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February 04th 2010 10: 42 p.m.
10 Americans charged in Haiti with kidnapping
U.S. consular officials have been making regular visits to the missionaries.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Americans' behavior "unfortunate whatever the motivation."
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. was open to discuss "other legal avenues" for the defendants, an apparent reference to the Haitian prime minister's earlier suggestion that Haiti could consider sending the Americans back to the United States for prosecution.
It's unlikely the Americans could be tried back home, according to Christopher J. Schmidt, an expert on international child kidnapping law in St. Louis, Mo. U.S. statutes may not even apply, he said, since the children never crossed an international border.
Silsby waved and smiled faintly to reporters but declined to answer questions as the Baptists were whisked away from the closed court hearing back to the holding cells where they have been held since Saturday. People rendered homeless by the quake sat idly under tarps in the parking lot, smoke rising from a cooking fire.
Earlier, Silsby expressed optimism about being released.
"We expect God's will will be done. And we will be released. And we're looking forward to what God is going to do," she told APTN before learning they would be charged.
Coq complained about conditions where the Americans were being held. He said they are sleeping on the floor without blankets and aren't being provided with adequate food. He said he had delivered pizza and sandwiches.
Silsby had begun planning last summer to create an orphanage for Haitian children in the Dominican Republic. When the earthquake struck she recruited other church members to help kick her plans into high gear. The 10 Americans rushed to Haiti and spent a week gathering children for their project.
Most of the children came from the quake-ravaged village of Callebas, where residents told The Associated Press that they handed over their children to the Americans because they were unable to feed or clothe them after the earthquake. They said the missionaries promised to educate the children and let relatives visit.
February 04th 2010 10:32 p.m.
10 Americans charged in Haiti with kidnapping
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— Ten U.S. Baptist missionaries were charged with kidnapping Thursday for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti to a hastily arranged refuge just as officials were trying to protect children from predators in the chaos of a great earthquake.
The Haitian lawyer who represents the 10 Americans portrayed nine of his clients as innocents caught up in a scheme they did not understand. But attorney Edwin Coq did not defend the actions of the group leader, Laura Silsby, though he continued to represent her.
"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border," Coq said. "But Silsby did."
The Americans, most members of two Idaho churches, said they were rescuing abandoned children and orphans from a nation that UNICEF says had 380,000 even before the catastrophic Jan. 12 quake.
But at least two-thirds of the children, who range in age from 2 to 12, have parents who gave them away because they said the Americans promised the children a better life.
The investigating judge, who interviewed the missionaries Tuesday and Wednesday, found sufficient evidence to charge them for trying to take the children across the border into the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 without documentation, Coq said.
Each was charged with one count of kidnapping, which carries a sentence of five to 15 years in prison, and one of criminal association, punishable by three to nine years. Coq said the case would be assigned a judge and a verdict could take three months.
The magistrate, Mazard Fortil, left without making a statement. Social Affairs Minister Jeanne Bernard Pierre, who has harshly criticized the missionaries, refused to comment. The government's communications minister, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, said only that the next court date had not been set.
U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten showed up after 5 p.m. outside judicial police headquarters, where the Americans are being held and where President Rene Preval and top ministers now have temporary offices because theirs were destroyed in the quake.
"The U.S. justice system cannot interfere in what's going on with these Americans right now," he told reporters. "The Haitian justice system will do what it has to do."
January 26th 2010 6:34 p.m.
A family in China made babies their business (a report by Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2010)
The lucrative trade in newborns was fueled by an adoption frenzy that saw government-run orphanages paying for children who they then made available to Westerners.
Reporting from Changning, China - The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would play him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants. His family-run business was racking up sales of as much as $3,000 a month, unimaginable riches for uneducated Chinese rice farmers from southern Hunan province. What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries. "They couldn't get enough babies. The demand kept going up and up, and so did the prices," recalled Duan, who was released from prison last month after serving about four years of a six-year sentence for child trafficking. Huddled around a gas stove that barely took the chill out of their ground-floor apartment, Duan and his parents offered a rare look at the inner workings of a "mom and pop" baby-trafficking ring run by members of his family and an illiterate garbage collector with a habit of picking up abandoned babies. From 2001 to '05, the ring sold 85 baby girls to six orphanages in Hunan.
His story, which is backed up by hundreds of pages of documents gathered in his 2006 court case, shed light on the secretive process that has seen tens of thousands of unwanted girls born to dirt-poor parents in the Chinese countryside growing up in the United States with names like Kelly and Emily.
"Definitely, all the orphanages gave money for babies," said the 38-year-old Duan, a loquacious man with a boxy haircut.
At first, Duan said, his family members assumed that they weren't breaking the law because the babies were going to government-run orphanages. It had been an accepted practice among peasant families to sell unwanted children to other families. But the police didn't see it that way. Chinese law had been strengthened in 1991 to clearly prohibit commerce in children. The concern is that not only is paying for babies unethical, it can encourage kidnapping, a rampant problem in China. And when babies are trafficked and their records falsified, they grow up with no sense of where they are from and their heritage.
Although Duan and his family trafficked babies only from the southern province of Guangdong, he says other families were doing the same -- bringing in babies from impoverished parts of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces to the west.
The merchandise may have been human, but it was a trading business like any other. Cash on delivery; prices set by laws of supply and demand. The Duans' supplier in Guangdong would charge extra if a baby was prettier or stronger than the average. The orphanages would often phone in their orders and haggle over the price. "Sometimes they would give us money in advance to buy the babies. They'd say, 'We'll take this many babies at such-and-such a price,' " Duan recalled.
Duan and five members of his family -- two younger sisters, his wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law -- were convicted in 2006 of child trafficking. The others remain in prison. Only Duan was released, on the grounds that he needed to support his parents. Family members complain that they were made scapegoats in the widespread buying and selling of babies. Several orphanage directors involved were promoted afterward. "The government was making the big money. . . . We only got a little bit, like the dregs of the tofu," said Duan Fagui, Yuelin's 59-year-old father. He said that many other families were selling babies to orphanages -- "the only difference is that we got caught."
It began in 1993 when Chen Zhijin, Yuelin Duan's mother, and the two sisters who remain in prison were hired for $1 a day to take care of babies for the orphanage in Changning, a town adjacent to the larger city of Hengyang.
At the time, the Communist Party's campaign to limit population size was running strong, and overly zealous cadres would sometimes demolish the houses of families that had more than one child (two for peasants if the first was a girl, because rural families wanted boys to carry on the family name).
It is illegal in China to abandon a baby, even at an orphanage, so people would discard their unwanted daughters in the dark of night in cardboard boxes or bamboo baskets. If they were leaving baby near an orphanage, they often would light a firecracker as a signal for the staff to find the child. "We'd find the babies all over," recalled Chen, a tiny woman in tattered plaid trousers with short hair hugging her face. "They'd be wrapped in rags, filthy. . . . Sometimes they'd have ants all over their face because babies have a sweet smell and the ants like them." Because Chen worked for the orphanage, rural people sometimes asked her to take their unwanted babies there. The orphanage would accept some, not all; it didn't have enough caretakers or formula for all the babies.
Then, in 1996 and '97, the orphanages around Hunan began to participate in a fast-growing program that was sending thousands of baby girls abroad for adoption. For each baby adopted, the supplying orphanage would receive a donation of $3,000 from the adoptive parents. Instead of rejecting the babies, the local orphanage director began begging Chen to bring in as many as she could, even offering to pay her expenses and then some. "Do us a favor, auntie," she said the director told her. "Bring us all the abandoned babies you can find."
Five other orphanages opened nearby and were making the same request. By 2000, however, the supply of babies was drying up. Rising incomes, changing attitudes toward girls and weaker enforcement of the one-child policy had combined to stem the widespread dumping of baby girls. Besides, pregnant women who were insistent on a boy would determine the gender with ultrasound (illegal, but common just the same) and abort female fetuses. But foreign adoptions were in full swing, with more than 5,000 babies heading to the United States in 2000 alone. "It used to be that you'd get 50 or 100 yuan [$7.30 or $14.60] per baby, then 700 or 800, but there was more demand and fees kept rising and they'd bring in babies from other provinces," Duan said. One such place was neighboring Guangdong, the manufacturing hub of China, with a large population of migrant workers who often couldn't keep their babies. By chance, the husband of Duan's sister Meilin got a job in 2001 working on a chicken farm in the small Guangdong city of Wuchuan. Nearby lived an older woman by the name of Liang Guihong, a former garbage collector, who for years had been taking in babies. She sometimes had more than 20 newborns in her home, lined up on blankets on her beds. The Duan family members saw opportunity. They started buying up the babies to sell to the orphanages in Hunan. "Liang used to take care of the babies out of kindness, but she turned into a businesswoman," Duan recalled in the interview.
Instead of turning over extra babies to the orphanages in Guangdong, Liang preferred to sell them to traffickers who would pay more to take them to Hunan or adjacent Jianxi province, which also supplied many of the babies adopted in the United States. The Duans say that in addition to the 85 babies she provided them, Liang sold more than 1,000 to orphanages. The orphanages disguised the origins of the babies, the Duans said. "They would fabricate the information. They would say that the baby was found at the Sunday market, near the bridge, on the street. Very few of the stories they put in the babies' files were true. Only the director of the orphanage knew the babies were really from Guangdong," Duan's father said. The orphanages had to comply with a law requiring that they look for the birth parents before putting a baby up for adoption. The Hunan civil affairs department put official notices seeking the birth parents of the babies in a local paper, but they were filled with deliberate misinformation about where the babies had been found. The well-publicized court case involving the Duans prompted the China Center of Adoption Affairs to suspend adoptions from Hunan and warn orphanages against paying for babies. Insiders in the orphanage community here say the practice continues, but with more discretion. Deng Yuping, director of an orphanage in Yichun in Jiangxi province, said he pays up to $75 to cover transportation costs for people who bring in babies, but that many walk away because they can get more from other orphanages. "It's true, some orphanages are paying bigger finder's fees' than we are," Deng said.
Orphanage directors acknowledge that they don't have the resources to make sure that babies brought in had been abandoned. "We can only take care of the child. It is up to the public security bureau [police] to investigate if that child was really abandoned," said Chen Ming, a former orphanage director who received a suspended sentence in the Duans' case.
The Chinese government acknowledges that each year 30,000 to 60,000 children go missing, most of them abducted.
*Is’nt this incredible, I lost my whole attention about this trafficking in human beings!!!! Where is the respect for all this infants?
January 24th 2010 10:42 p.m.
