EXPOSED SCANDAL: Farith Simon helped reveal that Ecuadorian children were adopted out of the country illegally in 1989. Photo: Espen Rasmussen / VG

QUITO (VG) Norwegian actors paid money to Ecuador. Then the demand to get a stolen child back disappeared. – An attempt to bury one’s own conscience, says the Ecuadorian lawyer.

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As VG could reveal on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian association Adoption Forum gave a large sum of money to a human rights organization in Ecuador in the 90s.

This is Part 1 of a four-part investigative series.

Content Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse. Reader discretion is advised.

A months-long Townhall investigation reveals disturbing new details about the affluent LGBTQ-activist couple accused of sodomizing their young adopted sons—now ages 9 and 11—and distributing "homemade" child pornography of the sexual abuse. Half a year after the shocking story made national news, Townhall is the only outlet following up on the criminal case in Georgia that has since seen zero headlines written about it. We've found that it's far, far worse than what was first reported.

Not only did the married men allegedly rape the two boys who were adopted through a Christian special-needs adoption agency, they were pimping out their children to nearby pedophiles in Atlanta-area suburbs, Townhall's follow-up investigation discovered.

Recorded jailhouse calls, a trove of never-before-seen court documents, and testimony from a family member who spoke exclusively with Townhall uncover the extent of the physical and emotional trauma the two elementary school-aged brothers endured as well as the red flags that the state overlooked during the same-sex couple's "faster than expected" adoption process.

After the 1976 coup, the military brutally crushed its opponents. At least 500 babies were taken from their captured parents and given to military couples to raise. Many still live unaware of their true identity

One autumn afternoon in 1983, paediatrician Jorge Meijide was called to an apartment in the small town of Acassuso, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His six-year-old patient turned out to have nothing more than a mild flu, but Meijide sensed that something else was wrong in the household.

The woman who claimed to be the child’s mother seemed to him too old to be his parent. On the walls hung photos of a man in military uniform: presumably the boy’s father.

In 1980s Argentina both details were more than suspect. The country was slowly returning to democracy after the “dirty war” waged by the military dictatorship under Jorge Videla, known as the “Hitler of the Pampa”. After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military set about crushing any potential opposition and eventually 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, almost all of them civilians. Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to military couples to raise as their own.

Soldiers frisk a man at a checkpoint in Buenos Aires in 1977. The military dictatorship of 1976-1983 left about 30,000 people missing; Jorge Videla,, who led the military junta from 1976 until 1981. Photographs: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images and Keystone/Getty Images

After the 1976 coup, the military brutally crushed its opponents. At least 500 babies were taken from their captured parents and given to military couples to raise. Many still live unaware of their true identity

One autumn afternoon in 1983, paediatrician Jorge Meijide was called to an apartment in the small town of Acassuso, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His six-year-old patient turned out to have nothing more than a mild flu, but Meijide sensed that something else was wrong in the household.

The woman who claimed to be the child’s mother seemed to him too old to be his parent. On the walls hung photos of a man in military uniform: presumably the boy’s father.

In 1980s Argentina both details were more than suspect. The country was slowly returning to democracy after the “dirty war” waged by the military dictatorship under Jorge Videla, known as the “Hitler of the Pampa”. After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military set about crushing any potential opposition and eventually 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, almost all of them civilians. Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and then murdered. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to military couples to raise as their own.

Soldiers frisk a man at a checkpoint in Buenos Aires in 1977. The military dictatorship of 1976-1983 left about 30,000 people missing; Jorge Videla,, who led the military junta from 1976 until 1981. Photographs: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images and Keystone/Getty Images

The case of four Croatian couples arrested in Zambia on suspicion of human trafficking through child adoptions from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has attracted the attention of European institutions, the Croatian Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

The four married couples from Croatia were arrested at Ndola airport in Zambia in early December on suspicion of human trafficking, based on suspicious adoption documents issued in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were released on bail after a court hearing last Thursday.

