Seymour Kurtz's Adoption Network
Originally it was thought that the only adoption agencies connected to Seymour J Kurtz was Friends of Children Adoption Agency (1973-1998) located in Atlanta , GA , American Friends of Children (1983 to sometime in the 90’s) in DC and The Easter House in IL which is closed also.
Birth Hope Adoption Agency of AZ. Started in 1984, it has since been closed down but the date is unknown at this time.
Casa del Sur (1973-1977) of Mexico City and LaSociedad of Tlaxcala, Mexico. That may still be in business today.
Families by Adoption, Adoption Edition, Adoption World in Chicago, IL and is probably still in business.
Golden Link Foundation in Chicago , IL not to mention his foundation in Denver , Co.
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1. Families by Adoption
2. Adoption Edition
3. Adoption World, Chicago, Illinois, ??? - present
4. The Golden Link Foundation, Chicago, Illinois
5. Easter House, Chicago, Illinois, 5-5-1960 to 2010
6. Friends of Children, Atlanta, Georgia, 9-4-1973 to 1998
7. Birth Hope, Phoenix, Arizona, 3-26-1984 to ??
8. American Friends of Children, Washington, DC, 6-24-1983 to sometime in the 1990s
9. Casa del Sur, Mexico City Mexico, 1973 to 1977
10. La Sociedad, Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1978 to ?
The Kurtz Network, 1960 to today
1960 or 1962: Easter House founded
According to the Lynn McTaggart, who interviewed Seymour Kurtz for her 1980 book The Baby Brokers: The Marketing of White Babies in America, Kurtz received his license to set up Easter House as a non-profit organization in 1962. However, state records show the date as 1960. McTaggart reported that Kurtz appointed the former head of the Illinois Department of Welfare (predecessor to the Department of Children and Family Services), Millicent Smith, as executive director. For thirteen years, he turned over all responsibility to Smith.
Kurtz began paying more attention to the agency in 1973, when Smith informed him that the agency might be forced to close, due to a shortage of babies. Kurtz said he promptly flew to Italy and Greece, looking for new sources of babies, but soon discovered that Europe had an even greater shortage of adoptable White babies than did America.
Source: McTaggart, Lynne. The Baby Brokers: The Marketing of White Babies in America. New York: The Dial Press, 1980.
1973 - 1974: Kurtz finds a way to "circumvent the laws and regulations of the entire world"
"Seymour Kurtz has come up with the perfect setup... Kurtz has found a way to circumvent the laws and regulations of the entire world," said Lynn McTaggart..
He did this by setting up a series of corporations, each to handle a single, specific function in the adoption process.
• He founded Casa del Sur in Mexico City to make the actual placement of babies; it opened in 1973. To obtain babies for adoption, Kurtz started an advertising campaign in Mexican newspapers and radio stations, with anti-abortion messages ("don't kill your child").
• Also in 1973, he founded a nonprofit corporation called Tzyril Foundation, located in the same office as Easter House. The purpose of Tzyril was to "underwrite" Casa del Sur or any other adoption agency and to act as an advertising agency, referral service, and intermediary between inquiring couples and the Mexican agency. Couples paid service fees to Tzyril Foundation, rather than Casa del Sur.
• Soon after incorporating Tzyril, Kurtz established Stichting Susu in The Hague, Holland, and planned for it to "communicate" the availability of Mexican babies to European clients. Because of the distance he had to travel to get it running, "the Dutch government's lack of enthusiasm," and the fact that it was "unnecessarily duplicitous," Kurtz decided to let Stitching Susu "expire" by 1977.
• Next, in 1974, Kurtz established Suku Corporation, a for-profit Delaware corporation, to handle the legal and immigration work involved in Mexican adoptions.
• Finally, Easter House, by "agreement" with Stichting Susu and Tzyril Foundation, would handle the home studies of applicants who wanted to adopt Mexican children, as Nancy C. Baker gave a similar explanation for Kurtz's convoluted scheme in her book, BabySelling: The Scandal of Black Market Adoptions, which discussed the relationship between Easter House, Tzyril Foundation, Casa del Sur, Stichting Susu, and Suku Corporation. "There seems to be no logical reason for this complicated structure, though at least one government agency thinks it may offer a unique opportunity for babyselling, hiding profits, and operating without any effective government regulation," she wrote. "Adoption applications and funds are shuffled between foundations, agencies, and corporations--and between the United States and foreign countries--with an apparently needless amount of paperwork and confusion."
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