53 Haitian Orphans Are Airlifted to U.S.
MIAMI — A group of 53 Haitian orphans landed in Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning, the first wave to arrive after the United States loosened its policy on visa requirements to expedite Americans’ adoptions of parentless children living in the post-earthquake ruins. But the new policy, announced late Monday, affects only 900 children whom the Haitian government had already identified as orphans, and whom adoption agencies had matched with couples in the United States. Tens of thousands of children are believed to have been orphaned in the quake, and their fate remains unclear, aid groups and United Nations officials say. Catholic leaders in Miami are pushing both governments to have children who appear to be orphaned airlifted to temporary group homes in South Florida. Several aid groups who focus on children, however, say every effort should be made to reunite them with relatives. It normally takes three years to adopt a child from Haiti, because of a lengthy process required under Haitian law. The Haitian government has had reason to be cautious; there are about 200 orphanages in Haiti, but United Nations officials say not all are legitimate. Some are fronts for traffickers who buy children from their parents and sell them to couples in other countries. “In orphanages in Haiti there are an awful lot of children who are not orphans,” said Christopher de Bono, a Unicef spokesman. Under the new policy, announced Monday night by the Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the United States is waiving visa requirements on humanitarian grounds for Haitian children already in the pipeline for adoption. Some adoptions had already been approved by Haitian authorities, but the United States also agreed to let in other children who had been matched with American parents but had not gotten a final blessing from Haitian officials. “The U.S. government has never done this in the past,” said Mary F. Robinson, president of the National Council for Adoption. “They are really going all out to expedite the process. ”Homeland Security Department officials said they were walking a fine line, trying to let in bona fide orphans without opening the floodgates to all children who have been separated from their parents. “We remain focused on family unification and must be vigilant not to separate children from relatives in Haiti who are still alive but displaced, or to unknowingly assist criminals who traffic in children in such desperate times,” said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the department. Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania played an instrumental role in bringing the first planeload of children out of Haiti, and the bureaucratic difficulties his team faced underscore the legal and moral complexities of transferring hundreds of children to a new country in the middle of a catastrophe that has crippled the Haitian government.“There were many times we thought we were coming back with no one,” Mr. Rendell said Tuesday in Pittsburgh. After an all-night journey on two planes, the children — some wrapped in blankets, some carried by nurses and doctors, some walking and waving — came off a donated jet at Pittsburgh International Airport just after 9 a.m. and were taken by bus to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of U.P.M.C. with a police escort. Some of their adoptive parents waited anxiously while doctors examined the children, most of whom are under the age of 4. “We just kept expecting the worst-case scenario, that they wouldn’t survive, that they’d be looted, that they’d run out of water,” said Jill Lear of Watertown, S.D., who arrived with her husband, Bruce, to wait for two children they were to adopt. Mr. Rendell and Representative Jason Altmire flew Monday to Haiti on a chartered plane carrying medical supplies and 20 doctors and nurses. The plan was to drop off the supplies and pick up children from an orphanage run by two sisters, Jamie and Alison McMutrie from a Pittsburgh suburb, Ben Avon, Pa.. The orphanage was so badly damaged that the McMutrie sisters and the children were living in a courtyard. With a borrowed cell phone, they sent out appeals for help, saying they had only enough provisions for a few days.Having lobbied the White House for several days, the Pennsylvania delegation had obtained United States visas for the children and had expected to be on the ground one hour. But Haitian officials would let only 28 of the 54 orphans the sisters had brought to the airport to leave; the rest had not cleared all the hurdles for adoption. Seven had yet to be matched with adoptive parents, the Haitians said.Then the sisters dug in their heels. “They just said no, they wouldn’t leave without all of them,” Mr. Altmire said. For five hours, the delegation worked furiously to get the Haitian government to agree to let all the children go. The governor’s wife, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, went to Port-au-Prince to meet with American diplomats. Mr. Rendell and Mr. Altmire lobbied the White House, which pressured Haitian officials. The chartered plane was forced to return to Miami before a deal was reached, Mr. Rendell said, but the delegation stayed in Haiti. But at 11 p.m., the Haitian officials relented and the children were evacuated on a United States military cargo plane to Orlando, Fla., where they transferred to the jet to Pennsylvania. One child was found to be missing at the last minute in Haiti, and Jamie McMutrie stayed behind to find her. They were expected to arrive here Wednesday.
James C. McKinley Jr. reported from Miami, and Sean D. Hamill from Pittsburgh.
January 20th 2010 9:15 p.m.
Interest in Haiti Adoptions Skyrockets
TULSA, OK -- The plight of Haiti's children has touched people all over the world and a Tulsa international adoption agency says they've seen a spike in calls from potential parents. Dillon International says typically it handles about a dozen adoptions from Haiti. In the last week, they have had more than 1,000 inquiries about adopting children from the devastated country. Tear-streaked, little faces of despair are calling to would-be parents all over the world. Rebecca Hackworth works for Dillon International, which specializes in international adoption and she has a special place in her heart for Haiti. "My girls came home in 85," Hackworth said. She became a mom to two Haitian girl’s, one now has a little girl of their own. Hackworth looks at her family and says she understands why people see adoption as a way to help. "The children that may be newly orphaned from this tragedy, It's going to take a while to know whether they're truly orphaned or if they have just been separated from their families," Hackworth said. Oklahomans Randy and Kathy Presley adopted 17 year-old Eliana from Haiti. They were in the process of adopting Eliana's brother, Christopher, when the earthquake struck. "You just wonder what's going through the mind of a little four year old, so much trauma, so much heartache, too young to see what they've seen," Kathy said. The Presley's say four-year-old Christopher is okay but they do not know where he is staying. They are not sure when they will be able to get him out of the country with Haiti's legal system in shambles. "Hold on, hold on, we're not quitting," Kathy said. "If its two years, its two years … we're still going to be there, we're not giving up." Rebecca Hackworth says persistence is going to be necessary. Adopting Haitian children may be harder and could take longer. "If adoption is in your heart; start. There's lot of kids. There are over a hundred million children orphaned in the world. So, Haiti isn't the only country where there's need," Hackworth said. Rebecca Hackworth says the Haitian and U.S. governments are trying to process emergency passports and visas for adoptive families but she says Dillon's last Haiti adoption took 26 months.
January 5th 2010 8:03 p.m.
US-Adoptions - Why the Federal Government Must Regulate Adoption
For years, the argument against greater regulation of adoption by the federal government has been rooted in the notion that adoption is a state law issue. The public thought adoption was a benevolent, philanthropic exercise practiced by charitable organizations donating their services to ensure better lives for orphans. In truth, adoption is big business and inherently interstate in nature. The federal government already tightly controls adoption from foster care. The truth is a powerful argument for immediate federal intervention in fee-charging adoption. By leaving regulation to the states, consumers of adoption services have been left almost entirely vulnerable to unscrupulous providers effectively shielded by distant geography from accountability. Adoption has become a multi-billion-dollar industry with some providers realizing revenues of $15 million annually. With the demand for healthy infants far in excess of the supply, American children are literally being sold to the highest bidders, often to foreign nationals living in other countries. Unfortunately, while unscrupulous facilitators trade in human beings for money, adoption effectively remains the only unregulated business in the United States.
As early as 1955, the U.S. Senate investigated abusive adoption practices. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee held a series of oversight hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In those hearings, Sen. Kefauver took testimony from birthparents, adoptive parents and adoptees. These witnesses detailed hundreds, if not thousands, of chilling stories which outlined a trail of unethical and deceptive business practices, including kidnaping, by adoption agencies coast to coast. The charges included the theft and sale of babies from birthparents who desperately wanted to keep them. Infants with life threatening health problems were placed with unsuspecting adoptive families oblivious to the desperate need their children had for urgent medical treatment. One agency in Tennessee was responsible for the illicit placement of more than 10,000 children in more than forty states in one ten-year period.
Since Sen. Kefauver's hearings more than forty years ago some agencies he targeted are still in business and the practices he exposed have continued. The number of wrongful adoption lawsuits against agencies engaged in careless practices and deliberate fraud are skyrocketing. Unfortunately, efforts to protect the consumers of adoption services have been consistently thwarted by a multi-million-dollar lobbying effort by fee charging adoption agencies and their trade association, the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). It should come as no surprise that some NCFA members were among those targeted by Sen. Kefauver.
For years, the big business interests of adoption have attempted to persuade Congress and the public that their interest in limiting openness in adoption is about privacy for birthmothers. The reality, however, may have more to do with promoting secrecy, limiting liability and preserving profits.
In 1992, NCFA charter member, the Smithlawn Maternity Center in Lubbock, Texas, was the first adoption agency in the United States to be successfully sued under federal racketeering statutes. The suit was filed by adoptive parents of two "healthy" infants. The parents alleged that agency employees concealed serious medical conditions of both children, who had different birthmothers. It was later learned from agency records that one child's mother had taken drugs before and during her pregnancy, while the other child had experienced significant trauma during delivery. The adoptive family also sued attorney George Thompson maintaining that he had a conflict of interest while representing them. While representing the family he also served on Smithlawn's board of directors. Under a subsequent settlement with the adoptive parents, Thompson, three Smithlawn officials and the agency itself were ordered to pay a settlement in excess of $1 million. (Dallas Morning News, 2/13/93)
Another NCFA member, LDS Social Services in Utah (whose affiliates represent over half of NCFA's membership) was sued in 1993 by a birthmother. She had been on Thorazine (a sedative) when the agency obtained her signature on the surrender, two days after the birth in 1967. When she was discharged from the hospital, she did not remember signing the surrender or being drugged. In the next few months she contacted the agency about thirty more times, expressing confusion and remorse over the loss of her son. The agency did not tell her about the drug or about her condition when she signed the surrender, and she did not ask; the agency simply said it could do nothing. In 1990 she and her son were reunited. Shortly thereafter, the agency, through a clerical mistake, gave her a copy of her medical records. After two years of further correspondence with the agency and with officials of the Mormon Church, she brought suit. The Utah courts dismissed the suit on the ground that it was started too late. (Salt Lake Tribune, 5/9/96) (Safsten v. LDS Social Services, Inc., 942 P.2d 949; Utah 1997)
Several stories in the July/August 1998 issue of Adoptive Families Magazine raise concerns about other questionable practices. Consider the following scenarios:
n An adoption agency separated newborn identical twin boys and placed them in two separate adoptive homes 3,000 miles apart despite insistence by their birthmother that they be placed for adoption together. Four years later, their adoptive parents were horrified to learn that the adoption agency could charge each couple the full adoption fee for one healthy infant's adoption-doubling the fee they could collect if the twins had been placed together.
n A college freshman planned adoption for her unborn child and contacted a large Texas agency. When she later changed her mind, the agency told her that she would have to repay thousands of dollars in medical and living expenses and would be prosecuted for fraud for failing to give up her child. Several years later she learned that authorities cannot force mothers in her circumstance to give up their babies.
n An independent facilitator in Massachusetts used a South American attorney to locate and place that country's children. Eventually it was discovered that the children had been kidnapped by the attorney's employee. Though the facilitator was forced out of business, the attorney still practices adoption in his country. The parents of the kidnapped children have no idea where their babies are today.
Stories like the last one illustrate the fact that American adoption consumers are not the only ones who have reason to question some American adoption providers. Around the same time Sen. Kefauver was conducting his landmark hearings, birthmothers in Ireland and Irish officials were making a series of alarming discoveries. They learned that thousands of Irish children who had been placed for adoption in the United States, on the condition that they be placed with Catholic families, were actually auctioned off to the highest bidders by American adoption providers. In some instances, children were placed in homes that had not even been homestudied. The Irish government was sufficiently concerned about these and other unscrupulous practices that, in 1959, they banned all adoptions of Irish children outside Ireland-a prohibition that continues to this day. (Banished Babies by Mike Milotte)
But Ireland is not the only country that has expressed concerns about the ethics of American adoption providers. In the February 7, 1999, issue of the New York Times Magazine, reporter Tina Rosenberg's story "Salvador's Disappeared Children" detailed the work in El Salvador of a search and reunion organization, Pro-Busqueda. Since 1994, Pro-Busqueda has reunited children abducted and sold by Central American military juntas, in some cases to families who were aware at the time of the sale that the children were kidnapped. While Pro-Busqueda has reunited 98 disappeared children with their biological families, they have a list of 434 other families searching for children and children searching for biological families. Fourteen of the abducted children reunited with birth families had been placed for adoption in the United States.
Like Salvadoran birthmothers, poor women in Guatemala also have reason to worry about American business practices in adoption. In 1998, Public Eye, a now-canceled TV news magazine featuring Bryant Gumbal, detailed problems of NCFA member agency, Adoption Associates in Jennison, Michigan. The agency contracted with a Guatemalan attorney who they knew had been accused of stealing children from unsuspecting birthmothers. The birthmothers had been told their children were stillborn. Adoption Associates continued to accept money from American families and accept children from the attorney although the Guatemalan government was investigating him in connection with more than a dozen children and the U.S. Embassy did not recommend that Americans use him.
While human rights activists all over the world applaud the efforts of Pro-Busqueda and decry the abduction of Guatemalan children from their mothers, the silent conspiracy of American officials, desperate infertile couples, naive child welfare advocates and big business interests have combined to stall protections for children and their families. As the market for children grows, agencies short on highly marketable healthy infants have hidden medical and/or emotional problems. The children are sold to unsuspecting families ill-equipped to deal with the children's special needs. Sometimes the failure to disclose can have disastrous results for the adoptive families.
