned upside down."