South Korea wants to map shady adoption practices with a study of dozens of adoptions from the second half of the last century.

The investigation was enforced by Danish lawyer Peter Regel Møller , himself adopted from South Korea.

South Korea will investigate dozens of adoptions of children who were given shelter in the United States and Europe, including Belgium, in the second half of the last century. These are the adoptions of children who were taken from South Korean parents without permission, especially in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These were often orphans or street children, usually girls. During the adoptions, documents were allegedly forged and identities were deliberately changed. Children were also kidnapped and registered as orphans, or abandoned by their parents.

unmarried mothers

The international adoption of South Korean children started in the years after the Korean War (1950-1953). Initially, it mainly concerned orphans. Thereafter, the emphasis shifted increasingly to "socially unwanted" children, such as those of unmarried mothers, a cultural taboo in South Korea, or those of South Korean mothers and African-American soldiers stationed in the country.

Pieter Verbruggen and Ricardo Alvarez met each other eleven years ago at a birthday party. It's love at first sight. About five years ago they come to the conclusion that they want to start a family and decide to adopt a child.

But that ends in a big disappointment, Pieter tells LINDA.nl.

ADOPT BABY

“We wanted to offer a child who was already born a good future,” he says. “A friend of ours had started an adoption process, which we followed with interest.” They also register themselves as adoptive parents. “As a gay you can only adopt from South Africa, Portugal and the United States. We chose the US, because that is where most children are born that are given up for adoption. It is also the only country where babies are given up for adoption, so it was our only hope for a baby.” They sign up for A New Way . “We went for a child from the US and from the Netherlands.”

The couple registers via the website. A year later they receive a letter asking if they still want to adopt. They want that. That is why an intensive program including a series of courses follows. “A course about having children, about adopting, about parenting. You should not miss a course.”

She is second mother to 14 Indian girls nobody else wanted and she sold her house in the USA to be able to raise them to adulthood. "My girls are doing so well," she says. She wears a sari but her Jewish identity grew stronger in the Hindu country.

Dr. Michelle Harrison just celebrated her 80th birthday, surrounded by the 14 girls she is raising in Kolkata, India and the dedicated staff who are helping her. Four of these abandoned girls are now young adults preparing to embark upon professional careers.

How does a Jewish doctor born in New York City end up running a home in India for girls nobody else wanted, I ask, unoriginally, at the beginning of our Zoom conversation.

“In my generation, there were lots of people entranced by India -- and I wasn’t one of them,” she answers, impishly raising her shoulders and smiling.

Harrison never retired. A family doctor, psychiatrist, and OB-GYN, she was involved in President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty program, The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, taught at Harvard, Rutgers, and the University of Pittsburgh, and served as Worldwide Director of Medical Affairs for the Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) Consumer Division and then as Executive Director of J&J’s Institute for Children. Following a break to recover from cancer, fate conspired to bring her to India to raise girls rejected for adoption, six of them severely disabled.

Introduce…

Fiom is the center of expertise in the field of unwanted pregnancy, distance & adoption and related questions. We offer information and help with unwanted pregnancies, information and aftercare in the field of adoption and guide people in their search for biological family in the Netherlands and abroad. We also manage the KID-DNA Database, which enables a match between a donor child and an anonymous donor. The starting point of working at Fiom is the right of self-determination of unwanted pregnant women, the right of a child to know where it comes from and to grow up while retaining its own identity. We do all this with approximately 80 passionate employees from our offices in 's-Hertogenbosch and Houten and from our home workplaces. Soon we will start with the establishment and design of the Expertise Center for Intercountry Adoption. This will be a network organization of stakeholders around the theme of intercountry adoption. In the Center of Expertise, adoptees, adoptive parents, birth relatives and other parties involved can access files, psychosocial assistance, searches and legal support, among other things.

For Program Adoption Services we are immediately looking for:

Professional care provider Aftercare

16-28 hours

The organization Rayon de Soleil de l'Enfant Etranger, which is still accredited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in five countries, is being investigated by the French courts for its illegal adoption activities in Mali in the 1990s. Similar cases have been documented in Romania and the Central African Republic.

After years of struggle – finally, a sense of relief. On September 6, the Judicial Court of Paris requested the opening of an investigation for fraud following a complaint filed in June 2020 by nine French adoptees from Mali against their adoption agency and their former correspondent in Bamako: Rayon de Soleil de l'Enfant Etranger (Ray of Sunshine of the Foreign Child, RDSEE) and Danielle Boudault.

They all accuse the French organization, still accredited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in five countries (Bulgaria, Chile, China, South Korea and India), of using "schemes" to "bypass the law" in order to have them adopted in France between 1989 and 1996, and deceiving their parents – biological as well as adoptive – in the process. The organization allegedly promised their biological parents that the children would only stay in France temporarily. As for the adoptive families, RDSEE reportedly assured them that the little Malian children had been abandoned by their families of origin.