Consider the case of the Thorne’s of Phoenix, Arizona. You may recall that the Thorne’s were arrested for child abuse after a tumultuous flight from Russia during which they engaged in a physical struggle with two 4-year-old girls adopted from a Russian orphanage through a Mesa, Arizona agency. Though the agency involved knew that at least one of the children involved suffered from severe emotional problems, both children were held out to the couple as "normal." After the Thorne’s arrest, the children were placed in foster care ten thousand miles from their home country. The Thorne’s, who paid high fees to adopt, now have criminal records and thousands of dollars in legal fees. The agency involved continues to do business with little or no liability for its failure to protect the Thorne’s or their daughters adequately. (New York Times, 11/2/97)
The Thorne’s story also highlights a growing, but little known, side-effect of careless placements by unscrupulous providers. While the number of international adoptions in the United States has doubled in the past ten years, disruptions of those adoptions are increasing at a much faster rate. Previously institutionalized children with severe attachment disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome and other serious problems are entering the already-overburdened U.S. foster care system. The disrupted adoptive families are liable for the cost of foster care. When the adoptive parents cannot pay, the American taxpayers foot the bill. The agencies responsible for placing these children collect hefty fees and have no statutory liability.
Fortunately, this year Congress will take up several vehicles that will contain provisions that could provide meaningful protections for birth and adoptive families. Efforts to ratify the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (the enabling legislation that will be required), a tax credit bill and other legislation all provide opportunities for Congress to hold hearings into abuses and to put safeguards in place. If adoptive parents, birthparents and adoptees band together, the first steps to greater consumer protection in adoption can be completed. In the meantime, organizations responsible for exploiting the consumers of adoption services will continue to spend millions of dollars to keep birthparents and the children they gave up for adoption from comparing notes and healing their lives.
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December 8th 2009 6:13 p.m.
Red tape hits adoption
A BUREAUCRATIC quibble threatens to unravel Australia's Ethiopian Adoption Program.
The Attorney-General's Department last month suspended the program after the Ethiopian Government asked for the formalisation of payments by adoptive families to help needy children left in Ethiopia. The department is concerned that such an arrangement would breach the Hague Convention guarding against improper financial gain arising from adoption.
December 6th 2009 6:25 p.m.
Embassies push for transparency in adoptions
Embassies of 12 countries entertaining inter-country adoptions from Nepal have jointly asked the government to ensure transparency and meet international standards while processing inter-country adoption cases. The embassies passed their concerns in the form of a note verbale (a diplomatic memorandum) to the government via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on November 24 after they found that the "inter-country adoptions from Nepal were not meeting international standards and practices determined by the Hague Convention". The convention says that adoption should take place in the best interest of the children.
"The group offers its support and urges the Government of Nepal to strengthen the beneficial cooperation with the Hague Conference [Hague Convention], e.g. to ensure that internationally recognized standards and practices," reads the note verbale possessed by myrepublica.com from its sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Submitted by the German Embassy on behalf of the countries on inter-country adoption, the note verbale was initially issued by Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Later, France, Italy and Spain also signed on it. Australia, Canada and the US have also supported it.
A diplomatic source told myrepublica.com that the embassies are particularly concerned over lack of a central authority with responsibility to ensure that inter-country adoptions met international standards and the lack of laws on a par with the convention.
"We also agree [with the countries] that the inter-country adoptions are not taking place as per the international standards. There should be a central authority to see the inter-country adoption," said advocate Upendra Keshari Neupane, who is also an executive committee member of Child NGO Federation.
The embassies have also asked the government to make public the number of adoptable children, their age and sex and the organizations they are staying in. They have also sought information on the status of adoptable children -- voluntarily waived or orphans.The countries entertaining inter-country adoption from Nepal, diplomatic sources said, are concerned over the rise in the number of adoptable children after the resumption of the inter-country adoption in 2009.
"The number of adoptable children dropped when adoption was suspended in 2007. But we have noticed a sudden rise in the number of such children in child homes and orphanages after the inter-country adoption was resumed in January 2009. How such children´s homes and orphanages see decrease in the number of children when the adoption was stopped and rise when the adoption was resumed?" the source asked.
The countries are also concerned over the representation of the Child NGO Federation in the Recommendation, Investigation and Monitoring Committee at the Ministry of Social Affairs that is responsible for investigating the facts about any children before granting approval for adoption.
"International standards require that there should be no representation of a federation of child NGO that also represents children´s homes and orphanages involved in inter-country adoption," said another diplomatic source. But advocate Neupane, who represents the federation in the committee, said, "Only the individual who is not involved in inter-country adoption is sent to represent the Child NGO Federation in the committee." In the note verbale, the embassies have also questioned the existence of two different committees to match a foreign family for any adoptable child. Advocate Neupane agreed that the works of the matching committee have not been transparent.
Similarly, the countries are also doubtful that the paper works on the situation of adoptable children might be fake. They have also expressed concern over deprival of foster care, kinship and domestic adoption to children at child homes and orphanages. "To encourage domestic adoption, the existing laws should be amended," said Neupane, who is also the President of Democratic Lawyers´ Association. kiran@myrepublica.com
November 30th 2009 3:22 p.m.
Ukraine’s children still have it rough
Country’s children hit hard by poverty, other pains.
Since Ukraine gained independence, the number of children in the nation decreased by 5 million. But despite their shrinking numbers, the lives of many of Ukraine’s 8.2 million kids remain tough, according to Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Nina Karpacheva.
Karpacheva called a Nov. 20 press conference to give a progress report on the state of the nation's children. Her remarks were timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. She read a letter from 12-year-old Nastya, describing the abuse some children endure: "I live with my grandparents. My mom died in an accident and I became disabled. Please, protect me from my father. He threw me and mom out before and now he wants me back. He does not pay us alimony.” Karpacheva said she receives thousands of letters from children seeking help. Some of the children require protection and care; others are living in poverty and have nowhere to turn for help.The United Nations says that poverty and poor health care are the two biggest problems Ukrainian children face. More than 26 percent of families with one child, 42 percent of families with two children and 77 percent of families with four and more children live in poverty, according to United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. In Ukraine, poverty is informally considered to be an income below Hr 1,500 monthly per person.“Child poverty is chronic and inherited,” Karpacheva said. “And it is scary.” The number of children with physical and mental disabilities, related to poor medical care, appears to be on the rise, she said. “Child poverty remains very high in Ukraine and it became more acute due to the crisis,” said Yukie Mokuo, a UNICEF representative in Ukraine. “Ukraine needs to continue its reform of the juvenile justice and child health care systems; it needs further improvement of immunization practices, the most effective and easiest way to protect the health of children. ”Not all child-related statistics are grim, fortunately.
Last year more than 50,000 children were born in Ukraine, 20 percent more than in 2004. And this year, Ukraine posted record-breaking birth rates since its 1991 independence. Infant mortality rates have also dropped from 10.4 deaths to 8.9 per 1,000 children under one year of age. This is still high in comparison, however, to many other nations.
Adoption of Ukrainian orphans and children without parental care has increased by 40 percent in three years. In 2008, 2,066 children were adopted, compared to 1,419 in 2005. More than 40 percent of these children find homes outside of the country. Karpacheva said the government should continue with efforts to increase adoptions in Ukraine. “It is extremely hard to fully track and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian kids abroad, as Ukraine, in all the years of independence, has failed to sign agreements with countries where the majority of adopting families come from,” she added. A few years ago, American John Krueger had adopted three Ukrainian boys, ages 7 to 11, and molested them for years. He was convicted in 2006.
There are domestic horror stories related to child abuse, trafficking and prostitution, too. According to Interpol, Ukraine’s market of child pornography is worth $100 million. In October, three parliament deputies were implicated in an abuse case. The politically-charged investigation is ongoing. In the last five years, more than 3,000 people have been convicted of sexual abuse and related crimes against children. “Seventy-five percent of child pornography is operated through the Internet. Some 750,000 pedophiles in the world are linked to the Internet. About 2 million children in the world get involved in this business every year. Ukraine needs drastic censorship of the Internet space aimed to combat child pornography,” Karpacheva concluded.
Ukraine started attracting more sex tourists after abolishing a visa regime for many European and North American countries. Also, an increasing number of children whose parents work abroad are growing up in other homes.“There are five to seven million Ukrainians working aboard," Karpacheva said.
Nataliya Bugayova can be reached at bugayova@kyivpost.com.
State of the children
Ukraine has 5 million fewer children since 1991 independence; 26.4 percent of families with 1 child, 42 percent of families with 2 children and 76.4 percent of families with 4 and more children live in poverty, defined informally as Hr 1,500 monthly or less per person; Interpol estimates Ukraine’s child pornography market is worth $100 million; 22.8 per cent of crimes in Ukraine are committed by children; Each year 10,000 children are convicted of crimes.
November 26th 2009 7:41 p.m.
Fed-up couples giving up adoption dreams
Australian couples are increasingly giving up on dreams of adopting a child from overseas orphanages, thanks largely to a sluggish bureaucracy that results in waiting times of up to seven years. More than 1000 couples nationwide have been approved for adoption and are waiting in line for their child — and at least that number again have lodged an expression of interest or a formal adoption application over the past year. But the mounting waiting times are driving some frustrated couples to divorce, while others simply "age out" — growing too old to adopt a child from their nominated country due to upper age limits. "We now get two to three emails a week from couples who say they no longer want to continue their journey [to adoption]," said Evelyne Schilz-Middleton, NSW president of the Australian Society for Intercountry Aid Children. Families approved in Australia for intercountry adoption may get lucky and wait as little as one year to adopt a child from a country like Taiwan. For other approved couples it takes about three to four years to adopt from countries like South Korea and Ethiopia, and around six years or longer from China and India, according to official accounts and interviews with adoption support groups.The bottleneck begins before a couple is even assessed as suitable to adopt a child from a foreign country. State and Territory authorities that manage the approval process ask couples to jump through various hoops — from sitting education seminars and psychological exams to undergoing training programs and giving their life story to a case worker — which alone can take a year or longer. One Melbourne couple registered their interest in an overseas adoption back in December 2007, joining a cue merely to be interviewed for the privilege of attending a training program. Since that time the couple has moved just 38 places in the cue, to number 80. "I phoned DHS [Victoria's Department of Human Services] and asked, 'What's the story?'," said the woman, 44, who wanted to remain anonymous for fears that speaking publicly will jeopardise her chance at adoption. "They said, 'Look, it's a long queue, I understand your frustration but there's nothing we can do'." Australian families adopted 270 children from overseas orphanages in 2007-08, according to latest figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. That represents 1.27 adoptions per 100,000 population — a far lower adoption rate than countries like America, which adopted 5.64 children per 100,000 population over the same period. Authorities acknowledge that waiting times have ballooned in recent years, a trend they attribute to a downturn in the number of orphans overseas available for adoption. But adoption advocates blame a government bureaucracy which they say is slow to process applications and unwilling to develop new programs overseas. A 2005 federal inquiry into inter-country adoption chaired by Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop found a "general attitude against inter-country adoption in most jurisdictions, which ranges from indifference or lack of support to hostility." Edith Cowan University researcher Trudy Rosenwald reckons little has changed since. "Too often couples experience an adoption journey that is very negative and defeating — and it's worse in Australia because you don't have any other choice except to go through a government department, which adds to the sense of disempowerment," she said. In addition to the long waiting times, Dr Rosenwald points to the strict eligibility criteria and expensive fees imposed on adoption applicants as evidence of "decision makers who don't believe in adoption". In Victoria, adoptive parents pay over $6000 in fees to adoption authorities while NSW applicants are charged almost $10,000 — and that doesn't include the airfares to pick up your child or other costs like organising a medical exam or birth certificate for them. The total cost of adopting a child, including fees from the country of origin and airfares, ranges from $25,000 to $40,000. Eligibility criteria also vary depending on the State or Territory. In NSW, you will not be assessed for inter-country adoption if you're also having infertility treatment or if you are pregnant; In Queensland and Western Australia, applicants must pass a body mass index test; and in Tasmania, both parents must be at least 40 years older than the adoptee. A spokeswoman for the Attorney-General's Department said the federal government had implemented 16 of the 27 recommendations that came out of the Bishop inquiry, including transferring responsibility for overseas programs to the Commonwealth.Two intergovernmental working groups had also been established "to achieve greater consistency in adoption laws across the States and Territories", the spokeswoman said. The Harmonisation Working Group has met three times and the Alternative Models Working Group has met twice, records of minutes show, but neither has reached agreement on creating uniform eligibility criteria or uniform fees for couples who wish to adopt.
