Juvenile Justice Committee takes suo moto notice of sale of infant

The Juvenile Justice Committee (JJC) of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday enquired about the alleged child trafficking and surrogacy racket in Eluru district.

The JJC, which took suo moto notice of the alleged sale of an infant in Pedavegi mandal in Eluru district, asked officials about the details of the case.

Principal Secretaries of the concerned departments, Eluru Deputy Superintendent of Police G.V.V.S. Pydeswara Rao and Two Town CI D.V. Ramana appeared before the JJC.

The JJC, while expressing concern over the alleged sale of babies, directed the officers to take steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

The Search For My Daughter’s Birth Mom

“In 2013, on a dusty, deserted road in Southern Ethiopia, four of us headed deep into a village in search of my daughter’s birthmother. Navigating the bumps and dodging an occasional goat, Asfaw drove us to where it all began.

As luck would have it, my driver spoke the language of the region as well as Amharic and English, and the older gentleman in the passenger seat beside him held in his lap a large book with the details of hundreds of adoptions. Just a few hours earlier, seated in the garden of the Abebe Zeleke Hotel, he had opened that book and confirmed the information I had been given on my daughter years ago—the name of her mother and the region where she was from. And he knew how to find her. I looked out the window. Despite the aridity, the landscape was lush; replete with the large leaves of the false banana trees. The anticipation was indescribable.

The search for my daughter’s birth mother was more than twice as long as the lengthy process of international adoption (which for me was two years, five months—plus an additional 4 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days waiting for a referral—according to my blog). After not finding success in adopting through the DC foster care system and being dissuaded from pursuing domestic adoption from the agencies themselves, I landed on international adoption, hopeful that I could have an open relationship with my daughter’s Ethiopian family. When I submitted my paperwork to the agency in June 2009, there were a handful of countries open. I chose Ethiopia because I had read the children were well taken care of and the country didn’t appear to be engaging in unethical practices.

I had also spent a month volunteering at an orphanage in Addis Ababa the year before and the experience had been nothing but positive. I loved the country and its people and was beyond excited to have it inextricably woven into my own family fabric. I was aware that some countries had been exposed for coercing or paying birthmothers to give up their children; others flat-out abducting and trafficking kids to meet the demand of families wanting to adopt. But in my research, I hadn’t heard of such things happening in Ethiopia. In addition, the agency I chose was recommended to me by an adoptive mom who said they facilitated birth mother introductions and she believed them to be above board. Satisfied, I forged ahead, open to a boy or a girl from birth to age 3.

Throw us into jail, but repatriate our child to India,” says Bhavesh Shah. “In any case, without her home is like a jail,” he adds. Bhavesh, a software developer, arrived in Germany in 2018 on a work visa. His wife Dhara delivered a baby girl in February 2021 in Berlin. When the baby was seven months old, she suffered an injury.

What happened thereafter might seem fairly uncomplicated, but in a foreign context, it assumed nightmarish proportions.

On September 23, 2021, the child protection agency made the Shahs sign a document whose contents were in German and, took the baby away. The translator was Urdu-speaking and knew no Gujarati. The Gujarati-speaking Shahs don’t know Urdu. They know Hindi, though not enough to understand legalese.

The incident has since become a legal battle. It transpired that the visiting paternal grandmother had inadvertently caused the injury but was too embarrassed to speak up. The criminal case against the Shahs was closed post-investigation, but the civil custody case is on. In the meantime, somewhere in an undisclosed location, in foster care, their baby has started to walk.

The Shahs have their own set of complaints beginning with the removal of a breastfeeding baby from its mother; of language as a hurdle in communication at every step with every institutional set-up; of decreased frequency of permitted visitations and cultural obdurateness — their request to let the baby be raised on a vegan/vegetarian diet has been ignored.

A 7-year-old boy was found dead inside of a washing machine just hours after his parents reported him missing Thursday.

At about 5.20am Thursday, the parents of Troy Khoeler filed a missing persons report with police, Lt Robert Minchew of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said during a press conference.

When police officers arrived at the home of Troy’s parents in Spring, Texas, the distraught couple said the boy had been missing since about 4am.