A statement by the European Commission on cross-border adoptions and the need for greater transparency and closer international cooperation in such cases has been included on the agenda of the plenary session of the European Parliament for February. Discussion was initiated by Croatian MEP Ladislav Ilcic, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, who proposed adoption of a resolution on inter-country adoption.

“Adopting a child is a noble act, but in order to protect children and adoptive parents, we need to put an end to organised crime and patch up the gaps in the system that are used by criminals for child trafficking. That’s why I initiated this resolution, which has quickly received great support from MPs and leaders of political groups,” Ilcic told Vecernji List.

The resolution would call on EU member states to temporarily or permanently suspend child adoptions from DR Congo and other countries with the widespread practice of child trafficking until mechanisms have been established to prevent such practice and potential adoptive parents are provided with an efficient and verified adoption procedure.

Mary wanted to raise her three children, but they were all taken from her. She died before she got justice.

A WOMAN PLANS to take legal action against the State over her mother’s exclusion from the planned redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby institutions.

Evelyn*, who was born into the system, has criticised the fact survivors who participated in the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (COIMBH) but died before the State apology in January 2021, will be excluded from the scheme.

She is currently in discussions with solicitors and said she will “take whatever legal action is necessary”.

Evelyn told The Journal that many women like her mother, who were not allowed to keep their children, died before they ever got justice.

Directing CARA to issue an NOC within 30 days to an NRI couple for adoption

of a child, the Delhi High Court in a ruling said the application being prior to

the coming into force of Adoption Regulations, 2022, the "adoption would not

be strictly required to be dealt with in the procedure prescribed in the said

Regulations."

In September 2019, a weeks-old baby girl was found badly hurt but -- miraculously -- alive in the rubble of a raid by U.S. special operations forces. The military had targeted a home in central Afghanistan, looking to capture or kill suspected foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida.

The baby was left orphaned. Both of her parents were killed in the operation and she was placed under the temporary medical care of the U.S. military to recover from burns and physical trauma.

Today, the 3-and-a-half year old, known as Baby Doe, is an orphan no longer. She is claimed by two families who are fighting a complex legal battle over the right to raise her.

On one side are her paternal uncle and cousins in Afghanistan, with whom she was placed by the Afghan government in early 2020. Her uncle's son and his wife, referred to in court as John and Jane Doe, cared for her for 18 months.

On the other side is a U.S. Marine lawyer who was in Afghanistan at the time of the raid and who successfully petitioned a local Virginia court to grant him an adoption order. An attorney for the Marine, Maj. Joshua Mast, has contended in court filings that the girl had no surviving biological relatives, which the U.S. government says isn't true.

Sirianna Arathi was left out of an important family meeting, one where a couple of her friends, their parents and partners decided she was part of their family – even though she isn't blood related.

"I feel so confident in just being like 'this is my family, these are my sisters, this is my older sister, this is my older brother,'" says Arathi, who takes pride in "owning that kind of chosen family identity without having to put that label of chosen family."

Arathi is originally from south India, but was adopted by a white family in the United States as a child.

She says her adoptive family expected her to be grateful for being "saved" and tried to control her by overmedicating her. She also said another family member abused her.

"I had this view of family that I should be not only completely loyal to the family that raised me, but that was it. That was family," she says.

On Tuesday, the Chilean lower house voted through a resolution regarding the thousands of suspected illegal adoptions from the country.

136 members voted for the resolution and only one member voted against.

The decision means that the left-wing president Gabriel Boric will establish a truth and reparations commission for internationally adopted and families of origin who have suffered from irregularities linked to adoptions from the 1950s until the turn of the millennium.

In a parliamentary inquiry from 2019, the Chilean lower house established that children had been stolen from their parents and adopted away to countries in the Western world – including to Sweden.

The investigation said that networks of social workers, judges, healthcare professionals and adoption agencies had acted in concert “with the aim of confiscating minors, especially if their mothers were in a vulnerable situation”.