November 17th 2009 6:11 p.m.
HC framing new rules for international adoptions
MUMBAI: International adoptions hold a fascination for many adoption agencies across the country. For the child, it is an opportunity to get a family’s love. But in a rising number of cases, children given in for adoption abroad, are abandoned or forced to come back to India for other reasons. And when that happens, usually they have nothing to fall back on. To fill in this lacuna and to ensure a safety net for cross-border adoptions, the Bombay high court is for the first time suggesting the establishment of a National Children's Trust Fund for their rehabilitation.
Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud is in the process of finalising path-breaking guidelines on foreign adoptions and the steps that need to be taken to ensure the welfare of these children. On Friday, the judge at an in-chamber hearing in which Asha Bajpai of TISS and additional solicitor general Darius Khambatta are participating, the court considered shortlisting several key systemic changes to the procedure. The judge is of the view that children who are abandoned or forced to return to India cannot be left to chart their course through unknown territory and with no institutional help. In a radical proposal, it was suggested that $5,000 should be deposited by each foreign adopting parent/s before the adoption is finalised. The funds thus collected would then be used for supporting children who return to India.
In one case, that is still pending before the Bombay HC, Jennifer Haynes, now 27 and adopted 20 years ago by a US couple, was sent back on certain charges. She moved the high court, saying she has no identity left and nowhere to stay. In another case, a 14-year-old girl also adopted by a US family is now back after she developed psychiatric problems. The question is who would fund her treatment-Wide Horizons for Children (WHC), the adoption agency that had placed her for adoption and then flew her back in 2008 September or Indian government's Central Adoption Resources Agency which gave the permission to bring her back or the Indian Council for Social Welfare (ICSW) under whose care she is now. The Indian council wants the adoptee parents and the WHC to pay for the medical treatment.
The HC has said that proper psychiatric evaluation prior to such international adoptions is also a must.
Advocate Jamshed Mistry, who has dealt with several cases of issues cropping in foreign adoptions, said that what needs to be done immediately is to ensure that records of foreign adoptions must be scrupulously kept by the agency that facilitated it for the 60-year period as mandated by the Hague Convention to which India is a signatory. But the practice is sometimes not followed. On adoption by a foreign national, the process of naturalisation of the child ought to begin immediately.
THETHIMESOFINDIA
November 15th 2009 7:41 p.m.
New adoption law draws fire for neglecting abuse
A draft adoption law has prompted criticism from lawmakers who say it does little to stem the abuse of adopted children.
Many National Assembly representatives also opposed stipulations in the draft that would bar homosexual foreigners from adopting and would give provincial adoption boards the power to approve or veto adoptions. Representatives also said the mandatory age distance between adopter and adoptee must be extended to limit cases of sexual abuse.The draft Adoption Law would be the country’s first law encompassing the various adoption regulations currently in place. It was discussed last week at the National Assembly’s ongoing session and will be revisited this week.
Gays prohibited
In line with the new draft, foreign parents applying to adopt in Vietnam would have to submit a signed statement confirming that they were not homosexual. The law would also require the age difference between parents and children of different genders be at least 20 years. Representatives said the law should aim to prevent abuse – sexual and otherwise – but most argued that requiring parents to state that they were not homosexual would not prevent abuse. Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong also said such a commitment would not ensure that parents were not gay or would not become so in the future.
The age-old question
Hanoi representative Dang Huyen Thai said she was concerned the law was not thorough enough. “I am afraid that we have not fully estimated the possible problems,” she said.
“It is possible for a parent of 36 years old to adopt a 16-year-old child for the purpose of sexual abuse or labor exploitation. ”She said this threat could be reduced if the age difference was between 25 and 30 years for parents and children of any gender. Many representatives also said the maximum adoption age should be raised to 16 instead of 15 as stipulated in the draft.
Deputy Bui Sy Loi of Thanh Hoa Province said the modification would be necessary because the Law on Child Protection, Care and Education recognized children as 16 years old or younger.
Simplification
Representatives applauded a section of the draft that would simplify the form adoptions can take in Vietnam. Currently, parents can chose “complete” adoption or “simple” adoption, the difference being that simple adoptees are still legally bound to their biological families via inheritance while complete adoptees are legally severed from their original families.The new draft aims to keep all adopted children linked to their biological families via inheritance.The National Assembly Law Committee supported the move, saying it was both legally and ethically the right thing to do.
But representative Nguyen Dang Kinh from Hanoi also said the adoptive children needed to be considered full members of their new adoptive families, with rights to inheritance there also. He said that link should not stop at just maternal and paternal relationships.“The child should have legal bonds to all family members, not just the adoptive parents,” he said. Iran Dinh Long of Dak Lak Province agreed with Kinh, saying such regulations could help prevent possible conflicts and disputes between the child and other members of the adoptive family. (thanhniennews.com)
October 21th 2009 7:00 p.m.
Government opposes resumption of international adoptions
The Romanian government opposes resumption of international adoptions after receiving a memorandum from the Romanian Adoption Office (ORA) proposing their resumption.
The current government has not debated the memorandum and therefore has not made a decision. Acting Prime Minister Emil Boc believes the present laws on international adoptions are in accord with international legislation and European standards," a government statement today (Fri) said. ORA State Secretary Bogdan Panait had no comment on the government's statement but said the document had been submitted only to ask for its view on the issue. Panait said ORA had proposed international adoptions only in cases of repeated failures of national adoption attempts.
The document said that there were still certain classes of "hard to adopt" children, for whom the current legal framework did not allow identification of adequate and permanent care solutions. Those classes included children older than six, children belonging to ethnic minorities, children with serious medical problems, and groups of more than two siblings who could not be reintegrated into their families, for whom Romanian foster families could not be found and who would therefore remain in the special protection system until they were 18, according to the document.
October 18th 2009 10:57 a.m.
Information about terre des hommes Germany
Terre des Hommes Germany is an aid organisation focussing on children and supporting about 350 projects in 28 countries. These include school and training projects, initiatives for street children, working children, child prostitutes and refugee children. It also runs food security and healthcare programmes.Terre des Hommes helps people to liberate themselves from oppression and economic hardship. It seeks to empower them to try out their own ideas about a life lived in dignity. We do not send out field workers, preferring to promote local initiatives: with money, advice and networking facilities.Terre des Hommes means, in French, earth of humanity.Terre des Hommes endeavours - through campaigns, lobbying and publicity - to influence German political and business circles in the interest of children suffering hunger, exploitation or the aftermath of war. Terre des Hommes action groups are groups of volunteers in 150 German towns and cities. They work on development-related issues at the local level, organising events, sitting on refugee councils and raising funds for projects. About eighty staff members work in the Terre des Hommes office in Osnabrück.
October 4th 2009 7:18 p.m.
Foreign-born adoptees feel at home in Finland
A study finds that adoptees experience little or no discrimination growing up in this country.
Children who are adopted to Finland from abroad grow up identifying themselves as Finnish, according to new research. For adoptees whose appearance sets them apart from native Finns, growing up different can be a trying experience. The study also found that, in general, Finnish attitudes towards international adoptees are more positive than towards immigrants.“In group interviews, some adopted youths even said that their cohorts considered being adopted as a cool thing,” says researcher Heidi Ruohio, whose study on the experiences of international adoptees in Finland was published by the Family Federation in August. She also conducted in-depth interviews with adult adoptees who have grown up in Finnish families.
The adoptees reported that they had experienced little or no discrimination in working life, though some had encountered racist attitudes in from customers in the service industry. Although initial responses may be negative or even racist towards a person whose skin colour or other ethnic features betray non-Finnish roots, a thorough command of the Finnish language and familiarity with the culture often dispel such animosity.“As they grow older, the adoptee identity can become a sort of defence,” says Ruohio. “They can fight back at prejudice by pointing out their Finnish background and language skills.”
The questions of identity are most complex during puberty, when feelings of not fitting in are common for all teenagers. Possibly it is not the skin colour reflected in the mirror that makes adopted youths feel different but the attention of their peers and constant queries about their “home country” or their biological parents. Of course, some adoptees may turn their attention to their ethnic roots and their home country and culture, while others choose to cut that part out of their lives almost entirely.
Voices of the adoptees rarely heard
While international adoption is frequently featured in the media, most coverage tends to concentrate on the parents, while the voices of the adoptees themselves are rarely heard. Many Finns still remember the controversial findings of a Swedish study five years ago, which found international adoptees to be adapting very poorly and suffering from various mental-health problems.“It is important to study and discuss these things,” says Ruohio. “In Sweden, they have researched adoption a lot and they’ve found out that some problems do exist. While the majority of adoptees fare very well, there is a small group that has serious problems. ”There are currently around 3,500 people in Finland who have been adopted from abroad. The number of international adoptions has been in decline recently. In 2008 a total of 195 children born overseas were adopted by Finnish parents, while in the peak year of 2005 the number was close to 350. The most common countries for international adoption to Finland in recent years include Thailand, China and Russia. (Matti Koskinen – HT)
October 2nd 2009 8:49 a.m.
More adoptions in Ukraine
Ukrainian orphans are adopted more frequently then before. This explains the minister of Ukraine for sports, family and youth Yuriy Pavlenko told journalists in Kiev. In the words of Pavlenko, the number of adopted children within the last four years by 30 percent compared to 2004. According to the officials in 2005 were adopted in 1419, for example, orphans, in 2008, the number of such children to 2066th this positive trend to hold this year, added the minister. According to his statements were within eihgt month of the current year 1528 the country adopted orphans.
September 30th 2009 9:45 a.m.
U.S. study: gays are worse parents
There is "no significant differences between adopted children grow up in homo-and hetero couples. Main factor for the happiness of children is thus filled the pockets of the parents, not their sexuality.
This is the result of a study of the East Carolina University in Greenville (North Carolina) and the University of Texas at Arlington, which was published in the journal "Adoption Quartlerly. The researchers interviewed while 1384 pairs, of which 155 were same sex.
"There are no differences between heterosexual or homosexual adoptive parents. People stop people," said Ryan Scott, Professor in charge of the results. "We need this information seriously, because we at least 130,000 children still need to find adoptive parents."
Influence on the happiness of adoptive children have, however, two factors: the first is crucial to get as much help the new parents in the adoption process. The most important point for happy children but they were a stable income of the parents. The higher the income, the happier are the children, the study found.
September 29th 2009 7:13 p.m.
Draft law promotes adoptions by locals
HA NOI — The draft law on adoption will encourage more Vietnamese people to adopt orphaned children, currently numbering about 200,000, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee heard at its session in Ha Noi yesterday.
According to a report prepared by Deputy Minister of Justice Dinh Trung Tung, the biggest difference between the draft law and existing adoption laws is the specific encouragement for domestic adoptions. Tung said 20,000 children had been adopted over the past five years, only 13,000 of whom were adopted by domestic families. The rest were adopted by foreigners. During that time there were shortcomings and overlaps in the regulating legal documents, hindering their effectiveness in real life circumstances. Tung said the draft law makers consulted the basic principles of the Hague Convention and took ideas from various ministries and agencies to come up with their draft version of the law. The draft law consists of six chapters with 57 articles. Included are stipulations regarding specific regulations on domestic adoption, procedures, stopping adoptions, and the responsibilities of agencies and organisations regarding adoption.
Draft Article 15 regulates that orphanages or other centres involved in raising children are responsible for trying to find domestic adoptive parents for children within 30 days of their arrival at the organisation. If they fail to find a domestic family to adopt the child within the 30 days, they should send the name of the child and relevant documents to the Ministry of Justice for publication on its national website. If no interest is shown by domestic families to adopt the child after 30 days, the opportunity will open up to foreigners. This regulation does not apply to children with disabilities, HIV/AIDS, victims of Agent Orange/dioxin or with other serious diseases. The draft law also stipulates that domestic citizens who would like to adopt a child may register with their local Justice Department or the Ministry of Justice.
