In total, 89 complaints have been made to gardaí to date.

The third episode of Redacted Lives, a new podcast series about mother and baby homes, was released by The Journal this week. The six-part documentary series explores the experiences of people who passed through the system.

Children born into these institutions were usually adopted or sent to industrial schools – often without their mother’s consent.

Many women have tried to find their children over the years, but to no avail. Adopted people have also struggled to find their parents, or information about their early life.

Redacted Lives gives these people the chance to tell the real story of mother and baby homes, and explores how the State continues to deny survivors access to information, proper redress and ownership of their true identities.

HYDERABAD: For Oruganti Hari Prasad and Vempati Baswanti, a childless couple from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh who are into their 50s, the wait was worth as they had to go through a lengthy process to legally adopt a child.After staying here for over a week, during which they interacted with the girl who they wanted to adopt through a Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA) and had a meeting with a medical officer, regional joint director, Shishu Vihar in-charge officer and others officials, they went home with 17-year-old Ruchika in October, 2021.

Like Hari Prasad and Vempati Baswanti, many childless couples were able to legally adopt children thanks to the efforts of Women Development and Child Welfare (WDCW) department, which is currently celebrating November, the International Adoption Awareness Month by organising programmes and interactive sessions to promote legal adoption process.

As per the data provided by WDCW department, a total of 1,430 kids were adopted since June 2014. Between April and October this year, a total of 127 children were adopted from Telangana, out of which 111 were in-country adoptions and 16 inter-country adoptions.

On Friday, the WDCW Department conducted a programme -- dance-drama to promote legal adoption as well as an interactive session with aspiring parents and the children. According to experts, a medically fit couple or individual below the age of 55 years who are financially stable and have no criminal records can adopt a child legally through the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a statutory body of the central ministry of WDCW. Even though the process is little lengthy and requires the parents to wait

for a period of three to four years, it is important to adopt the children the right way, they said.

Laura Codru?a Kovesi got married in secret, shortly after becoming the European Chief Prosecutor. She has kept the identity of the partner under wraps.

Laura Codru?a Kovesi does not usually talk about her private life, although there have been quite a lot of speculations over time. It is known about the current head of the European Public Prosecutor's Office that she was married to Eduard Kovesi from Sibiu, between 2002 and 2007, after which she devoted herself to her career, becoming chief prosecutor at the National Anti-Corruption Directorate.

Laura Codru?a Kovesi: "I got married"

In this context, Kovesi surprised everyone in October 2022 when he revealed that he got married .

"I got married a few years ago. Immediately after I took office in Luxembourg. The friend I had in Romania is Romanian. He worked privately. It was a low-key relationship. He is an extraordinary man.

When did child abuse, long considered a private matter, became a public concern? The 1874 case of ten-year-old Mary Ellen Wilson of New York City is usually considered the first great challenge to a violent tradition.

“Despite the fact that for hundreds of years history records instances of cruelty to children by parents and other caretakers, few cases of child abuse were acted on in the courts before the nineteenth century,” explains scholar Lela B. Costin.

As Costin writes, many legends have arisen about Mary Ellen, including most prominently that, on the basis her being an “animal,” the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) stepped in to save her from her vicious foster parents.

Bergh and SPCA counsel Elbridge T. Gerry decided the child was entitled to protection under the laws against animal cruelty.

When no public or private entity would step in to help Mary Ellen, Etta Angell Wheeler (“variously termed a mission worker, a tenement visitor, and a social worker”) appealed to Henry Bergh of the SPCA. The story goes that she suggested that Mary Ellen should surely be thought of as “a little animal,” too. Bergh supposedly affirmed that “[t]he child is an animal. If there is no justice for it as a human being, it shall have least have the right of the cur” to not be abused. In this legend, Bergh and SPCA counsel Elbridge T. Gerry decided the child was entitled to protection under the laws against animal cruelty.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: JUST-C2-CHARTE@ec.europa.eu

Date: Fri 25. Nov 2022 at 22:19

Subject: Reply to Citizen's Letter - Ares(2022)8175473

To: info@againstchildtrafficking.org

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Illegal international adoptions

How adoptees demand enlightenment

In the 1970s and 1980s it was relatively easy for couples with an unfulfilled desire to have children to adopt a child from abroad. Today these children are grown. When they search for their biological parents, they often find out that their adoption was illegal and documents were forged.

ISTANBUL, TURKIYE - JANUARY 8: 3-year old Syrian girl, Rana is seen playing at a park with her foster family in Beylikduzu district of Istanbul, Turkiye on January 8, 2022. Parents of 2 boys, Doganer couple adopted 3-year- old Syrian girl Rana after deciding to become a foster family. Ali Atmaca / Anadolu Agency

Knowing the biological origin is important for identity formation. Not knowing anything about their birth family plunges some adoptees into deep crises. (picture alliance / AA / Ali Atmaca)

Franc Weerwind, the Minister for Legal Protection, must disclose more information about adoptions from Sri Lanka in the period between 1984 and 1994, the Council of State has decided. It concerns a file of Dilani Butink.

Dilani Butink was adopted from Sri Lanka in 1992 and still does not know who her biological parents are due to abuses. According to her, the Dutch government has done too little to prevent fraudulent adoptions.

Passages painted black

Butink had requested access to a file in which certain passages had been painted black via an appeal to the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob). Weerwind must now make these illegible passages public from the highest administrative court.

In addition to making it public, the minister must forward the woman's request to the National Archives, because there are also documents that fall under Butink's Wob request. These are documents referred to in the report of the Joustra Committee.

Bertha Holt’s The Seed from the East (1956), an account of herhusband Harry’s pivotal role in the history of international Ko-rean adoption, offers this vivid summary on the back cover: ‘‘Ko-rea . . . 1954 . . . Thousands of children suffered in crowded, un-derstaffed and poorly supplied orphanages—children, it seemed,that no one wanted. But God gave one couple a heart to love thesechildren. This most ordinary family—a lumberman with a heartcondition, a farming wife and six children—changed the worldwhen they adopted eight Korean-Amerasian children. The storyof the Harry Holt family testifies to God’s ability to use ordinarypeople to bring about extraordinary change. Intercountry adop-tion flourishes today, largely because God used the faith anddetermination of the Holts to adopt homeless children into fami-lies of their own.’’ This is, in fact, the story that is conventionallytold about the origins of Korean overseas adoption.? Not only anarrative of Christian charity and divine selection, it is also one ofthe ‘‘extraordinary’’ capabilities (even if God given) of ‘‘ordinary’’individuals. The key characters in this story are thousands of needychildren, a quintessential American frontier figure, and a ChristianGod. Bertha Holt, Harry’s ‘‘farming wife,’’ penned The Seed from theEast (1956) and also Bring My Sons from Afar (1986),? both ofwhich borrow their titles from verses in the Book of Isaiah. Theseare the primary texts that compose the legendary story of Harry’sefforts to bring Korean children to families in the West.

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