alt=Annie KnoxSALT LAKE CITY — The dozens of women from a tiny Pacific island nation drew little attention as they traveled to Utah. It was only after they moved in together and began giving birth in hospitals along the Wasatch Front that neighbors and medical workers grew suspicious.
Soon Utah authorities were investigating several calls made to a human trafficking tip line. A wave of women from the Marshall Islands was giving birth and placing their babies for adoption, each with the same home address, a house belonging to attorney Paul Petersen.
More than eight months after his arrest in the multistate illegal adoption scheme, Petersen admitted Tuesday to defrauding one Utah family and smuggling three women to Utah.
Petersen, 44, resigned from his job in Arizona as Maricopa County’s assessor in January. He pleaded guilty in that state Thursday to collaborating to get state-funded health care for adoptive mothers, even though he knew the women didn’t live in Arizona.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and his counterpart from the Marshall Islands joined others in cheering this week’s developments. They credit teamwork between states and nations for what they said is a swift resolution that will lead to a hefty penalty for Petersen, who faces up to 15 years just in the Utah prison system.
“As a result, Utah today is safer, America is safer, the Marshall Islands is safer,” Reyes said.
Investigators navigated the intricacies of international law and cultural differences to pursue the case, said Leo Lucey, investigations chief in the attorney general’s office.
“It’s a very fascinating, disturbing, sad story of exploitation,” he said. “It’s exploitation based on religion, based on race, based on socioeconomic status ... and based on education.”
An adoption lawyer licensed to practice in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas, Petersen had served a Latter-day Saint mission in the Marshall Islands.
He entered guilty pleas in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court Friday to three counts of human smuggling, a third-degree felony, and communications fraud, a second-degree felony.
Defense attorney Scott Williams read facts supporting the pleas, saying his client bought plane tickets for three women who traveled from the Marshall Islands to Utah in 2017 and 2018. Peterson owned and managed the house each lived in and accepted $35,000 from those seeking to adopt their babies, Williams said.
In order to secure an adoption contract, his client purposely did not tell two adoptive parents about an agreement between the U.S. and the Pacific Island nation prohibiting such travel without a visa, Williams said.
In the Friday hearing held over video, Petersen tuned in from Arizona, sitting next to his attorney and responding, “Guilty, your honor,” when she asked for his pleas.
Authorities in Utah have said he brought at least 40 women from the Marshall Islands to the Beehive State to place their babies for adoption over three years, offering each $10,000. Citizens of the island nation have been barred from traveling to the U.S. for adoptions since 2003.
The women received little or no prenatal care, prosecutors alleged.
Assistant attorney general Dan Strong said he hopes the case will deter similar crimes and remind the public to remain skeptical.
“If something seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Someone’s probably taking shortcuts.”
Andrea Sherman, with the Refugee and Immigrant Center, said her agency worked with 30 of the women, while still others returned to the Marshall Islands or sought services elsewhere, she said.
While some went through with the adoptions — after being equipped with attorneys, advocates and interpreters — others declined, Sherman told reporters.
Richard Hickson, attorney general for the Marshall Islands, said many of the women Petersen brought to Utah are receiving help from agencies in the U.S. but are “effectively stateless” right now. “He’s left a trail of devastation behind him, Mr. Petersen has.”
Hickson urged those seeking to adopt to go through proper channels in the nation’s court system.
Jini Roby, a Provo-based attorney who helped author the 2002 Marshall Islands law establishing a legal process to adopt, said before the government tightened regulations, many U.S. military families stationed there brought Marshallese children back home. She estimates a total of 700 to 800 vanished.
Roby said she was happy to see that authorities are now connecting the dots between human trafficking and some international adoptions.
“I believe that this going to reverberate throughout the global community of adoption,” she said.
Utah prosecutors agreed to recommend one to 15 years in the Utah State Prison, with lesser terms of up to five years for the other three charges to run concurrently, or at the same time. Williams is seeking for the Utah prison sentence to run alongside others in Arizona, where his client faces a maximum of 17 years in prison, and in Arkansas, where he is expected to enter guilty pleas next week.
Petersen will also pay $50,000 to the Utah Attorney General’s Office to cover costs of investigation and prosecution. He has agreed not to practice law in Utah or work on adoption proceedings here for the duration of his sentence.
Petersen had faced an additional seven charges in Utah, but prosecutors agreed to drop them as part of the plea bargain. They are an additional count of human smuggling, three counts of sale of a child and two more of communications fraud, plus one count of pattern of unlawful activity.
Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 13.