AP Enterprise: Guatemala adoption fraud query throws US adoptions into limbo

"Their rights to an identity are violated because if their mothers have no identity, neither do they," prosecutor Jaime Tecu told the judge.

Luciany's story reveals some of the complexities of adoptions in the poverty-ridden country.

Luciany was born on Jan. 4, 2007. Her birth mother shows up twice in her village's civil registry, with the same picture and fingerprints but different names. One says she is Mara Natividad Hernndez, a married woman. The other created in her village the same day she gave birth to Luciany in a hospital hours away identifies her as Orbelina Davila Paz, a single woman.

Prosecutors suspect she got a false I.D. so she and her husband could give the baby up without going before a judge. They believe many of the birth mothers with false identity documents were trying to get around laws that require husbands and grandparents to renounce their rights in court.

Luciany's birth mother gave her to a network of notaries and attorneys supplying babies to Casa Quivira, a spotless home in the picturesque colonial city of Antigua. A few weeks later, Mary and Michael Ball started adoption proceedings for Luciany.

Mary Ball, 39, has an adopted sister, and has wanted to adopt a child since she was a little girl herself. She felt so strongly about adoption that she discussed her plan with Michael even before getting married.

She chose Casa Quivira because her best friend had adopted through the same agency. The Balls did not want to adopt an American child out of fear the birth mother would back out at the last minute.

"We didn't want to grow attached to a child and have that child taken away," said Ball, who prosecutes sex crimes and child abuse in Indiana.

They met Luciany when she was 4 months old and fell in love. She has huge brown eyes and a ton of dark brown hair. Every month they received new photos of her by e-mail. They spent more than $30,000 in agency fees and travel costs.

The Balls were told that Luciany would be living in poverty if she stayed in Guatemala. A visit by the AP to her birth mother's home in Santa Rosa de Lima confirmed the extended family lives in a tiny one-room shack made of cinderblocks, with an open cooking area. Barefoot children played on the dirt floor as sewage water ran past.