An attorney and executive director of a North Texas adoption agency has been arrested and accused of trying to buy Tarrant County jail inmates’ babies and sell them on the black market.
Jody Hall, 68, was arrested at her home in Kyle, Texas, and booked into the Hays County jail on July 23. She was charged with two counts of sale or purchase of a child.
According to jail records obtained by Fox 4 KDFW, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office alleged that Hall gave money to pregnant women in jail in exchange for putting their children up for adoption through Hall’s non-profit adoption agency, Adoptions International.
A probable cause affidavit alleges that Hall paid one inmate $846 and attempted to meet up with the inmate’s boyfriend, the father of the child in question, so he could legally sign over his rights to custody.
According to Fox 4, Hall communicated with the inmates through their jail tablets. She allegedly messaged one woman, “I’ve helped a lot of girls like yourself. We have families who cannot have children that would love to adopt your child. You can pick a family and start communicating with them now. We will put $100 weekly on your books, and you can spend part of it on the tablet or whatever you wish to buy.”
In another situation, Hall purportedly paid an inmate $846 for her child, but the inmate decided to keep her baby.
The affidavit claims Hall texted, “You’re in jail and a drug addict. YOU! Did NOT keep him. You are a scammer and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case. I don’t need birth moms that lie to me just to get financial support. And I can’t give you anymore if he’s not willing to sign the paperwork.”
Hall allegedly told the inmates that she was going to put their children up for adoption through her non-profit agency, even though it lost its accreditation years ago.
The Intercounty Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity, the only organization authorized by the U.S. government to screen international adoption agencies, canceled the accreditation for Adoptions International in 2019 for “failing to maintain substantial compliance with accreditation standards.”
The cancelation followed a 2019 investigation by Honolulu Civil Beat into black market adoptions from the Marshall Islands. The “Black Market Babies” investigation examined alleged illegal adoption practices in the island nation involving several attorneys, one of whom was Hall.
“Now it appears that what Jody Hall was doing at that time was arranging adoptions with Marshallese birth mothers who already lived in Arkansas, which is legal if they’re already living in the United States. And people from the Marshall Islands can travel to the United States without a visa, then if they’re already living here and become pregnant, they’re allowed to give up their children in adoption,” investigative reporter John Hill explained in an interview with KERA.
“But what we found was that in some of these cases, the adoptions fell through, and the text provided to us by clients of Jody Hall showed that she was talking about flying women from the Marshall Islands for the purposes of having their children in the United States and giving them up for adoption. And that violates a treaty between the United States and the Marshall Islands,” he said.
Hall was released from Hays County jail after posting a $50,000 bond.