Jody Hall, a 68-year-old Dallas-area woman who runs an adoption agency, has been accused of “unethical adoption practices” in relation to a scheme to pay incarcerated women in the Tarrant County jail system to place their unborn children in her agency.
According to Fox 4 News, Hall, who runs Adoptions International Inc., allegedly added $846 to one incarcerated woman’s account and also attempted to arrange a meeting with her boyfriend so he could sign away his parental rights. According to investigators, Hall communicated with one incarcerated woman by texting her on her jail tablet.
“I’ve helped a lot of girls like yourself. We have families who cannot have children that would love to adopt your child,” Hall wrote. “You can pick a family and start communicating with them now. We will put $100 weekly on your books, and you can spend part of it on the tablet or whatever you wish to buy.”
In another incident, Hall transferred $846 to an incarcerated woman’s account but became irate when she decided to keep the baby.
“You’re in jail and a drug addict. YOU! Did NOT keep him. You are a scammer, and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case,” Hall wrote, according to investigators. “I don’t need birth moms that lie to me just to get financial support. And I can’t give you anymore if he’s not willing to sign the paperwork.”
According to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, the payments were unauthorized because the jail pays for any pregnancy-related or living expenses. In addition, Hall’s agency lost its accreditation in 2019 over a failure to “maintain substantial compliance with accreditation standards.”
The Texas Rangers and Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office detectives started investigating Hall in May, which culminated her being arrested at home on July 23. Hall posted a $50,000 bond, according to KERA News. The charges Hall faces constitute a third-degree felony.
They report that Hall also allegedly participated in a scheme to broker black-market adoptions from the Marshall Islands through an illegal pipeline in Hawaii. That investigation, it turns out, is what suspended her organization’s accreditation and prohibited her from conducting international adoptions by the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity.
According to John Hill, a reporter for Civil Beat, paying to adopt children is a violation of United States law.
As Hill told KERA News, “Five days after our reporting on Jody Hall, the one agency that is commissioned by the U.S. State Department to accredit international adoption agencies apparently read our reporting and suspended Jody Hall’s accreditation to do international adoptions. And then, a couple of months after that, they permanently canceled her accreditation. And so, she was no longer accredited by the only agency in the United States to do international adoptions.”
Hill continued, “These adoptions are oftentimes exploitative, and I think that when they crossed the line in a lot of states is: not only is there the prohibition of Marshall Islands residents flying or being flown to the United States to give up their children for adoption, but within the United States, you’re not allowed to pay for babies. In most states, you’re allowed to make payments to pregnant women to sort of maintain their health and things related to pregnancy. But you’re not allowed to just sort of say, ‘Here’s a bunch of money; we want your baby.’ And so, that is a line they’re alleging in Texas that she crossed with these jail inmates.”
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