Records obtained by ITV News reveal 197 babies are buried in mass burial grounds across England, ITV News Social Affairs Correspondent Sarah Corker reports

An investigation by ITV News has found that nearly 200 babies are buried in unmarked graves across England, amid allegations of neglect and poor treatment at church run homes for unmarried mothers in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Burials were often carried out in secret, and without the knowledge of families.

Between 1949 and the mid-1970s, an estimated 200,000 women were sent away to mother and baby homes run by churches and the state - where infants were taken from their mothers or died through poor care.

Burial records obtained by ITV News through a series of Freedom of Information requests have revealed that 197 babies, who died at eight of these homes, are buried in mass burial grounds at least ten different cemeteries across the England, from Newcastle to Hampshire.

A Quebec woman, adopted in Romania in the 1990s under a false identity, laments that the government had been warned nine years ago by her country of origin of the irregularities in her file, but without ever notifying her.

"It's been nine years since I was told that I had the wrong identity. How many other adoptees are they hiding information from?" says Roxana Pamela Harrison, who hopes her story will force the Quebec government, which is responsible for adoptions, to be proactive.

The 33-year-old woman learned on her own a little over a year ago that she had been adopted in Romania under the identity of another child, without her adoptive parents knowing. It was when she found her biological family that she discovered that her name was "Adriana" and that she had been born in December 1990, rather than April 1991.

But when she went to Romania in January 2024 to try to get her adoption file, she was shocked to learn that her adoption had been cancelled outright. Worse still, the Quebec government had known about it since 2015.

Adoption cancelled

A young Swedish woman, whose biological mother is Vietnamese, has returned to Vietnam twice in search of the woman who gave birth to her 34 years ago before she was adopted and moved abroad.

Driven by an unwavering desire for a reunion, she holds onto the hope that one day, her efforts will lead to a miracle.

With tears in her eyes, Hoa, as she is called, recently shared her story with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, expressing her heartfelt wish to meet her birth mother.

Adoption et trafic d'enfants en Roumanie: «Jamais je n’ai remis en question la légalité de l’adoption», confie une maman adoptive

Photo Clara Loiseau

PARTAGE

Didier Reynders : ce que l’on sait de l’enquête en cinq questions

Perquisitionné le 3 décembre, l’ex-commissaire européen doit s’expliquer sur la provenance d’un million d’euros environ, dont une partie a été engloutie dans l’achat suspect de billets de la Loterie nationale. Par la voix de son avocat, il rejette les soupçons de blanchiment. Le point sur ce que l’on sait de l’enquête. Article réservé aux abonnés

Par Louis Colart, Joël MatrichePublié le 7/12/2024 à 07:00 Temps de lecture: 2 min

Hello, I’m attorney Kim Sun-hugh. I would like to share some insights and experiences from working with overseas adoptees during their visits to their agencies, the National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC), and the police. I cannot say that having an attorney present during these visits will dramatically affect the outcome, nor can I say whether having such legal assistance is always necessary. 

A Quebecer sets out in search of her true identity

Document type : Web page copy

Source : www.journaldemontreal.com

Publication date : December 6, 2024

The Journal followed her to her country of origin where she met her biological family

Cambodia jails 13 pregnant Filipino surrogates

Thirteen women from the Philippines have been convicted of human trafficking in Cambodia for intending to sell babies they carried through surrogacy.

They were sentenced to four years in prison, but with two years suspended, the Kandal Provincial Court said.

The court said it had strong evidence showing that the women intended on having the babies "to sell to a third person in exchange for money, which is an act of human trafficking".

The women are not expected to serve any jail time until giving birth, and the court did not say what will happen to the babies when they are born.

Belgian police gave von der Leyen no warning about Reynders probe

The EU has not launched its own investigation into money laundering allegations against the former justice commissioner.

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Didier Reynders was questioned as part of a money laundering probe. | Kenzo Trbouillard/AFP via Getty Images

By Anthony Deutsch

THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families, according to a report by Yale's School of Public Health.

The U.S. State Department-backed research, published on Tuesday, identified 314 Ukrainian children taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of what it says was a systematic, Kremlin-funded program to "Russify" them.

Reuters was unable to confirm the report's findings independently.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his child rights' commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children.