For five years, Le Monde has conducted an investigation on this organization, one of the most important French non-profits responsible for the adoption of more than 7,000 children around the world. RDSEE is suspected of having adopted children who shouldn't have been taken from their families – in Mali, but also in the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Haiti, Peru and Romania – in order to cater to French couples' international adoption requests.

Mrs Maritha Agulanna, a native of Ahiara in the Ahiazu Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State, is the foster mother of a 20-year-old lady, Juliet, who recently discovered, by sheer providence, her biological parents, Prof Michael and Mrs Gloria Okwudili, in Enugu State. She tells RAPHAEL EDE how she took custody of the lady days after her birth and denies the allegation of child theft and human trafficking

How are you related to the 20-year-old lady who lived with you from birth, but claimed to have found her biological parents in your neighbourhood?

I adopted the girl when she was a week old from the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Imo State branch, on June 21, 2002. The girl was born on June 14, 2002.

Do you have an adoption certificate or document to show that the girl was properly adopted as required by law?

To the best of my knowledge, yes. The Nigerian Red Cross Society, Imo State branch, issued a document titled, ‘To Whom It May Concern Fostering/Adoption of a Baby Girl from This Home’, dated June 21, 2002. It was signed by the State Secretary, Chief H. C. Mela. The document read, ‘This is to confirm that Mr Lawrence Ukachi Agulanna and Mrs Maritha Chidinma Agulanna from Nnarambia in Ahiara, Ahiazu Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State, fostered a week-old baby girl from this home. The said baby was born on June 14, 2002. The adoptive parents have been advised to report to the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Owerri, Imo State, for the necessary documentation of the child and to the court for legal processes and adoption orders of the child. I wish to request that the applicants be given the necessary assistance that they may require’.

SEOUL, South Korea — Nearly 400 South Koreans adopted as children by families in the West have requested South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate their adoptions through Friday’s application deadline, as Seoul faces growing pressure to reckon with a child export frenzy driven by dictatorships that ruled the country until the 1980s.

The commission on Thursday said it decided to investigate 34 cases among the 51 adoptees who first submitted their applications in August, which could possibly develop into the country’s most far-reaching inquiry into foreign adoptions yet.

A total of 63 adoptees from the United States, Europe and Australia submitted applications to the commission on Friday, claiming their adoptions were marred by falsified documents that laundered child statuses or identities as agencies raced to send thousands of children abroad each year.

The adoptees accused agencies of fabricating documents to ensure their adoptability, such as falsely registering them as orphans when they had living relatives or switching their identities with other children, which have resulted in lost connections or false reunions with birth relatives.

Similar issues have been raised by many of the 306 adoptees who previously submitted applications in past months, as they called for the commission to pressure agencies into fully opening their documents and to establish whether the government was responsible for the corrupt practices.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Thursday upheld an order of a Family Court which directed the petitioner to pay maintenance to his alleged son. The child's mother had also deposed that the child was born out of her physical relationship with the petitioner, who once had kept her as his 'mistress'.

While dismissing the revision petition, a Single Judge Bench of Justice Satyen Vaidya observed,

"The statement of mother of the respondent regarding the paternity of respondent cannot be brushed aside easily. It is hard to believe that a female would name any unknown person to be the father of her son. Contest by petitioner to the prayer for DNA test strengthens the claim of the respondent."

Background

The respondent sought maintenance from the petitioner claiming himself to be his son. He alleged that he was born out of relationship that once existed between the petitioner and his mother. The mother of the respondent also deposed that she had fallen in love with the petitioner, who had kept her as a mistress. She further stated, on oath, that the petitioner had maintained physical relation with her, as a result of which she conceived and ultimately delivered a baby boy i.e. the respondent.

Research Presentation

This research is being carried out by the Université Libre de Bruxelles within the framework of an international collaboration. The aim of this study is to increase scientific knowledge about the development of the adoptive family in different European countries. This is important to answer current questions and improve professional practice.

Are you an adoptive parent (heterosexual, gay or lesbian)?

Do you have one or more adopted children between the ages of 4 and 17? Are you single or are you in a relationship?

If so, your help is invaluable.

Hope for 14 Belgian adopted children from South Korea in search of identity: "The stories are harrowing"

She was nine months old when she was adopted as a Korean by a couple from Deurne, but it was only sixteen years ago that Yung Fierens (46) discovered the fraud in her file. She is far from alone: ??a special committee in South Korea will examine adoption fraud among more than 350 adoptees, including 14 Belgians. “They will finally know who their birth parents are.”

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