Kilshaws turn hate objects

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 23. Until two weeks ago, nobody outside their neighbourhood had even heard of the Kilshaws, a middle-aged and rather grumpy couple who lived with their three children in a non-descript Welsh village.

Today, they are two of the best known faces in the United Kingdom, reviled by the tabloids, despised as much by the conservatives as by the liberals and sought after by TV channels for rights to their ``story''.

So, what is their story, and what has made them famous - or, more accurately, famously infamous? Alan and Judith Kilshaw did what hundreds of couples across the world are probably doing every day but they made the mistake of boasting about it, and their lives are now in a shambles. They bought twin babies on the net and then drove 2,000 miles across America to escape another couple, Richard and Vickie Allen, to whom the children had been originally sold by their mother, Tranda Wecker, through a fly-by- night child adopting agency.

To begin from the beginning: the six-month-old twins, Belinda and Kimberley, were first sold to the Allens of California for the equivalent of £ 4,000 but two months after they had stayed with them, they were tricked into returning them to their mother who sold them to the Kilshaws - then holidaying in America - for a little over £ 8,000. When the Allens got to know of it, they were furious and demanded the twins back but the Kilshaws told them to mind their own business. And while they were trading charges, the woman who ran the adoption agency through which the Allens had bought the babies disappeared. As the Kilshaws drove away with the children, the Allens apparently gave them a hot chase but the British couple managed to give them the slip and caught a flight to Manchester.

Even as they thought they were home and dry, disaster was waiting to happen. And it happened on January 16. The Sun, which got a whiff of it, went to town with the story of the ``immoral'' couple (that was the sense of the story) who had bought children on the net, triggering a wave of moral outrage. The Kilshaws insisted that they had not bought but adopted the twins - the money they had paid were adoption-related charges, they said - but this did not square up with their earlier boast of how they had paid £ 8,000 for them. TV channels went into overdrive with the Kilshaws in Wales and Allens in California brought ``face to face'' on a ``live'' debate hooked across the Atlantic. The Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, called it ``disgusting'' and promised to outlaw such adoptions; the twins' natural mother was seen and heard on a U.S. TV channel saying she wanted her children back; the Kilshaws had a field day as they addressed press conferences, gave interviews and posed with the twins, saying they were now inseparable - until one evening the Social Care Services swooped on the hotel where they were staying and took away the twins.

The twins are now in official care, the Kilshaws are crying hoarse that it is not fair and have decided to challenge the decision, the Government has said it would toughen laws relating to overseas adoption and crack down on websites offering children for adoption, women columnists have their hands full with demands for opinion pieces, an The Sun has come up with the story that Judith Kilshaw is a witch! Which she has, of course, denied - and meanwhile, everyone is wondering why a middle aged couple with their own children should be going to such lengths to adopt other people's babies.

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Section  : International
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