Anupama and her husband Ajith come out of the CWC office at Poojapura on Thursday

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala state council for child welfare on Thursday issued an order for facilitating the DNA test of the child it had given out for adoption to an Andhra couple.

The order was issued after Anupama, who has accused her parents of giving out her baby for adoption to the council without her consent, claimed that the child was hers. After the government informed the court about the claims of Anupama over the child, the court had directed the council and child welfare committee to take steps for conducting the DNA test of the child.

Reacting to the latest development, Anupama, who is staging a protest in front of the welfare council, said she was happy about the order, but would continue the stir till she gets her baby back. “The order says the child would be brought back to Kerala in five days for the DNA test. The district child protection officer would be the custodian of the baby till the DNA test is over. The child would be housed in a government facility is what I assume,” she said.

The child would be brought from Andhra under police protection. “Getting back my child is one of the most important demands I have raised. But there are other important problems that need attention. It includes action against the authorities who failed to do justice. My fight would continue until all those responsible for the forced adoption of my child are punished,” Anupama said.

A Texas woman who was a program manager at an adoption agency based in Ohio has pleaded guilty to federal charges of procuring adoptions of Ugandan and Polish children by bribing Ugandan officials and defrauding authorities in this country. Debra Parris of Lake Dallas also played a role in one of the most horrific child abuse cases in North Texas, where the woman’s adult son used a Barbie doll to cause severe trauma to the private parts of his 5-year-old adopted daughter, authorities said. The girl was adopted from the agency where the North Texas woman worked. Parris pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to violate the foreign corrupt practices act (FCPA) and commit visa fraud in connection with the Uganda scheme, and conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the Poland scheme. She is scheduled to be sentenced on March 9, 2022. Two other co-defendants, Margaret Cole, 73, of Strongsville, Ohio; and Dorah Mirembe, 41, of Kampala, Uganda, were indicted in the case. Cole was the executive director of European Adoption Consultants, and Mirembe worked for the company.

The trial against Cole is scheduled to commence on Feb. 7. Mirembe remains at large. Another North Texas woman and an employee at European Adoption Consultants, Robin Longoria of Mansfield, has pleaded guilty in the case. Information was not available Friday on her status. They were charged in Ohio, where the now closed European Adoption Consultants had been operating. The company was based in Strongsville, Ohio. The State Department said that in addition to Poland and Uganda, the agency ran adoption programs in Bulgaria, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Honduras, India, Panama, Tanzania and Ukraine, according to cleveland.com. Parris engaged in a scam to pay bribes to Ugandan officials to corruptly procure the adoption of Ugandan children by families in the United States, including the adoption of kids who were not properly determined to be orphaned, authorities said.

The bribes were paid to social welfare officers, Ugandan magistrate judges and court registrars. According to an indictment, Parris and other co-conspirators and the entities they worked for received more than $900,000 in connection with the adoptions. In the Poland scheme, the indictment alleges that after clients of their adoption agency determined they could not care for one of two Polish children they were set to adopt, Cole and Parris took steps to transfer the child to Parris’ relatives, who were not eligible for inter-country adoption. The girl was adopted in 2015 to John Tufts, who is Parris’ son and lived in North Texas. The Dallas Observer reported the girl told investigators that a bad guy “hurt my vagina and booty and they make it red” but she refused to identify him, according to Tufts’ arrest warrant affidavit. Tufts was charged in Denton with injury to a child — serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony. According to the affidavit, he “intentionally and knowingly caused injury to [the child] by inserting a Barbie doll into her vaginal and anal area.” Tufts’ wife was also charged. John Tufts was sentenced to 28 years in prison in March 2019, according to Denton County criminal court records. In July 2019, his now ex-wife, Georgiana Tufts, was sentenced to 10 years of probation with 90 days in jail and 240 community service hours as conditions of that probation, according to court records. After the girl was abused, the Ohio federal indictment alleges that Cole and Parris took steps to conceal their improper conduct from U.S. agencies and Polish authorities.

Holt International and Gift of Adoption Partner to Make up to $500,000 in Adoption Philanthropy Grants Available to Put Adoption in Reach for Qualified Families Adopting Vulnerable Children.