After the parents partook in a brief interview for the missing persons report, deputies found there were ‘signs’ indicating that they should search the house in its entirety for the boy.

Minchew could not say what those signs were, or if it was standard procedure, but authorities also searched the immediate area outside the home for the boy.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a biological mother can also be an “adoptive mother”. The ruling came in a case where a woman’s plea for adopting her daughter from her first marriage, after she tied the knot again, was dismissed by a Bhiwani family court.

During the course of hearing, the Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma was told that the biological parents got a divorce vide judgment and decree dated April 25, 2016, passed by Sonepat District Judge (Family Court).

Thereafter, the mother solemnised the second marriage in September 2017. The two then filed the application under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act for the seven-year-old girl’s adoption.

Along with the application and other documents, permission/consent by the biological parents for surrendering the minor’s custody to the step-parent, duly allowed and “stamped by the seal” of the Bhiwani Child Welfare Committee, was placed on record.

The minor’s consent that she wanted to stay with the biological mother and her second husband was also placed on record. But the application was rejected on the ground that a biological mother cannot become a mother in “dual status” — a biological mother as well as adoptive mother.

Timeschange,systemschange. Weevolvefrom generationsto generations.

In nearly 15 years as a volunteer group, we have become a known value in the adoption world, where we

have given everyone the opportunity to give a voice around and for adoption and foster-related groups on

our platform. We want to make clear what adoption entails and what impact it has on the various parties.

We aim to strengthen international and domestic adoptions worldwide so that we can provide more

Gather as many of the approximately 4,000 Belgians adopted from South Korea as possible, and then look together at recently surfaced reportage images from more than forty years ago. That is what Yung Fierens wants to achieve. “These images show that people already knew what suffering was being done to us. It's time we finally get recognition for that."

The interest group Critical Adoptees Front Europe (CAFE) is demanding official apologies from the government after images have surfaced of South Korean children arriving in our country completely upset, to be handed over to their adoptive parents. CAFE also wants a committee to be established. That message 'Het Nieuwsblad' Tuesday.

The images date from 1981. According to Yung Fierens (45), chairwoman of the interest group Critical Adoptees Front Europe (CAFE), these images show that even then it was already known what malpractice was happening. For example, children were sold and false birth certificates were also drawn up.

“We request an official apology from the government,” said Fierens. “In addition, we want a truth commission that investigates what went wrong with the intercountry adoptions. And finally, we want support in the search for our parents.”

“As the Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and Family, I understand the questions and concerns about abuses in the past,” responds Hilde Crevits (CD&V). “Flanders has been co-authorized for intercountry adoption since 2012. Previously, this was exclusively a federal competence. There is now a federal debate about how to deal with these abuses.” The minister also points out that at the beginning of June the House unanimously asked the government to start an investigation into illegal adoptions in our country.

Crevits adds that last year, on the basis of a report by an expert panel, the Flemish government laid down the guidelines within which international adoption is still possible in the future. “We try to exclude abuses and abuses as much as possible,” says Crevits.

Becoming a mother without being married was often considered a sin in the 50s, 60s and 70s. That is why thousands of women at that time had to give up their babies for adoption immediately after birth, against their will. One of those 'remote mothers' is Trudy Scheele-Gertsen (75), who, together with women's rights organization Bureau Clara Wichmann, filed a lawsuit against the Dutch State because of these abuses.

32-year-old Iresha was born in India and adopted as a baby by Dutch adoptive parents. Iresha is 12 years old when she dares to confide in someone and tells about how things really go at her home. At the age of 15 she is removed from home. She spends her teenage years in various youth care institutions.

Years later she has her own life on track. She lives in Antwerp where she is educated at the art academy and works on her artworks with great passion. This is her story.

Where I come from

I grew up in a family with Dutch parents. After my arrival in the Netherlands, my parents adopted my sister from Colombia. My mother got pregnant twice more. She interrupted one pregnancy and when I was 7 years old they had another son. I've always felt different. I looked different from the people around me.

When I was 5 years old, I traveled to India with my adoptive parents to meet my biological mother. This was a traumatic experience. I was too young to be confronted with my background; the different culture in India and the poverty I saw. When I got off the plane and was confronted by the people living on the streets, I threw up.