According to Tung, new draft rules have been included for introducing children to potential adoptive parents from other countries. For example, Draft Articles 36 and 41 regulate that only the Ministry of Justice may introduce children to prospective parents, which is expected to prevent any malpractice by orphanages. At the debate, some deputies suggested new regulations regarding the role of orphanages in working with foreigners on adoption cases. Chairman of the Legal Committee Nguyen Van Thuan said some orphanages were involved in too many activities at one time, including taking in homeless children, accepting foreign donations and introducing children to foreigners. "This results in a lack of objectivity," he said. Thuan also disagreed with the solution that some activities would be undertaken by the Adoption Department under the Ministry of Justice. "It’s not suitable with the ministry’s State management role. It would do better to work as a guard keeper in this situation. "Introducing children to foreigners should be the role of social organisations," he argued. Tung said foreigners should only be allowed to adopt Vietnamese children as a last resort. "Within the next 15-20 years, as the country develops, adoption will primarily stay in the country," he said. "In the long term, we’ll put an end to organisations introducing homeless children to foreigners." However, Chairman of the Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children Dao Trong Thi suggested there should be a method to ensure the best conditions for the child. "I think the most important factor is to find families with the best conditions for children, and there should be criteria to assess that," he said, objecting to the proposed draft law regulation that prioritises domestic families. Thi also said the law should clarify how children would be encouraged to express their own wishes. Chair person of the Committee for Social Affairs Truong Thi Mai said there should not be a regulation against adoption of children who are handicapped, have HIV/AIDS and Agent Orange/dioxin victims. "If we do that, I’m afraid there will be people who take advantage of the rule and will refuse to care for disadvantaged children," she said. Mai also proposed the draft law should include the time frame when children must be told they are adoptees. Some foreign countries regulate that they must be told when they reach adulthood at age 18, but in others it’s not disclosed until their parents die. Council of Nationalities Chairman K’sor Phuoc said there should be a regulation spelling out the rights of adopted children, especially when they are with their foreign families. For example, the children should have the right to either renounce or keep their Vietnamese nationality.
NA Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong said there were still many cases that see parents adopting children without fulfilling legal formalities. He suggested the writers add a rule about this to the draft law. — VNS
September 29th 2009 7:08 p.m.
The issue of intercountry adoption and, in particular, the negotiation of a new bilateral agreement with Vietnam has been given considerable priority by Department officials over the past year. The Minister of State, Deputy Andrews, has advised the House and parent and prospective adoptive parent representative groups on many occasions regarding the developments in those discussions. He again emphasises that the Government’s objective is to provide a regime in which the child is at the centre of the adoption process, whether it is an intercountry or domestic adoption, and that adoptions are effected in a manner which is legal, safe and secure.
The most important development in achieving that objective is the development of an appropriate legislative regime which recognises the changing global situation regarding adoption over the past 20 years. The Adoption Bill, which includes the regime of the Hague Convention, provides an assurance for individual children, their families, and the State, that appropriate procedures have been followed and that the adoption was effected in the best interests of the child. A core principle of the Adoption Bill and the Hague Convention is that the child’s interests must be paramount. The Hague Convention, which is given the force of law in this Bill, effectively puts in place an agreement between states to regulate the standards that will apply in each jurisdiction. It is to put in place safeguards that acceptable standards are being applied in other countries, over which we have no jurisdiction.
Over the course of the past six weeks, two significant reports have been received regarding child welfare, protection and adoption in Vietnam. First, in August 2009, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, with technical assistance from UNICEF in Vietnam, published a report entitled “Creating a protective environment for children in Viet Nam: an assessment of child protection laws and policies, especially children in special circumstances in Viet Nam ”. Some of the issues raised in this report had already been under consideration in ongoing deliberations of the drafting of a new bilateral agreement with the Vietnamese. However, this report has highlighted significant policy and legal implications and warrants further deliberation.
Furthermore, the Minister of State has received in draft form a report of an examination of intercountry adoption in Vietnam carried out by the International Social Services, ISS. The report was commissioned by UNICEF in coordination with the Ministry of Justice of Vietnam. It aims to identify and address problems in both domestic and Intercountry adoption processes with a view to assisting Vietnam in its preparations to ratify the Hague Convention. This report is likely to give rise to further issues that will need to be considered.
The Minister of State stresses that these two reports, both prepared in co-operation with the Vietnamese Government, and UNICEF, go to the heart of the matter regarding concerns about intercountry adoption in Vietnam. He states that he would be failing in his duty to protect children if he did not acknowledge and consider the content of these reports extremely carefully before deciding on next steps. In saying that, these reports also serve to highlight the commitment of the Vietnamese Government to ensuring that the adoption process in Vietnam is in line with the best international standards and its willingness to address issues at the core of that commitment. The Minister of State is currently awaiting finalisation of the ISS report, which is expected in mid to late October.
He is fully aware that those involved in the adoptive process are asking for a clear Government indication as to whether a new bilateral agreement will be concluded. Furthermore, they wish to be informed about a time frame for likely next steps. In meeting representative adoptive groups this afternoon, the Minister of State indicated that the Government must await receipt of the finalised ISS report before a decision can be made whether to continue with negotiations on a new bilateral agreement with Vietnam.
The draft ISS report addresses in some detail the concerns raised in the past regarding intercountry adoption from Vietnam. Given the sensitivity of matters at hand and the gravity of the decisions to be made, the Minister of State believes it prudent to await the finalisation of the ISS report. It is his view, however, that even if the decision is made to proceed with the negotiation of a new bilateral agreement, this process will take some time. It is conceivable that because of the legal complexity involved in safeguarding against the concerns referred to in the reports this process could very well run in to the early part of next year. It is important to be absolutely honest with prospective adoptive parents, many of whom are trying to plan their lives in the absence of definite timelines.
This is an extremely sensitive matter and the Minister of State is aware of the likely concerns of the many Irish families who have already adopted children from Vietnam. He consulted the Adoption Board which advised that all adoptions from Vietnam that have been registered on the register of foreign adoptions are safe and secure. There should be no doubt about the status of adoptions that have already been effected from Vietnam. These children have been adopted by loving families in Ireland and there should be no doubt concerning their status.
The Minister of State is acutely conscious of the concerns of prospective adoptive parents. Over recent months he has regularly met individual prospective adoptive parents and representative groups. He is deeply aware of the angst, frustration and emotion that prospective adoptive parents continue to experience at this time. He has communicated at every opportunity updates on these matters and has committed to continuing this process.
Regarding the processing of 20 applications, the Minister of State made a private visit to Vietnam in June to assess progress and support advancement of the discussions on a new bilateral agreement on adoption with Vietnam. In the course of discussions held during this visit, the Vietnamese authorities, as a gesture of goodwill, agreed to process the 20 cases that were received by the Department of Adoption before 1 April 2009 but for which no referral had been made prior to 1 May 2009. Several applications were already being processed under the transitional arrangements put in place by the Vietnamese side. This request and the Vietnamese accession to it, was made having regard to the very advanced stage of the applications and the very small number of applications involved. Further applications for adoption will not be considered by the Vietnamese side outside of a bilateral agreement between the two countries.
The Adoption Board has considered the situation of these 20 applications at the request of the Minister of State. The board and Deputy Andrews are satisfied there is no legal impediment in allowing these adoptions to proceed. The board has advised that, as always, registration of these adoptions will have regard to the provisions of the Adoption Acts 1952 to 1998 and will also have specific regard to relevant issues raised above. The need to ensure that appropriate arrangements to safeguard any adoptions are put in place is highlighted by the reports referred to. The Adoption Board has advised the Minister of State of its decision to seek the assistance of the Department of Foreign Affairs in processing the 20 applications. He considers this a prudent approach; staff of his office met with the Department of Foreign Affairs this evening with regard to these matters and he expects the processing of these 20 cases will be advanced shortly.
The granting of a declaration is not a bureaucratic process rather a quasi-judicial one which is a major step in the adoption procedure which is of significance not only to the applicants but to the child whom they will eventually adopt. The issuing of declarations of eligibility and suitability is a matter for the Adoption Board which is an independent statutory body. The Adoption Board must comply with the provisions set down in the Adoption Act 1991. Applications for an extension to the validity of a declaration must be made in the first 12 month period of validity of the declaration. The Adoption Board must also consider whether it is reasonable and proper to grant extensions for a further period. The office of the Minister of State does not have any function in relation to the matter. He has raised the matter with the Adoption Board and they have indicated that the board will be as sympathetic to such applicants as is possible within the legal framework. The Minister of State is also aware that this process has its own implications regarding the role of the Health Service Executive and he will raise the matter directly with the HSE tomorrow.
September 28th 2009 8:47 p.m.
Chinese babies stolen by officials for foreign adoption
In some rural areas, instead of levying fines for violations of China's child policies, greedy officials took babies, which would each fetch $3,000 in adoption fees.
Reporting from Tianxi, China - The man from family planning liked to prowl around the mountaintop village, looking for diapers on clotheslines and listening for the cry of a hungry newborn. One day in the spring of 2004, he presented himself at Yang Shuiying's doorstep and commanded: "Bring out the baby." Yang wept and argued, but, alone with her 4-month-old daughter, she was in no position to resist the man every parent in Tianxi feared.
"I'm going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of money for her," he told the sobbing mother as he drove her with the baby to an orphanage in Zhenyuan, a nearby city in the southern province of Guizhou. In return, he promised that the family wouldn't have to pay fines for violating China's one-child policy.Then he warned her: "Don't tell anyone about it."For five years, she kept the terrible secret. "I didn't understand that they didn't have the right to take our babies," she said. Since the early 1990s, more than 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad, the majority to the United States.The conventional wisdom is that the babies, mostly girls, were abandoned by their parents because of the traditional preference for boys and China's restrictions on family size. No doubt, that was the case for tens of thousands of the girls.
But some parents are beginning to come forward to tell harrowing stories of babies who were taken away by coercion, fraud or kidnapping -- sometimes by government officials who covered their tracks by pretending that the babies had been abandoned. Parents who say their children were taken complain that officials were motivated by the $3,000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages."Our children were exported abroad like they were factory products," said Yang Libing, a migrant worker from Hunan province whose daughter was seized in 2005. He has since learned that she is in the United States. Doubts about how babies are procured for adoption in China have begun to ripple through the international adoption community."In the beginning, I think, adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a lot of people at the local level were making too much money," said Ina Hut, who last month resigned as the head of the Netherlands' largest adoption agency out of concern about baby trafficking.The Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs, the government agency that oversees foreign and domestic adoption, rejected repeated requests for comment. Officials of the agency have told foreign diplomats that they believe that the abuses are limited to a small number of babies and that those responsible have been removed and punished. For adoptive parents, the possibility that their children were forcibly taken from their birth parents is terrifying.
"When we adopted in 2006, we were fed the same stories, that there were millions of unwanted girls in China, that they would be left on the street to die if we didn't help," said Cathy Wagner, an adoptive mother from Nova Scotia, Canada. "I love my daughter, but if I had any idea my money would cause her to be taken away from another mother who loved her, I never would have adopted."
Twisting the laws
The problem is rooted in China's population controls, which limit most families to one child, two if they live in the countryside and the first is a girl. Each town has a family planning office, usually staffed by loyal Communist Party cadres who have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations. People who have additional babies can be fined up to six times their annual income -- fines euphemistically called "social service expenditures," which are an important source of revenue for local government in rural areas."The family planning people are even more powerful than the Ministry of Public Security," said Yang Zhizhu, a legal scholar in Beijing.Throughout the countryside, red banners exhort, "Give birth to fewer babies, plant more trees" and, more ominously, "If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined."But the law does not give officials the power to take babies from their parents. (The Los Angeles Times)
September 26th 2009 3:35 p.m.
Adoption Costs
Adopting from the U.S. foster care system is generally the least expensive type of adoption, usually involving little or no cost, and states often provide subsidies to adoptive parents. Stepparent and kinship adoptions are often not very costly. Agency and private adoptions can range from $5,000 to $40,000 or more depending on a variety of factors including services provided, travel expenses, birthmother expenses, requirements in the state, and other factors. International adoptions can range from $7,000 to $30,000.
