The Cook Report - The Baby Bandits S13E04 (1996)

This is another story about the commercial exploitation of babies – this time from Central America. We were alerted to it by a young couple who were attempting to adopt a little boy from Guatemala and had come to believe that the whole process was corrupt. They had initially enlisted the help of a now defunct group called the GSG – the Guatemala Support Group, but quickly became suspicious of them and offered to help the Cook Report make a programme. Caught on secret film, the GSG recommended ways of ‘getting round UK immigration law’ and the obtaining of private home study reports from a since disbarred social worker who, barely bothered to interview prospective parents – and didn’t bother at all with the necessary background checks. It turned out that in Guatemala, their child had been ‘sourced’ by an infamous lawyer called Juan Varela, who employed a network of scouts to find him suitable children from desperately poor families who would part with their offspring on the promise of a better life for them. They were paid a pittance, but Varela and his associates could make $25,000 per child. Also in this unprincipled network was a notorious baby broker called Lya Sorano. She was based in the US, but operated in Europe since the US authorities had banned her from any involvement with children. Between them, Varela and Sorano were instrumental in making babies Guatemala’s biggest ‘non-traditional’ export, with up to 5,500 of them leaving the country every year. The programme was attacked by The Observer, which had swallowed whole the falsehoods of the GSG and alleged the couple were only actors and ‘their child’ was abandoned after filming. In fact, their little boy was happily settled in the UK. They did not wish to be involved in any action against the newspaper because it might affect their newly adopted son. So, no action was taken. Eventually, the Guatemalan authorities tightened up their adoption procedures and signed up to the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption. --- This is an independent channel dedicated to the work of the pioneering Investigative Journalist, Roger Cook. Unfortunately, the entire Cook Report archive was destroyed in a fire at a London data storage facility in 2006, and we would therefore like your help We have acquired most of these episodes unofficially by reaching out to the Great British public. So some of what we’ve found is not the best technical quality and we don’t have the copyright, which belongs to ITV. Do you have any old Cook Report programmes in your VHS collection? If so, we would appreciate it if you would allow us to digitise and share them on the channel. Thanks in advance! Email: rogercookreports@ Please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for the latest content from Roger Cook Reports. Website: (coming soon) Facebook: Twitter: