Two employees at Children's Hope International have been found to have forged documents in connection with adoptions in Russia.

The story was first reported by Missouri television station KSDK on Tuesday evening. Children's Hope, which handles adoptions in almost every state in the U.S. through its 16 regional offices, posted this statement from its executive director, Dwyatt Gantt, about the forgeries on its Web site yesterday. Today, I spoke with Cory Barron, its director of outreach, at length about what happened.

In July, officials in Arkansas notified CHI of problems with a document sent to Russia involving an adoption in that state. An internal investigation by CHI found that the document was forged as were nine other documents for Russian adoptions it was handling in seven states. "We had two employees that mishandled documents through the improper use of notaries," Mr. Barron. "It was against every ethical standard that we stand for."

Mr. Barron said the employees were terminated one month later and that CHI "pro-actively" contacted the Missouri Department of Social Services, the families involved and the Council On Accreditation, which is its accrediting agency. He said CHI also contacted state officials in Tennessee, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Kansas and Washington, which, together with Arkansas, were the states affected.

Mike Owens, the KSDK reporter who filed the story, said that Arkansas officials had learned about the forgery from Russia and that Missouri adoption regulators learned about the forgeries in August after receiving calls from other states. A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services told me that it had learned of the forgery from Russian officials, who were concerned about language in a letter it had received that appeared to be on Tennessee Department of Children's Services stationery. The letter indicated that the department would step in to monitor the welfare of the children in the event that CHI's license got revoked. The spokesman said that the agency told the Russians that that is not something that it does.

Mr. Barron declined to name the employees who were fired, but KSDK identified them as Mareda Eckert and Susan Ellison. Mr. Barron did tell me that both had been in CHI's Russia department at least five years, and that the forgeries occurred in 2006 and 2007. "This was not a long drawn out thing that they had done," he told me. "In most of their tenure they were fabulous. They made a bad mistake."

Mr. Barron said that CHI has implemented a corrective plan with Missouri regulators and that, as part of it, CHI had reviewed thousands of documents for Russia and the other countries it serves.

According to CHI, five of the seven states affected have completed their investigations into the matter and have not taken any action against CHI. Kansas and Illinois have yet to complete their investigations. The spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services confirmed that Tennessee has not revoked CHI's license, but told me that the case has been turned over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and that his agency is in "standby mode" on any further action. He did say, however, that he was not aware of any hearings held in Tennessee on the matter, something that the TV report alleged.

The KSDK report also said that on October 30, the Missouri Department of Social Services referred the case to police in Maryland Heights, Mo., the St. Louis suburb in which CHI is based. Mr. Barron confirmed that CHI had spoken with the police and had told them that they are declining to prosecute the employees involved. "These were staff members that made a big mistake," he said, "and they were terminated, but we will leave any prosecution decisions up to the state."

Mr. Barron told me that the adoptions affected by the forged documents were "on schedule". Children's Hope is among the agencies waiting for re-accreditation in Russia. Mr. Barron said that, while he did not know when that would happen, "all indications are that this incident will not affect our accreditation in Russia as far as we know at this time."

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