While there may be a small fee required up front, any requirement that all fees be paid immediately following application should raise red flags. When talking with your professional, ask about the payment schedule, and about sliding scale fees if your financial resources are limited.
There are a growing number of resources to help manage the cost of adoption, including tax benefits (some of which apply to public agency adoptions as well), loans, employer benefits, and others.
September 24th 2009 7:16 p.m.
Recession blamed for orphans
Pretoria - The number of orphans and vulnerable children has increased with the global financial downturn, Social Development Minister Edna Molewa said on Monday."Currently the number of children who have become orphans and vulnerable is estimated to be 1.5 million, with the largest number in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces."This number is expected to reach two million by 2010," Molewa told journalists at the National Press Club in Pretoria. She said the decrease in the number of traditional caregivers and breadwinners had resulted in increased poverty and lack of proper care for children."When a parent becomes sick and dies, it affects every aspect of the child - emotionally, physical security, mental development and overall health. "Molewa said government preferred adoptions because it provided stability, a long-term family relationship and gave a child a sense of belonging."We view adoption as one of the best options to address the plight of orphans and vulnerable children".
September 22th 2009 10:34 a.m.
16 stand trial in Vietnam baby selling case
HANOI, Vietnam — A court in northern Vietnam has put 16 people on trial for allegedly selling more than 250 babies for foreign adoption, a court official said Tuesday.
The head of two social welfare centers in Nam Dinh province as well as several doctors and nurses at village clinics went on trial Tuesday, said Dang Viet Hung, the chief judge at the court hearing the case. The defendants are charged with "abuse of power and authority" and could face prison terms of five to 10 years.The defendants allegedly solicited infants from unwed mothers and those from desperately poor families and falsified documents claiming the babies had been abandoned at village clinics, making them eligible for adoption, Hung said. The ring sent 266 babies for foreign adoption from 2005 to July 2008, when the activity was discovered, Hung said. He did not know the countries of the adoptive parents. Tuesday's Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper reported that each defendant illegally earned 5 million dong ($275) to 10 million dong ($550) overall.Vietnam and the United States, one of the Southeast Asian country's largest recipients of children for adoption, have yet to renew their bilateral adoption agreement that expired in September. The U.S. Embassy said in a report in April last year that Vietnam had failed to police its adoption system, allowing corruption, fraud and baby-selling to flourish.The report described brokers scouring villages for babies, hospitals selling the infants of mothers who cannot pay their bills, and a grandmother giving away her grandchild without telling the child's mother.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
September 19th 2009 9:36 a.m.
Stata leads in foster child adoptions
Florida is getting a $9.75 million federal bonus for leading the nation in increasing the adoption of foster children. The Department of Children and Families announced the grant Thursday. It'll be used for adoption incentives. Florida is getting 28 percent of the total $35 million in nationwide funding. Texas is second with $5 million. A record number of Florida foster children have been adopted in the past two budget years: 3.777 in 2008-09 and 3.674 in the prior year. (Florida Today)
September 19th 2009 9:26 a.m.
Official: No Ukrainian adoption for Elton John (By MARIA DANILOVA (AP)
KIEV, Ukraine — Elton John won't be able to adopt a 14-month-old HIV-positive child from Ukraine because the pop star is too old and isn't married, the government said Monday.
Adoption and gay rights advocates expressed regret about the determination by Family, Youth and Sports Minister Yuriy Pavlenko, while a children's charity had reservations about John's weekend announcement that he and his male partner, David Furnish, wanted to adopt the boy. John announced his desire after meeting the boy, named Lev, while touring an orphanage Saturday as part of an anti-AIDS charity project."I don't know how we do that, but he has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home," John said. But Pavlenko told The Associated Press that the adoption will not happen because adoptive parents must be married and because the pop star is too old.The singer is 62 and Ukrainian law requires a parent to be no more than 45 years older than an adopted child. John and Furnish tied the knot in 2005 in one of the first legalized civil unions in Britain, but Pavlenko said Ukraine does not recognize gays unions as marriage."Elton John will not be able to adopt a Ukrainian child and if he files that request we will unfortunately deny it," Pavlenko said. "The law is the same for everybody: for a president, for a minister, for Elton John." John spokesman Gary Farrow declined to comment. Pavlenko said Ukraine was grateful for the singer's charity work and expressed hope that his desire to adopt Lev would spur the domestic adoption of more children with health problems, which is still rare in Ukraine.Pavlenko said domestic adoptions have increased significantly thanks to government childcare supplements and maternity leave for adoptive families. In 2004, Ukrainian families adopted about 1,500 children compared with 2,500 adoptions by foreigners. This year, 2,500 orphans were adopted locally while 1,000 found homes abroad. However, Ukrainians are still reluctant to adopt ill, psychologically challenged children or those older than 10. Pavlenko said that only about 30 HIV-positive children have been adopted since 2007. About 32,000 Ukrainian orphans are waiting to be adopted this year, but only 2,000 Ukrainian families are lined to adopt them.Albert Pavlov, head of the Happy Child foundation for orphaned and sick children in Zaporizhia, said he opposed adoption by gays, but called for removing age and marriage restrictions for adopters. "I don't understand why a middle-aged single woman, if she is in good health, cannot raise a child," Pavlov said.Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of Ukraine's Gay Forum, a leading gay rights organization in Ukraine, said the regulations were depriving the boy of a chance to find a family and love."If I were that child, I would feel very bitter and sad," Sheremet said.Yukie Mokuo, UNICEF representative in Ukraine, said that foreign adoptions should be encouraged when no local families can be found.But charity Save the Children UK, which also expressed misgivings over Madonna's adoption of a girl from Malawi, said celebrity adoptions risked sending the wrong message about how best to help foreign children."International adoption can actually exacerbate the problem it hopes to solve" by encouraging parents to abandon children in the hope of giving them a better life, spokesman Adrian Lovett said. "Most orphans in institutions, including in Ukraine, have one or both parents still living, or have an extended family that could care for them with the right support," Lovett said in a statement. Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
September 15th 2009 3:42 p.m.
Elton John wants to adopt toddler (Florida Today)
Pop star Elton John may be joining the ranks of A-list celebrities with adopted children. John says he wants to adopt a 14-month-old Ukrainian toddler he met at an orphanage there.The singer admits it may not be possoble because of bureaucratic obstacles but says a young boy named Lev stole his heart during his visit. John said Saturday night that he and longtime partner David Furnish had often discussed adopting in the past but said he had been reluctant because he is 62 years old and tours frequently. But he says meeting Lev has changed his mind.
September 10th 2009 6:31 p.m.
Money plays too big role in adoption
Lack of communication
But there is more, says Ina Hut. A children’s home offering children up for adoption can often give more information about the identity of a child than they are doing now. This applies to China, but also to many other countries. And the Dutch government has acted spinelessly against this lack of communication. The Ministry of Justice recognises that China in particular has a fragile adoption system, but overall they consider it satisfactory, with good intentions. According to the ministry an in-depth investigation could actually damage commercial and diplomatic interests. This infuriates Ina Hut. It is criminal to change or hold back the identity of a child, she says. Even though an adopted child has probably been stolen from the parents, it has the right to know that. She suggests the following solution for a system that is more fair: “If you take a look at the amount of money involved in international adoption … invest that in the countries themselves and see whether the children can be taken care of there, in a good home or with family or friends. The big money should be taken out of the system. If, after a long search, there is no other solution for a child who has no parents to raise them, then adoption is an excellent answer. But only as a very last resort”.
‘Nagging’
Ina Hut has had many reactions to the news she is leaving from Dutch foster parents. A large group thinks it is good that she is calling for more transparency, because no parent would want a stolen child. Another group says they cannot identify themselves with the image of ‘nagging’ and ‘being so obsessed by the desire to have a child that they don’t mind if a few rules are violated’. The procedure for adoption often takes years and involves a great many rules. Enough to make the procedure fair, they say. And like 30 years ago, you often hear the refrain: ‘Even if you help just one…’
August 28th 2009 9:36 a.m.
Under the disguise of gods love,mothers where forced to give up their babies to the Church
For many decades, if not centuries, people thought and believed that the church and their congregations would be the centre of pure Christianity where their sins would be washed of. Premature pregnancy before marriage, even after rape and incest, where seen as acts of sinners. Even though many women where victims of the situations. But the punishment of their deeds in society itself was not enough. Even in monasteries and convents young women where abused, mistreated, even raped. Also young boys and men who ended up in by nuns and priest run schools where the victims of the Catholic orders.
But what many people do not know is, that baby theft and forced relinquishment was part of the catholic scheme of pressure and punishment. Mothers where forced to give up their babies in monasteries for adoption. Centuries women lost their children under supervision of the church and their leaders.
The issue is, that is not an old history alone. It gave birth to export these practices to new catholic orders and missionaries in new countries outside the west. With the decline of members in the western world, the new members in the East and middle Asia became victims of the same practices. South Korea, Vietnam and India are well known examples of these practices and the first waves of children for intercountry adoption with help of congregations and new missionaries.
The stories of the European victims are getting into the open, when will the stories of the other continents follow their tragic and dramatic truth. Interesting detail is that, even though feminism was introduced and equal rights for women was enforced, that at the point of children, some women feel more capable to have children then others and did and do not really care of other mothers loose their babies to them. This astonishing development is not only shocking but also reads that feminism was hiding also a system of class sensitiveness. Meaning, some women are more equal than others.
August 6th 2009 4:55 p.m.
Lifeline Children's Services picks up where Small World left off
Small World Adoptions was for many years Spokane's local agency for adopting from China. Run by adoptive mom Kathy Storro, numerous families used this local agency to bring home their Chinese children. When Storro stepped down to focus more on her own children, she left some big shoes to fill. Luckily, her highly trained staff continues on the path Storro forged.
Now, Lifeline Children's Services is operating in Washington State and families will find former SWA employees Janell Lucas, now an adoption specialist, and social worker Melissa Swanson, doing the same work they always did--connecting children with families. Lucas assists families with dossiers and other paperwork steps throughout the process. Swanson works with local Spokane families to complete homestudies and post-placement reports. Lifeline, a full-service agency, places children with Christian families and works in China, Ethiopia, the U.S., Uganda, Peru and Ukraine.
Info's: http://www.lifelineadoption.org/templates/cuslifeline/details.asp?id=26708&PID=130181
July 29th 2009 2:20 p.m.
Adoptions from Russia losing popularity in the US – official
The Americans are adopting fewer Russian orphans than they used to, a US official has said.
According to Michelle Bond, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizens Services, the number of adoptions from Russia to the US has noticeably decreased, Interfax writes. “At present Americans adopt around 1,800 Russian children per year,” Bond said at a briefing on Monday.“In the 1990s the number used to be around 4,000 or 5,000 per year,” she said. According to Bond, the decrease began after 2000, when the Russian government introduced obligatory certification for American agencies.The issue of US adoptions from Russia is a sensitive one. Between 1996 and 2008, 15 Russian children adopted by Americans died, in 14 cases through the fault of their new parents. “Recently, sixteen Russian children died in the United States,” Bond admitted. “We see each of these cases as a tragedy, each is thoroughly investigated, and the guilty are punished,” Bond said. In December 2008 an American court ruled Miles Harrison was not guilty of involuntary manslaughter of his 21-month-old adopted Russian son. Harrison left the child unattended, in his car in hot weather, causing the child’s death from overheating. The acquittal was officially condemned by Russia’s Foreign Ministry. Bond assured the audience that the Russian consulate had full access to information about the adopted children's lives in the US, and said the US and Russia were discussing possible ways to ease cooperation. She said the Americans adopted children from many countries, Russia being one of the popular choices because so many Russian children live in orphanages.The number of orphans in Russia was estimated at 800,000 in October 2008. Of these children, 80% were so-called social orphans, rejected by their biological parents or taken from them by legal rulings.
Source: http://www.mosnews.com/world/2009/07/27/popularadoption/Â
July 22th 2009 4:27 p.m.