Eugene, Oregon, Nov. 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In celebration of National Adoption Month, Holt International and Gift of Adoption today announced a partnership to reduce financial barriers to adoption for qualified families yearning to adopt vulnerable children by making up to $500,000 in adoption philanthropy grants available. The partnership celebrates each organization’s child-centered beliefs that every child deserves a permanent and loving home.

Through its Families Not Finances campaign, Holt will provide grants of $10,000 towards the fees for adopting children they’ve identified as needing special support to be matched with a qualified family regardless of the family’s financial status. Holt’s $10,000 grant will go toward eliminating Holt’s agency costs for the adoption of children who have been identified as needing special support.

Gift of Adoption will provide up to $15,000 to complete the adoption of any Holt family who has been matched with a child and needs financial assistance to bring their waiting child home.

“For 25 years Gift of Adoption volunteers and donors have made adoption a philanthropic priority", added Pam Devereux, CEO of Gift of Adoption. "Reminding us that you don’t have to adopt to give a child a loving permanent family.”.

The narratives around adoption narratives are changing, led by the voices involved. This Adoption Week Scotland, we look at what the award-winning project Whatever Next? tells us about how we can learn from each other and international adoption.

Whatever Next? is an award-winning adoptee-led project which was started in January 2021 by three Chinese adoptees – Addie, Hannah and Jo - who met in Edinburgh at the tail end of 2019. Since then, Whatever Next?, which focuses on how adoption is talked about and represented, has made appearances on BBC Radio Scotland, LBC, and in the Herald Scotland, and is currently working with Solus Productions on a podcast and Adoption UK on a series of webinars. In this blog post, they share some of their thoughts on how discussion surrounding adoption is changing and how they navigate this.

The three of us, Addie, Hannah and Jo met in Edinburgh. Addie had posted on a Facebook group designed for UK-based Chinese adoptees to see if there was anybody in Edinburgh who fancied meeting up in person. Our first few meetings started as cups of coffee and cake dotted around the various cafes of Edinburgh and the project initially began as an experiment to see how some of our views on certain topics about adoption might shift as we grew older. We began recording a few of these with the idea that it might be interesting to listen back to these in a couple of years' time.

Since that first recorded conversation, Whatever Next? has grown far beyond anything we could have imagined and it has been both a great privilege and experience to bring our conversations to other adoptees as well as friends, family and loved ones outside “the adoptive triad” (birth parents, adoptive parents, adoptee).

Three aims we try to strive towards in our work are bridging gaps in dialogues with those outside of the adoption triad; documenting changes in our own thoughts surrounding adoption as we learn more and grow older; and challenging traditional adoption narratives while showcasing the diversity of opinions within the global adoptive community.

The narratives around adoption narratives are changing, led by the voices involved. This Adoption Week Scotland, we look at what the award-winning project Whatever Next? tells us about how we can learn from each other and international adoption.

Whatever Next? is an award-winning adoptee-led project which was started in January 2021 by three Chinese adoptees – Addie, Hannah and Jo - who met in Edinburgh at the tail end of 2019. Since then, Whatever Next?, which focuses on how adoption is talked about and represented, has made appearances on BBC Radio Scotland, LBC, and in the Herald Scotland, and is currently working with Solus Productions on a podcast and Adoption UK on a series of webinars. In this blog post, they share some of their thoughts on how discussion surrounding adoption is changing and how they navigate this.

The three of us, Addie, Hannah and Jo met in Edinburgh. Addie had posted on a Facebook group designed for UK-based Chinese adoptees to see if there was anybody in Edinburgh who fancied meeting up in person. Our first few meetings started as cups of coffee and cake dotted around the various cafes of Edinburgh and the project initially began as an experiment to see how some of our views on certain topics about adoption might shift as we grew older. We began recording a few of these with the idea that it might be interesting to listen back to these in a couple of years' time.

Since that first recorded conversation, Whatever Next? has grown far beyond anything we could have imagined and it has been both a great privilege and experience to bring our conversations to other adoptees as well as friends, family and loved ones outside “the adoptive triad” (birth parents, adoptive parents, adoptee).

