Tsunami's second victims

Disaster | Trafficking of storm orphans is on the rise, so the United States—suspicious of exploitation—halts adoptions from disaster regions | Lynn Vincent

Five days after the Southeast Asia tsunami swallowed coastal towns and villages in 12 countries, a C-130 Hercules transport plane whisked hundreds of Acehnese refugees from Indonesia to the North Sumatra capital of Medan. There, a little boy named Raja, 5, stepped out onto the tarmac. Soon after, a couple who said they were Raja's parents appeared to collect him.

But they weren't his parents. Riza Mutiara, coordinator of the Aceh Sepakat nongovernmental organization, noticed that the couple didn't even look Acehnese. When she challenged them, they changed their story: They were actually Raja's next-door neighbors, they said. But Ms. Mutiara suspected the couple had been paid by child-traffickers to steal the boy and stopped them from taking him.