Online databank to streamline adoption process
NEW DELHI: With over 6,000 children in the country waiting to be adopted, the government plans to put in place an online centralised databank to fast-track the process of adoption. Significantly, this comes at a time when adoption is at an all-time low. Bureaucratic delays and a time consuming process translate to a waiting period that could stretch from six months to three years. The databank under preparation will include details of children like their age, gender, date of birth and photograph. The Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) — under the aegis of the women and child development ministry — will also provide details about the child's antecedents like physical or mental disability, whether the child is abandoned or an orphan among other things. The databank will link 71 government-run adoption agencies. Each agency will be given an user identification and will be able to show children available for adoption to parents not just in their agency but also in another state with the consultation of CARA. "Right now, a problem that one faces is that some centres do not have any children for adoption or the prospective parents want to see some more children. Ordinarily they would have to wait. Once the system kicks in, the parents are free to adopt a child from anywhere in the country," a senior ministry source said. The system will also allow parents to provide feedback while allowing agencies to keep track of the adopted child. However, there is a hitch to the plan. So far, most states have differing laws on adoption and do not allow inter-state adoption fearing trafficking. "We are in talks with states to ensure that there is one uniform policy for the entire country," the source said.
Adoption figures for the country paint a dismal picture. While countries like China, Ethiopia and Philippines have steamlined processes to ensure that abandoned and orphaned children find a home, India has lost its way in babudom. According to data available with CARA, in-country adoption has dropped from 2,533 in 2001 to 2,169 in 2008. Similarly, inter-country adoptions (NRI/foreign-born parents) have declined from 1,269 in 2001 to 821 in 2008.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS-India-Online-databank-to-streamline-adoption-process/articleshow/4799851.cms
July 15th 2009 9:31 p.m.
Our lives were changed forever by an orphan with HIV and a haunting smile (Published Date: 14 July 2009)
NATALIE and Ian Westwell had no intention of adopting a child when they wed after a whirlwind romance in 2005. Natalie had been a single parent to her daughter Megan and son Tristan for nine years before marrying Ian, who was divorced but had no children. Their plan was to try for a child of their own after a honeymoon in South Africa. But the trip changed everything. After the dream wedding, they decided to have a working holiday doing something to help others. On arrival in Durban, they were driven 30 miles to the Makaputu Children's Village, an orphanage which was home to a few of the estimated 3.4 million children who had been orphaned by AIDS in South Africa. They spent their stay caring for and playing with children who had either been orphaned by parents dying of AIDS or by the death of parents whose neighbours had shot them on learning that they had the disease, sometimes in front of their children. Some of the children had a parent, both parents or other family members still, but the family could not accept the fact that the youngster had HIV.
A small, overworked staff and a few volunteers ran the orphanage, which was surrounded by razor wire, not only to stop youngsters from running away but to prevent intruders from kidnapping and abusing the children.
The newlyweds visited other projects in the area, including a hospital ward for adults with AIDS and a playgroup, and on their last day they were allowed to take a few children to the beach. Frolicking in the waves and licking ice-creams were experiences Natalie's own children took for granted, but for these little ones such treats were unknown.
"We both knew the trip would be life-changing, but I don't think we couldn't know beforehand just how much it would change us," says Natalie, who lives with her family in East Yorkshire. "We saw some children with HIV who were horribly ill because of a lack of basic medical care like antibiotics. While we were there I went and bought a big bottle of antibiotic syrup to help, but the staff were too scared to use it because when it ran out there would be no more. Meanwhile children were becoming needlessly very ill with ear infections and tonsilitis. It was heart-rending."
On that final day at the beach, one of the children in the group was a sick 20-month-old called S'bahle (Star). "She never smiled at us, hated cuddles and smelled pretty awful, with mites in her hair and infected pustules on her scalp. I was taking a photo of her with Ian when she looked up and gave him the most beautiful smile." With that smile in their minds' eyes, Natalie and Ian wrenched themselves away and returned to the UK, exhausted but exhilarated. They couldn't get the orphanage out of their minds and simply couldn't return to life as it had been before. Nor did they want to.
The idea of adopting one of the South African children came to them, but initially they hesitated, because such adoptions seemed to be the preserve of super-rich celebrities like Madonna or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie – not a teacher and window cleaner from Yorkshire who both worked part-time in order to juggle childcare. "We're not the stereotypical couple attempting inter-country adoption, in that they tend to be older, too, and they often can't have children of their own. We had my children, and hadn't even started trying for a baby of our own," says Natalie, who's now 34."And although we knew that such adoptions could be expensive, at the start of it all we had no idea how much legal red tape, paperwork and money were really involved.
"It was very important to us that Megan and Tristan were happy with the idea of us trying to help a South African child, and they were excited from the beginning. I researched international adoption and found that it was possible to adopt from practically anywhere, apart from South Africa, which had not fully signed up to the Hague Convention on protection of children and co-operation on inter-country adoption. But still I tried to find a way, coming up against many brick walls." Eventually, they were contacted by a female lawyer in South Africa who offered to help them, and 14 months later Ian, Natalie and the children went back to Durban to finalise legal proceedings. During the lengthy process of assessments by social workers, which had involved both their families and many friends being interviewed about their suitability to adopt, and legal protocols which altogether cost them £17,000, little Star was becoming more and more poorly.
Her father was alive, but his family apparently did not want to bring up an HIV child. Her mother, who also had to sign away her right to the little girl, was very ill (presumed to be from an AIDS-related illness), and died just before Star left South Africa.
Just as the last legal hurdle was about to be crossed, the story of Madonna and Guy Ritchie's adoption of David Banda from an orphanage in Malawi hit the headlines, which meant the Westwells' adoption proceedings suffered a setback while the judge waited to consider the effects of the international media backlash. "The negative press Madonna got definitely didn't do us any favours," says Natalie. "Everything stopped at a crucial moment, overturning a court order. But things calmed down and we were allowed to go ahead. Finally, Star was handed to us and we were free to get her a passport and leave."
Natalie and Ian are all too aware that what they have done is seen as controversial by some. "Star was three when we went back to get her, and her health had deteriorated dramatically. When we finally got her back here and a hospital in Sheffield agreed to look after her, we were told she was only two per cent away from full-blown AIDS. She would certainly have died if we had left her in South Africa. "She has also brought a new meaning to our lives, and we would like to help other children in South Africa by opening our own orphanage there one day." Fairytale endings are a myth, of course, although the Westwells feel happy and enriched by having adopted Star, and certainly have no regrets. The prognosis for their daughter is a long healthy life, so long as she takes her medicine and is monitored regularly by doctors. She is a picture of happiness and health and loves school. The older children adore their little sister, the family talks all the time about Africa, of how Natalie and Ian met Star and the trip they all took to bring her to England. They plan to take her back to meet her family there in a few years' time, and, in the meantime, Natalie and Ian are also founding a charity to fund raise for the Makaputu Children's Village. It wasn't until they brought a South African child with HIV into their family that the Westwells appreciated how patchy public understanding of HIV/AIDS is in the UK.
"We were faced with fear and prejudice," says Natalie. "There are still people who don't understand that there is no risk of cross-infection through their children playing with Star or eating at the same table. Star is oblivious to those kind of feelings, but we made a conscious decision to educate people, printing leaflets for adults and children, for schools and playgroups. People just fear the unknown, but we have to help them to understand so that we can do our bit to make the world
a better place for everyone with HIV." Natalie says she has always believed in fate, and even more so now. "I believe that of all the places and orphanages we could have gone to, we were destined to go to that one and meet her. There's a reason that's bigger than us, and we were taken there to help not just her but others, too."
July 14th 2009 2:01 p.m.
Adoption is easier now (Philippine News)
There are legions of childless couples or unmarried individuals, Filipinos or foreigners, who wish to adopt a child to make their lives a little brighter. But many of them balk from doing so because of the prevailing notion that that the process is costly, lengthy and difficult. This may have been true before. Not anymore.
Child adoption in the country has been greatly simplified and shortened, thanks to a landmark law that transformed it into a purely administrative process, free from judicial intervention. Republic Act 9523, enacted by Congress this year, transferred the process of declaring an abandoned, neglected and surrendered child legally available for adoption from the courts to the Social Welfare Department. The effect of this legislation is that the child and the prospective adoptive parents, as well as the child-caring and -placing agencies need not have to go through a long and expensive judicial proceeding to have the child declared legally free for adoption. With the new mechanism in place, a child as young as three months, born without a family, may have an earlier start at being a member of a family that adopts him or her. Aside from the social welfare officers of the DSWD, there is another public servant in your town or city who plays an important role in the implementation of RA 9523—the civil registrar in your town or city. After the DSWD issues a certificate that a child is legally available for adoption, the local civil registrar comes in. The registrar issues a so-called foundling certificate which should be transmitted within seven working days to the National Statistics Office. The task of the civil registrar becomes more sensitive in handling cases of abandoned children, who are among the disadvantaged persons vulnerable to social discrimination, abuse and exploitation. They are entirely dependent on the ability and efficiency of the state in caring for them. When a foundling certificate is issued to them, they assume a legal personality in society. The foundling certificate, for all intents and purposes, serves the equivalent of a birth certificate except for the fact that it is lacking in details regarding the circumstances of their birth. Unfortunately, a foundling certificate is not fully understood by the public. This misconception tends to create a feeling of inferiority complex for the children concerned. “Society tends to look at them differently through no fault of their own, that affects their mental and emotional well-being,” laments Atty. Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana, president of the Association of Child-Caring Agencies of the Philippines Gana relates the sad experience of an adopted daughter who, in the company of her adoptive mother, applied for a passport with the Foreign Affairs Department and submitted a foundling certificate, together with other supporting documents. The attending employee, visibly irked and apparently not familiar with a foundling certificate, asked “ano itong foundling certificate?” causing her and her mother embarrassment in the presence of other applicants. For these reasons, Gana is batting for the issuance of a certificate of live birth for the abandoned children, instead of a mere foundling certificate, considering that they were also born alive. She urged the authorities concerned to look for ways to make things easier for such children who are placed at a disadvantage. “As they grow up, they start to realize that there is something that sets them apart from other children. They will have to bear with the teasing of their friends and suffer the quizzical looks of the school registrars. Need we brand them and set them apart by issuing them foundling certificates instead of certificates of live birth. Couldn’t we simply put the little known facts about their birth on a birth certificate with may be an annotation of who supplied said facts?” she told members of the Philippine Association of Civil Registrars during their 10th national biennial convention at the Cebu International Convention Center in Mandaue City. Child adoption is a legal process by which the parental authority of biological parents and the corresponding rights and obligations of the biological parents and the child toward each other are severed and transferred to adoptive parents. Adoption in the country takes the form of either domestic adoption (RA 8552) or inter-country adoption. In her remarks, Gana also expounded on other recent legislations that have reformed the system of establishing the identities of members of society. There is Republic Act 9522, amending the Family Code, which allows children born out of wedlock, or illegitimate children to use the surname of their father if they have been expressly recognized by the father through the record appearing in the civil registry or if a private handwritten document is presented by the father. This has diminished, it no erased the stigma that is associated with being an illegitimate child.. Another is RA 9048 which makes it easier for children and their parents to have erroneous or undesirable entries in the birth certificate corrected and changed This law allows the correction of clerical or typographical errors or change in the name or nickname in the civil registry record without the need for a judicial order. Instead, the city or municipal registrar, or consul general in Philippine consulates abroad, to act on petitions for these corrections. RA 9048 is a breakthrough in making civil registration more child-friendly if only because it spares the child and his/her parents from the tedious process of going to the courts to correct a mistake in the civil registrar’s records or change his or her name that makes him or her an object of ridicule, that is tainted with dishonor or which is extremely difficult to write or pronounce.
Atty. Gana, by the way, disputes the impression that the job of civil registrars is mechanical or ministerial just because it entails continuous recording of vital events and information in the life of a citizen such as birth, marriage, death, as well as of decrees, legal instruments and judicial orders affecting the individual. “I tell you there is much joy to be found in being the public functionary who records the most vital events in the person’s life. Yours is a role that has great meaning to others. This because through your hands pass the records of all members of the community. You keep track of the history of our lives.”
July 13th 2009 1:09 p.m.