Three aims we try to strive towards in our work are bridging gaps in dialogues with those outside of the adoption triad; documenting changes in our own thoughts surrounding adoption as we learn more and grow older; and challenging traditional adoption narratives while showcasing the diversity of opinions within the global adoptive community.

The Thiruvananthapuram district child welfare committee has ordered that a child that was already

declared legally free for adoption and handed over to adoptive parents under preadoption foster care shall be returned to the adoption agency.

The order was issued in view of the claim by a woman that it was her child and her parents and

relatives gave the child for adoption without her consent.

Anupama Chandran, a 22-year-old woman hailing from Thiruvananthapuram, had also moved legally

MAKED IMPRESSIONS: Many were moved to tears by Fredrik Solvang's strong story in the program «Lindmo» earlier this autumn. - The new report confirms what many of us have lived with since we were brought here in the 1970s and 80s, namely that we who are adopted abroad experience discrimination to the same extent as people with an immigrant background, the columnists write.

DANIEL Abimael SKJERVE Wensell

DIANA PATRICIA fynbos,

CHRISTINA VIOLETA THRANE Storsve, Adoption changing - Resource adopted and their families

HAWA Muus, Foundation on August 10

THE TESTIMONY GIVEN by Philomena Lee to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes about the adoption of her son has been misinterpreted by the Government, the High Court has heard.

Michael Lynn SC, acting on behalf of Lee, said an assertion made in court by Eoin McCullough SC, acting on behalf of the Government, that Lee consented to the adoption of her son was inaccurate.

Lynn said that while Lee did sign the document in question, she was given “no other choice” and the full content of it was never explained to her.

Lee and fellow survivor Mary Harney are among several women taking legal action against the State following the publication of the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes earlier this year. Their two legal challenges are being used as test cases which will set a precedent for future similar cases.

The Commission of Investigation dissolved in February, so the women are taking cases against the Minister for Children, the Irish Government and the Attorney General.

This week the 98th title of Yvonne Keuls will be published. A book she had to write, about her foster child Gemmetje. Just as she had to tell all those other unjust stories, including about child abuse by high-ranking people. "If I see the law being tampered with, I stand up."

Yvonne Keuls turns 90 next month, but that doesn't mean she gets few Whatsapp messages. In fact, "it goes on throughout the day," she says. She shows the baby photos that appear in the family app: one of her three great-grandchildren. “I have three daughters of my own, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. I eat that. They all have cauliflower ears because I nibbled on them.'

Three daughters of your own, you say. Why?

'Because I've also had some foster children over the years. One of them stayed in my life for 25 years, that's Gemmetje. It took me quite a while to write about her, but it had to happen, I've known that for twenty years, since her death. I have never laughed with anyone as much as with that creature. Maybe with my mother. And you know what it is: if you really laugh with someone, you never forget it – you can't put your finger on it, but if you can really laugh with each other, the bond goes under the skin.'

The novel that Keuls wrote about that 'creature', Gemmetje Victoria , will be published this week. It is her 98th title. A book in the vein of the 'social novels' that are among her greatest successes, and which are still read today: The rotten life of Floortje Bloem (1982), The mother of David S. (1980) and Jan Rap en z' nmaat (1977), in which Gemmetje (as Gemma) also plays one of the leading roles.

Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter has never been able to find the family who put her up for adoption, but her pursuit of information has shaped her life since being adopted by a single mom in Minnesota

Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter will be celebrating her 49th birthday this November 28, but her exact age remains shrouded in mystery.

"We don't know if I was a week old or a couple of months old when they found me, so they just gave me a birthday," Kripa Cooper-Lewter tells PEOPLE.

That's because the mother of two was found as an infant in a cradle on the steps of an Indian orphanage started by Mother Teresa. The sisters there estimated she was born in 1972 and came up with her birthdate.

"That's the story I've been told my whole life," Kripa Cooper-Lewter says. "The sisters said they had a cradle outside the orphanage that people could leave children in, because it was common that babies would be abandoned on the street."