In March of 1975, Friends of Children of Viet Nam had in its care and custody approximately one hundred infants residing in our Vietnamese foster homes and approximately thirty infants in the intensive care unit at the Friends of Children of Viet Nam Center in Gia Dinh. As the war escalated, we continued to receive custody of abandoned infants from orphanages with whom we had worked closely in the past.

Throughout the entire time of our association with these orphanages we never had any reason to question or distrust them in their relinquishment of children to our agency for the purpose of adoption. Never did a mother or a relative contact our agency seeking the return of a child relinquished to us by one of these orphanages. Further, we were never aware of a single incident in which a mother or a relative appeared at one of the orphanages to reclaim a relinquished child.

The orphanages continuously exhibited their ability to us to distinguish between adoptable and unadoptable children, i.e. the abandoned or irrevocably released child versus the child placed in the orphanage by its family for custodial care. The directors of these orphanages were very reluctant to release any older children for adoption, even though these children had lived there for many years and had had not family contact.