UK - Number of adopted children returned to care has doubled in five years
The number of adopted children who have been returned to care homes because their new parents cannot cope with them has doubled in the past five years. Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the number has increased by a third in the past year alone as parents struggle with often challenging children who have suffered years of neglect or abuse in their natural families. Going back into care after living with an adoptive family is a traumatic experience for children, and for the adoptive parents who have to accept their only chance of having a family has gone. It is also a huge cost to an already over-stretched system with the children likely to need expensive specialist care. The increase in breakdowns comes despite a fall in the number of children being adopted. Only 4,637 children were adopted in 2007, the lowest number since 1999. The data on breakdowns is in a survey of local authorities, conducted by More4 News and shared with The Times. More4 News will broadcast its special report tonight at 8pm. Experts say the figures show that many children are being left to suffer at the hands of dysfunctional natural parents for too long before being taken into care by social workers. By the time they are adopted, many have severe emotional or behavioural problems. Local authorities are not obliged to keep any data on adoption breakdowns and the vast majority of those contacted by More4 News had no figures or only partial records. However, according to the numbers kept by 92 out of 450 local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, 57 children were returned to care in 2008-09 compared with 26 in 2004-05. If the pattern is repeated across the country, it means more than 250 children were returned to the care system last year. The Adoption Act of 2002 was supposed to speed up adoption so that children do not have to languish in the care system for too long. However, the bigger problem may be that they are allowed to stay with their natural parents for too long before social workers remove them from their home. Lord Laming, Britain’s foremost expert on child protection, highlighted this issue in the wake of the Baby P tragedy. He urged social workers to be far more realistic about parents’ ability to turn their lives around and to act more decisively when there are problems. The figures are also a reflection of the changing face of adoption. Before the 1970s, most adopted children were babies born to single mothers, but today more than three quarters have been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. The increase in alcohol and drug abuse among parents is also a growing factor in care proceedings, with parents often being given several chances to break their habit before children are removed. According to data provided to More4 News by the local authorities, last year only four per cent of adopted children were babies, with the majority aged between one and four. A quarter were aged between five and nine. Adoption UK, the charity which supports adoptive families, said not enough was being done to help parents to care for a challenging child. Jonathan Pearce, of Adoption UK, said: “The figures starkly illustrate the difficulties and complexity of modern-day adoptions from care and also highlight the lack of support for adoptive families in their challenging task of being therapeutic parents for traumatised children.” The charity says the system is still too preoccupied with the intense and lengthy approvals process for would-be adoptive parents, rather than preparing them in advance and helping them afterwards. Source: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6675966.ece
July 11th 2009 10:19 a.m.
Post-adoption depression can catch parents by surprise
Feeling unsure and anxious after your adoption is not discussed enough
Typically, when a parent or parents decide to adopt, it is after much thought, and possibly, over some loss of fertility. There may have even been a false start or two on the adoption path. So when the child finally arrives, and a parent feels less than perfect about the situation, there's sometimes a tendency to think something is terribly amiss--either with the parent or the child. While it's certainly true that adoption transitions can be challenging, or even difficult, some even extremely so, it is absolutely normal for an adoptive parent to feel as if a mistake has been made, or that somehow the entire process wasn't what was expected. In fact, it's probably more common than you think, but still tends to one of the least written about topics. Post-adoption depression (PADS) or even post-adoption anxiety, as some would describe it, has been written about for years, but seldom makes front page headlines or is mandatory reading for adoption training. When it is, it may be all too easy to skim it and think, "Well, of course that would never happen to me."
But when a new parent finds herself trying to tamp down thoughts about calling the adoption agency and asking them to take the child back, the natural reaction is to feel horribly inadequate, as if there has been some monumental failure--after all, the adoption was well planned for and researched. There could have been months or years of waiting and even thousands of dollars spent. Travel could have been involved. But it is not what the parent expected and daydreams of the "old life" before it was "ruined" with the adoption keep returning. Sometimes, until a person is actually experiencing some of these feelings, it is hard to explain or even understand how this could happen. But research has shown that as much as 65% of adoptive parents suffer from these or similar feelings--even the experienced ones who have been through it several times before. It's important to note that PADS is not only common, but it often passes with time. If the adoption is of an older child, bonding and attaching for both parent and child can take even longer. Even with an infant, it may not be love at first site. But adoptive parents should not feel isolated or inferior by these feelings. In fact, they should reach out to their social worker, agency, friends, a doctor and even online resources such as chat groups on Yahoo! or other services. Getting help is the key to getting through it.
Some good writing on post-adoption depression:
July 6th 2009 10:40 a.m.
Progress over Vietnam adoptions
PATRICK LOGUE ( IRISHTIMES.COM )
Minister for Children Barry Andrews has reported “good progress” in talks with Vietnam on the resumption of adoption between the two countries.
Ireland’s bilateral agreement with Vietnam lapsed on May 1st last after five years, giving rise to dismay among prospective adoptive parents caught up in the process. They have been lobbying their public representatives, who in turn have been putting pressure on Mr Andrews to resolve the matter urgently. A statement released by his office this evening said Mr Andrews had met Minister for Justice of Vietnam, Ha Hung Cuong, on June 30th and there were further follow up discussions with other Vietnamese officials this week. At the meetings, it was proposed to continue the focus on a new bilateral agreement, the statement added. “Work on the draft text of the new bilateral agreement, previously circulated in March and discussed in April, continued during the week.“Good progress was made and during the course of the discussions a clear path towards resolution on outstanding issues was identified. It was also agreed that further face-to-face discussions to finalise these issues would take place in August.”The statement said it was not possible to say when adoptions between Ireland and Vietnam would resume. Ireland will enact new legislation on adoption, including inter-country adoption, this year. It emerged earlier this year that Ireland did not renew the bilateral adoption agreement with Vietnam because of concerns about adoption procedures there. This followed the publication last year of a negative report from the US authorities on inter-country adoptions in Vietnam, leading to the US ending adoptions from there. In a report published in April 2008, the US State Department identified a number of problems with foreign adoptions from Vietnam. The issues centre on whether the children are genuinely available for adoption, and whether and how much money changes hands in the adoption process.
July 4th 2009 7:05 p.m.
A movie opening at the end of this week, called Orphan, is sending chills through the adoption community, and not because it is a thriller.
It tells the story of a family who adopts a young girl from an orphanage, only to have her terrify all around her with what appear (from the trailer, at least) to be evil and supernatural powers.
Fearing that this feeds the stereotype of older adoptive children as “damaged”, many adoption and foster care advocates are joining together to protest the film. They have already succeeded in persuading the studio to remove one line — “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own” – from the ads for the movie. Now some are using the controversy to educate the public about the realities of older adoption. The Christian Alliance for Orphans, for instance, has created a website, orphansdeservebetter.org, with a section of statistics, which include:
An expansive 1994 study by the Search Institute comparing adopted teens to other teens found that:
- Adopted teens scored higher on indicators of well-being such as school performance, friendships, volunteerism, self-esteem and optimism.
- Adopted teens scored lower on indicators of high-risk behavior such as depression, alcohol use, vandalism, and police trouble.
- Compared to their non-adopted siblings, adopted teens showed no significant difference in their perception of similarities between themselves and adoptive parents in terms of interests.
- Children adopted transracially showed no differences in terms of identity formation and self-esteem, attachment to parents, or psychological health.
Many other studies have reached similar findings. These include:
- Adopted children are well-integrated into their families and schools and show good psychological outcomes. There are few differences between children who have been adopted and their non-adopted peers (Palacios and Sanchez-Sandoval, 2005).
- Long-term outcomes are positive for adopted children, and generally show little or no difference compared to non-adopted children (Benson, 2004).
- The vast majority of adopted children show behavior patterns and emotional and academic adjustment very similar to those of non-adopted children (Palacios and Sanchez-Sandoval, 2005, Vrand and Brinich, 1999, Brodzinsky, 1987).
- Numerous studies indicate that adoptive parents report high levels of satisfaction with their adoption (Barth and Brooks, 2000).
- People who were adopted fare significantly better than those children who remain in negligent, abusive birth families, or in foster care or institutions (Maughan et al., 1998, Brodzinsky et al., 1998).
- If adopted individuals did experience adoption-related struggles, most of these struggles significantly diminished or disappeared by young adulthood (Feigelman, 1997).
- People who were adopted reported more confidence in their judgment than non-adopted persons, viewed others more positively, and saw their parents as significantly more nurturing, comforting, and protectively concerned and helpful (Marquis and Detweiler, 1985).
I have to admit, some of these facts surprised me. For years I’d heard stories of older adoptions that ran into trouble, and while I like to think that a horror film would not sway me, I am realizing that anecdote over the years already has. A letter of protest to Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute warned that the film “may impede recruitment efforts by feeding into the unconscious fears of potential foster and adoptive families that orphaned children are psychotic and unable to heal from the wounds of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.”Do you carry these assumptions? Is it a film studio’s responsibility to challenge them? Or is this nothing but a summer horror film, just innocent, insignificant fun? In a real life adoption thriller, hundreds of Canadian families who thought they were well on their way to adopting children from Ethiopia, found themselves in limbo last week when the agency arranging the adoptions suddenly went bankrupt and closed its doors. CBC Canada reports on one family, Mark and Sarla Ksotelyk, who live outside of Edmonton, Alberta, and who had spent the past two years inching through the process to adopt a five-year-old boy and his three-year-old sister, when they were flabbergasted to see a notice of bankruptcy appear on the website of Kids Link International Adoption. The couple has already adopted three children from within the Canadian foster system, and had been expecting to bring the Ethiopian siblings home in October. Now they are not sure who is caring for the children in the African orphanage funded by the agency. “It’s a terrible feeling to be half way across the world and to know that your kids are in danger and in need and there’s really not much you can do about it,” she said. “You feel absolutely helpless.” Far more so, one assumes, than you feel simply watching a make-believe horror film.
Maurice Laparlière Radio Netherlands / Expatica
Source: http://www.expatica.com/nl/family/kids/Money-plays-too-big-a-role-in-adoption_14640.html?ppager=1
As small American children can be placed easily within the United States, the Dutch ministry plans to apply stricter requirements to regulations on adopting children from the country.
THE HAGUE – The Dutch government said Wednesday it would make it more difficult to adopt American children, who formed the third largest group of foreign adoptions in the Netherlands in 2008. "The adoption of children from the United States will be subjected to stricter requirements," the justice ministry said in a statement – explaining that small children could easily be placed with American families. From a total of 767 foreign adoptions last year, 56 were of American children – the third largest group after China and Haiti.Under Dutch adoption regulations, it was preferable for a child to be adopted from within his own area or country. And investigations have shown that "small children can easily find homes with American families," said the statement. "There appears to be no necessity to place these children outside the United States."The ministry said the tougher criteria would not be applied to American children of five years or older, those in foster care, or those who are difficult to place because of health problems or other special reasons. (AFP / Expatica)
June 30th 2009 1:49 p.m.
Programmes People & Power - Stolen Babies - 24 June 09
Until last year, Guatemala had the highest adoption rate in the world. Between 2002 and 2007, some 22,000 of its children were adopted by foreigners, more than 90 per cent of them came from the US. But the practice was marked by lax adoption procedures and plagued by criminals targeting poor mothers.
A government investigation into some 3,000 cases in the adoption pipeline found fraudulent paperwork in more than 1,000 of them. There is strong evidence that in many cases babies had been stolen before being traded for adoption.
Guatemalan mothers whose babies were snatched in this way are convinced that their children are in the US and now they want them back.
People & Power's Bob Abeshouse investigates.
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Für die Richtigkeit der veröffentlichten Kontaktanzeigen, Artikel, Nachrichten, Daten und Empfehlungen übernehme ich nicht die Verantwortung. Ich weise ausdrücklich darauf hin, dass die Informationen keine Aufforderung von mir zur Adoption im Sinne des Adoptionsvermittlungsgesetzes noch der Haager Konvention darstellen. Jede namentlich genannte Person übernimmt selbst die Haftung für die bereit gestellten Informationen. Ich bin nicht verantwortlich für die Inhalte von Anzeigen und von Links zu Seiten, die außerhalb meines Einflussbereiches liegen. Artikel ersetzen keine Rechtsberatung. Diese kann nur durch Juristinnen und Juristen erfolgen.
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